Page "Agrarianism" Paragraph 17

Borrowing from the French Physiocrats the idea that all wealth originates with the land, making farming the only truly productive enterprise, agrarianism claims that agriculture is the foundation of all other professions.

Philosophically, European agrarianism reflects the ideas of John Locke, who declared in his Second Treatise of Civil Government ( 1690 ) that those who work the land are its rightful owners.

His labor theory of value influenced the thinking of Thomas Jefferson, who in turn shaped the way many nineteenth-century American homesteaders understood ownership of their farms.

Jefferson wrote in 1785 in a letter to John Jay that