influence on
the country mind of the more restless and adventurous rural people who,
for one reason or another, have not migrated. In the far West
especially, attention has been given to the rural hostility to, or at
least the misunderstanding of, city movements which attempt ambitious
social advances. It is safe to assume that this attitude of rural people
is widespread and is noticeable far west merely because of a greater
frankness. The easterner hides his attitude because he has become
conscious that it opens him to criticism. This attitude of rural
hostility is rooted in the fundamental differences between the thinking
of country and of city people, due largely to the process of social
selection. This mental difference gives constant opportunity for social
friction. If the individuals who live most happily in the city and in
the country are contrasted, there is reason to suppose that the mental
opposition expresses nervous differences. In one we have the more rapid,
more changeable, and more consuming thinker, while the thought of the
other is slower, more persistent, and less wasteful of nervous energy.

The work of the average farmer brings him into limited association with
his fellows as compared with the city worker. This fact also operates
upon him mentally. He has less sense of social variations and less
realization of the need of group solidarity. This results in his having
less social passion than his city brother, except when he is caught in a
periodic outburst of economic discontent expressed in radical agitation,
and also in his having a more feeble class-consciousness and a weaker
basis for cooperation. This last limitation is one from which the farmer
seriously suffers.

The farmer's lack of contact with antagonistic groups, because his work
keeps him away from the centers where social discontent boils with
passion and because it prevents his appreciating class differences,
makes him a conservative element in our national life, but one always
big with the danger of a blind servitude to traditions and archaic
social judgments. The thinking of the farmer may be either substantial
from his sense of personal sufficiency or backward from his lack of
contact. The decision regarding his attitude is made by the influences
that enter his life, in addition to those born of his occupation.

At this point, however, it would be serious to forget that some of the
larger farming enterprises are carried on so diffe