heat for the world's market. As agriculture became a
business, he became a business man. As agricultural science began to
contribute to the art of farming, he studied applied science. As
industrial education developed, he founded and patronized institutions
for agricultural education. As alertness and enterprise began to be
indispensable in commercial activity, he grew alert and enterprising.

The mossback is the man who has either misread the signs of the times,
or who has not possessed the speed demanded in the two-minute class. He
is the old farmer gone to seed. He tries to fit the old methods to the
new regime.

But it is not sufficient to picture the new farmer. You must explain
him. What is it that makes the new farmer? Who is he? What are his
tools? In the first place, you cannot explain the new farmer unless you
know the old farmer. You cannot have the new farmer unless you also
have the mossback. The new farmer is a comparative person, as it were.
You have to define him in terms of the mossback. The contrast is not
between the old farmer and the new, for that is merely a question of
relative conditions in different epochs of time. The contrast is between
the new farmer and the mossback, for that is a question of men and of
their relative efficiency as members of the industrial order. Then, of
course, you must observe the individual traits that characterize the new
farmer, such as keenness, business instinct, readiness to adopt new
methods, and, in fact, all the qualities that make a man a success today
in any calling. For the new farmer, in respect to his personal
qualities, is not a sport, a phenomenon. He does not stand out as a
distinct and peculiar specimen. He is a successful American citizen who
grows corn instead of making steel rails.

But you have not yet explained the new farmer. These personal traits do
not explain him. It may be possible to explain an individual and his
success by calling attention to his characteristics, and yet you cannot
completely analyze him and his career unless you understand the
conditions under which he works--the industrial and social environment.
Much less can you explain a class of people by describing their personal
characteristics. You must reach out into the great current of life that
is about them, and discern the direction and power of that current.

Now, the conditions that tend to make the new farmer possible may be
grouped in an old-fashioned way under two hea