"This, Mr. Fenwick, is but a sample of many like expressions from the lips of public men, showing the stigma and low estimate which is placed on farmers as a class, by clerical, professional and commercial people. When we consider that farming people form a large majority of the citizens of our republic, a republic whose constitution guarantees equal rights for all; whose chief corner stone from the beginning, has been its admirable system of free education in its public schools; the manifest endeavor of the Bishop and his class, to consign the tillers of the soil to a caste of low order, and to argue that education is for the few and not for the farmer, indicates something radically wrong in our social system that augurs ill for the future of our republic. That the dissatisfaction is widespread and serious, is manifest to all thinkers and observers. To discover the cause and cure, and to speedily apply the remedy for this growing discontent, becomes an imperative duty for all patriotic people. In my experience, the following are some of the most prolific causes:
"The isolation and loneliness of the small farm.
"The long hours of tedious, monotonous toil for both man and woman.
"The constantly increasing competition of large farms, armed with capital and expensive machinery, which tends to reduce the price of farm products.
"The want of proper society, healthful amusements, books, and many other necessary educational facilities.
"The discouraging meagerness of the financial returns for a year of such constant toil.
"These things all tend to destroy the farmer's love for, and pride in, his occupation, until farm work becomes a repulsive drudgery, and he flies to the city for a more congenial employment. Is it then, under the circumstances, any wonder that the farmers' sons should become dissatisfied with the occupation of their birth? That in company with their sisters and sweethearts they should be determined, at all hazards, to escape from the evils of what Bishop Withington terms a 'God-ordained' class of hewers of wood, drawers of water, and tillers of the soil, a class which dooms them and their children to a future of hopeless toil?
"Agriculture forms the basis and support of our national, industrial and commercial success. Therefore it is imperative that agricultural pursuits be made to become the most noble and pleasing of all occupations. How can this be accomplished?
"Surely, co-operative farming, with its improved conditions and methods, is the remedy indicated!"