get by Tolstoi in his "Resurrection," when his hero, from moral
sympathy with land reform, undertakes to give his tenants land under
conditions more to their advantage and, much to his surprise, finds them
hostile to the plan. They had been too often tricked in the past and
felt too little acquainted with business methods to have any confidence
in the new plan which claimed benevolent motives. It is only fair to
admit that the farmer differs from others of his social rank only in
degree, and that his experiences in the past appear to him to justify
his skeptical attitude. He has at times suffered exploitation; what he
does not realize is that this has been made possible by his lack of
knowledge of the ways of modern business and by his failure to
organize. The farmer is beginning to appreciate the significance of
marketing. Unfortunately, he too often carries his suspiciousness, which
has resulted from business experiences, into many other lines of action
and thinking, and thus robs himself of enthusiasm and social confidence.

A third important element in the making of the farmer's mind may be
broadly designated as suggestion. The farmer is like other men in that
his mental outlook is largely colored by the suggestions that enter his
life.

It is this fact, perhaps, that explains why the farmer's mind does not
express more clearly vocational character, for no other source of
persistent suggestions has upon most men the influence of the newspaper,
and each day, almost everywhere, the daily paper comes to the farmer
with its appealing suggestions. Of course the paper represents the urban
point of view rather than the rural, but in the deepest sense it may be
said to look at life from the human outlook, the way the average man
sees things. The newspaper, therefore, feeds the farmer's mind with
suggestions and ideas that counteract the influences that specially
emphasize the rural environment. It keeps him in contact with thinking
and events that are world-wide, and unconsciously permeates his motives,
at times giving him urban cravings that keep him from utilizing to the
full his social resources in the country. Any attempt to understand
rural life that minimizes the common human fellowship which the
newspaper offers the farmer is certain to lead to unfortunate
misinterpretation. Mentally the farmer is far from being isolated in his
experiences, for he no longer is confined to the world of local ideas as
he once was. Thi