When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization.

Webster’s aphorism links agriculture to the rise of settled society. “Tillage” implies not merely farming but the deliberate transformation of land, which enables stable food supplies, permanent communities, and surplus resources. From that surplus come specialization and “other arts”—crafts, commerce, learning, and government—because fewer people must devote all their time to subsistence. Calling farmers the “founders of human civilization” elevates agricultural labor from a private occupation to a civilizational precondition, reflecting a common nineteenth‑century civic rhetoric that treated agrarian productivity as the bedrock of national prosperity and social order.