The building up of the countryman is the big constructive job of our time.  When the countryman comes to his own, the town man will no longer be able to tax, and to concentrate power, and to bully the world.

     Very heartily yours,
     WALTER H. PAGE.

To Henry Wallace

     Garden City, N.Y.
     11 March, 1913.

     MY DEAR UNCLE HENRY: 

What a letter yours is!  By George! we must get on the job, you and I, of steering the world—­get on it a little more actively.  Else it may run amuck.  We have frightful responsibilities in this matter.  The subject weighs the more deeply and heavily on me because I am just back from a month’s vacation in North Carolina, where I am going to build me a winter and old-age bungalow.  No; you would be disappointed if you went out of your way to see my boys.  Moreover, they are now merely clearing land.  They sold out the farm they put in shape, after two years’ work, for just ten times what it had cost, and they are now starting another one de novo.  About a year hence, they’ll have something to show.  And next winter, when my house is built down there, I want you to come and see me and see that country.  I’ll show you one of the most remarkable farmers’ clubs you ever saw and many other interesting things as well—­many, very many.  I’m getting into this farm business in dead earnest.  That’s the dickens of it:  how can I do my share in our partnership to run the universe if I give my time to cotton-growing problems?  It’s a tangled world.

Well, bless your soul!  You and the younger Wallaces (my regards to every one of them) and Poe[9]—­you are all very kind to think of me for that difficult place—­too difficult by far, for me.  Besides, it would have cost me my life.  If I were to go into public life, I should have had to sell my whole interest here.  This would have meant that I could never make another dollar.  More than that, I’d have thrown away a trade that I’ve learned and gone at another one that I know little about—­a bad change, surely.  So, you see, there never was anything serious in this either in my mind or in the President’s.  Arthur hit it off right one day when somebody asked him: 

     “Is your father going to take the Secretaryship of Agriculture?”

     He replied:  “Not seriously.”

     Besides, the President didn’t ask me!  He knew too much for that.

     [Illustration:  Charles D. McIver of Greensboro, North Caroline, a
     leader in the cause of Southern Education]

     [Illustration:  Woodrow Wilson in 1912]