A typical old homestead of the Middle West 100 Students of agriculture in the pageant that celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Ohio State University 114 A feeding-plant at “Whitehall,” the farm of Edwin S. Kelly, near Springfield, Ohio 120 Judging graded shorthorn herds at the American Royal Live Stock Show in Kansas City 132 Chicago is the big brother of all lesser towns 142 The “Ham Fair” in Paris is richer in antiquarian loot, but Maxwell Street is enough; ’twill serve! 152 Banquet given for the members of the National Institute of Arts and Letters 176 There is a death-watch that occupies front seats at every political meeting 194 The Political Barbecue 198 THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY France evoked from the unknown the valley that may, in more than one sense, be called the heart of America.... The chief significance and import of the addition of this valley to the maps of the world, all indeed that makes it significant, is that here was given (though not of deliberate intent) a rich, wide, untouched field, distant, accessible only to the hardiest, without a shadowing tradition or a restraining fence, in which men of all races were to make attempt to live together under rules of their own devising and enforcing. And as here the government of the people by the people was to have even more literal interpretation than in that Atlantic strip which had traditions of property suffrage and church privilege and class distinctions, I have called it the “Valley of the New Democracy.” --JOHN H. FINLEY: “The French in the Heart of America.” THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY CHAPTER I THE FOLKS AND THEIR FOLKSINESS I “The great trouble with these fellows down here,” remarked my friend as we left the office of a New York banker--“the trouble with all of ’em is that they forget about the _Folks_. You noticed that when he asked in his large, patronizing way how things are going out West he didn’t wait for us to answer; he pressed a button and told his secretary to bring in those tables of railroad earnings and to-day’s crop bulletins and that sort of rubbish, so he could tell _us_. It never occurs to ’em that the Folks are human beings and not just a column of statistics. Why, the _Folks_----”