<Li> Cultivation of the soil "has within it a positive spiritual good" and from it the cultivator acquires the virtues of "honor, manliness, self - reliance, courage, moral integrity, and hospitality ." They result from a direct contact with nature and, through nature, a closer relationship to God . The agrarian is blessed in that he follows the example of God in creating order out of chaos . </Li> <P> The philosophical roots of agrarianism include European and Chinese philosophers . The Chinese school of Agriculturalism (农家 / 農家) was a philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism . In societies influenced by Confucianism, the farmer was considered an esteemed productive member of society, but merchants who made money were looked down upon . That influenced European intellectuals like François Quesnay, an avid Confucianist and advocate of China's agrarian policies, in forming the French agrarian philosophy of physiocracy . The physiocrats, along with the ideas of John Locke and the Romantic Era, formed the basis of modern European and American agrarianism . </P> <P> United States president (1801--1809) Thomas Jefferson was a representative agrarian who built Jeffersonian democracy around the notion that farmers are "the most valuable citizens" and the truest republicans . </P> <P> Peasant parties first appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, when commercialized agriculture and world market forces disrupted traditional rural society, and the railway and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers . Agrarian parties advocated land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it . They also wanted village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements . Many peasant parties were also nationalist parties because peasants often worked their land for the benefit of landlords of different ethnicity . </P>

Who wanted america to be an agrarian society