Daniel Lattier for Intellectual Takeout writes. “At the time of the America’s founding, 95% of its population lived on farmland, and only 5% lived in urban areas. Fast forward to today, and these numbers have dramatically flip-flopped. Currently, a whopping 81% of people live in urban areas and only 19% live in rural areas. What is more, only about 1.6% of the American labor force is engaged in agriculture.
Thomas Jefferson when writing about British commercialism: “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… I consider the class of artificers as the panders of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are overturned... I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural.”