Alex de Tocqueville (1848, 551–53) observed a similar phenomenon during his sojourn in the United States: Agriculture is perhaps, of all the useful arts, the one which improves most slowly in democratic nations…. To cultivate the ground promises an almost certain reward … but a slow one. In that way you only grow rich by little and with toil. Agriculture only suits the wealthy, who already have a great superfluity, or the poor, who only want to live…. [T]he great fortunes … are almost always of commercial origin.
