Once more the food of the world is to be produced. Working in accord with nature, man will sow seed, prune his trees, trim his vines, tend his herds and flocks, and bow his shoulders to the burden of toil, so that the world may be fed. To guide him in his work he draws on the long experience of the race and the enlightenment of modern science; to aid him he calls for the best tools and machinery that the brain can devise. As soon as the farmer drives his team to the field he stimulates activity in the colleges and laboratories and in all the mines and factories. Those who labor in the cities may go on with their work, for there will be food to pay for their products. But there is something more. Besides renewing the food supply of the world--the most necessary work of all, for we are never more than a few months away from the hunger line--the men who work in the fields will re-create the wealth of the world. Without being renewed by the interest and profits to be derived from the crops, Capital, that bulks so large and is often so insolent, would dwindle and disappear. Financiers, Manufacturers, Promoters, and Captains of Industry depend on the crops--on the labor of the men in the fields--as much as any one else. They devise their great schemes, launch their projects, and undertake their enterprises solely with a view to getting a share of the new wealth that will be taken from the fields and perfected by labor. The crops and the wages of the laboring men will pay debts contracted for necessities and luxuries, and pay the interest on borrowed money. The financial machinery of the world can work smoothly, for there will be a flood of new wealth when the crops are harvested. If the crops failed, or if the farmers refused to produce, the cities would be wiped out and the social fabric would crumble. The Government would be without revenues. If debts and interest were not paid, dividends on stocks and bonds would cease and the capitalist would be reduced to beggary. Without the yearly work of the farmers our magnificent civilization would relapse to barbarism and our great world drama would become a mad scramble of savages. From this point of view the farmer's part is entirely heroic. He is the demi-Atlas of the world, the "arm and bourgonet of men." In our great drama, introduced by bird song and lighted by the spring sunshine, he is surely cast for the title rôle. Alas, the pity of it! He has been too often merely the drudge--the serf who provided the luxuries of his over-lords.