Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Farmer and the Interests: A Study in Parasitism
Ideas rule the world. Man is as free as his thought. Contiguity imports contagion of ideas - isolation works sterilization. The farmer lacks ideas, his thought is circumscribed. His isolation in space on the farm breeds isolation of soul. He spends his days apart in toil; he is alone in body, soul, and industry. He develops individualism, he loses confidence in his fellows, his gregarious instincts decay, his powers of combination become atrophied, his cc-operative faculties grow impot ent. He is solitary, weak, and gullible.
He toils long and hard. He produces much, and, under the operation of the natural laws of supply and demand, he would receive a corres pondingly large return, but having produced, he makes no manner of provision for retaining a fair share of his production. The economic laws of the state are deliberately framed to take from him the greater part of his production. He has the law-making power in his own hands, but owing to his individualism, he does not exercise this power.
Agriculture is the chief basic industry of Can ada, and those engaged in it are the most numer ous, the most necessary, the most moral, and potentially the most in?uential class in the com munity, but through lack of class coherence they have abrogated their chief functions as citizens.
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