The second characteristic of the land farmer was his development of the family group. He differed from the pioneer, whose life was lonely and individual, in the perfection of group life in his period. He differs from the exploiter who succeeds him in the country today in the fact that exploitation has dissolved the family group. The experience of the land farmer compacted and perfected the household group in the country. The beginnings of this group life were in the pioneer period, but there was not peace in which the family could develop nor were there resources by which it could be endowed. The classic period of American home life is that of the land farmer. The typical American home, as it lives in sentiment, in literature and in idealism, is the home of the land farmer. Third, the land farmer owned his home. He built upon his farm a homestead which in most cases represented his ideal of domestic and family comfort. He built for permanence. So far as his means permitted he provided for his children and for generations of descendants after them. He consecrated the soil to his people and to his name by setting apart a graveyard on his own land, and there he buried his dead. Fourth, the land farmer had neighbors. His well-developed family group would not have been possible without other groups in the same community and the independence of the family group was relative, being perfected by imitation and economic competition. The land-farmer type came to maturity only when the whole of the land was possessed, when on every side the family group was confronted with other family groups, and neighborliness became universal. The family group is dependent through intermarriage and relationship upon other groups in the community. Family relationships thus came in the land-farmer communities to be very general. Some rough and crude forms of economic co-operation also grew up in this period, as modifications of the competition on which the land-farmer type is based. "The farmer type produced a definite social life," says Prof. Ross. "The second period, extending from 1835 to 1890, had as its chief objective the enrichment of the group life."