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Show Difference in Status of American and European Farming Class Is Explained These ancient ways at their best represent time-tested adaptations to the peculiar local conditions of soil and climate, as well as to plant and animal life; at their worst, they impose cumbersome hindrances to an effective production under modern mod-ern conditions of trans-oceanic competition. com-petition. But whatever they are, most peasants accept them without question. They do their work in their particular fashion, merely "because "be-cause it has always been done that way." The urban American has little conception of the European peasant, peas-ant, unless it be as the romantic figure of novel and opera, writes Carl Joachim Friedrich in the Yale Review. Except in certain remote sections, the American farmer is very different from the peasant of long-settled countries. To be sure, both farmer and peasant are engaged en-gaged in agriculture. But the typical typi-cal American farmer is a small-scale small-scale producer whose outlook is that of the business man. In fact, a great many American farmers are business men. While such business men-farmers are also to be found in Europe, they are not nearly so predominant Apart from the owners of the large estates employing a considerable number of men and women, say, ten or more, almost all European agriculturists are peasants. They are tradition-bound. Not only their personal habits but their methods of cultivation are handed on from father fa-ther to son, not entirely unrv-nged, of course, but neverthele -er-woven with ancient ways , things. i |