Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 123, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1919 — Farmers at the Polls [ARTICLE]

Farmers at the Polls

More Than Half the Voting Population Is Rural

It is like a dash of cold water full in the face to hold" up before many an excited city radical*? eyes the solid facts which prove that more than half of the voting population of this country is rural. The big centers of industry and traffic are prone to forget and grossly underestimate the power of the farmers at the polls, for the simple reason that they are not seen, every day, and are seldom coqnted. They are not like the city people who are being reckoned up, with more or less imaginative inflation of their numbers, by directory publishers, school officials, chambers of commerce and various local “boomers,” a little tipsy with their own urban conceit. The great cities are swarming with “reformers” who seldom give any consideration to the mental attitude of the farmers toward the" revolutionary schemes which they think will presently remake the world. They cannot tolerate the thought of dependence for authority upon such comparatively empty places as the rural counties and the distinctively, agricultural states. They seldom grasp the cold ■fact that they must win the country voters or else face failure, complete, hopeless and unending.