urban thinking the right to enjoy a
monopoly of social influence is this: men cannot safely build up their
social thinking from experiences gathered merely from the field of human
association. Nature also has lessons to teach and lessons that do not
always agree with the inferences that are naturally made when one thinks
only of the experiences of men in their associations. It is socially
foolish and socially unsafe to disregard, or at least to forget, the
value of thinking that functions, as the farmer's does, in the effort to
control Nature for a livelihood that directly contributes to human
welfare. If such thinking is often prosaic and rigid, it is also close
to reality and insistent upon practicality. Narrow it may be at times,
as a result of lack of opportunity to have wide contact, but it is
substantial and born of knowledge of the necessary limitations that
Nature places upon the wishes of men and women. The farmer by his
vocation is taught to be suspicious of easy solutions. He stands aloof
from men who claim to have found the panacea and regards men of such
abounding enthusiasm as belonging to the same group of the pathetically
deluded as the believers in the machine of perpetual motion. The farmer
keeps the greatest distance from day dreaming and can never have charged
against him as a characteristic fault that menace of self-supporting
fancy which is so insidious in its attack upon the mental wholesomeness
of a multitude of people.

It becomes, therefore, as a result of a constant and clear-minded
attention to the actual working of forces of Nature that seem at times
friendly and at times hostile to man's purposes, difficult for the
farmer to regard money, even with all its recognized power, as able to
do everything, or the one thing to be desired. This does not mean, of
course, that the farmer is indifferent to money. No one who knows him at
all would claim that he is unconcerned in regard to finances. He is
always interested in money, and, like other men, works to make it. For
want of money he is often troubled. He knows how much money will do in
the sphere of human association. His everyday philosophy reveals this in
ways that one cannot mistake. He also knows, however, that even money
has its limits and that these are seen in man's relations with Nature.

How different it is in the experience of the city-dweller! He finds that
money will do nearly anything. With money he can have the fruits
gathered fro