The Unsettling of America (1977) by Wendell Berry

IN the mind of Thomas Jefferson, farming, education, and democratic liberty were indissolubly linked. The great conviction of his life, which he staked his life upon and celebrated in a final letter two weeks before his death, was "that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. " But if liberty was in that sense a right, it was nevertheless also a privilege to be earned, deserved, and strenuously kept; to keep themselves free, he thought, a people must be stable, economically independent, and virtuous. He believed-on the basis, it should be remembered, of extensive experience both in this country and abroad-that these qualities were most dependably found in the farming people: "Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds. " These bonds were not merely those of economics and property, but those, at once more feeling and more practical, that come from the investment in a place and a community of work, devotion, knowledge, memory, and association.

By contrast, Jefferson wrote: "I consider the class of artificers as the panders of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned. " By "artificers" he meant manufacturers, and he made no distinction between "management" and "labor. " The last-quoted sentence is followed by no explanation, but its juxtaposition with the one first quoted suggests that he held manufacturers in suspicion because their values were already becoming abstract, enabling them to be "socially mobile" and therefore subject preeminently to the motives of self-interest.