They are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others; and, when once they have taken root, they will extinguish every other vegetable that grows around them... The most ignorant, the most bungling member of that profession, will, if placed in the most obscure part of the country, promote litigiousness, and amass more wealth without labor, than the most opulent farmer with all his toils.

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Original Citation

Crevecoeur, Michel Guillaume Jean [published as J. Hector St. John]. "What Is an American?" Letters from an American Farmer. London: Davies & Davies, 1782.

Current Citation

Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John. "Letters From an American Farmer." Letters From an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America, edited by Albert E. Stone. Penguin Classics, 1981.