Sayward’s changing feelings are symbolized by her attitude toward the trees of the forest. The original settlers cut these down in a wide area to develop their farmsteads and later the town of Americus. In the beginning, Sayward has an almost personal animosity toward the trees, because of the backbreaking labor they required as settlers struggled to clear the land for farms and homes. By the last novel of the trilogy, Sayward mourns the loss of the great trees:   "She had thought it then a wonderful sight to see, a place free of the lonesome gloom of the deep woods, and nary a big butt (tree) to have to cut down and burn up. But she didn't know how much she liked it now. . . . Now why did she think all her life that trees were savage and cruel? . . . . Maybe she was just homesick for when she was young." Coming to understand what they mean to her, Sayward finds several young trees on the edges of her former land. She transplants them to the front and side yards of her house. On her deathbed, before she loses the power of speech, she asks for her bed to be moved so that she can see the trees to her last breath. Sayward believes that the original settlers were forced to build character by their hard work and persistence in the face of adversity. By contrast, the new generation of town settlers seems untested. To Sayward's mind, the new generation are taking advantage of the work done by people before them, and have not made equal contributions or sacrifices. Contemporary life seems easy by contrast. “What gave folks ‘narve strings’ today and made them soft so they couldn’t stand what folks could when she was young? . . . . It had taken a wild and rough land to breed the big butts (trees) she saw when first she came here, and she reckoned it took a rough and hard life to breed the kind of folks she knew as a young woman. If you made it easy for folks, it seemed like their hardihood had to pay for it.” By comparison, her youngest son, Chancey, follows the Socialist beliefs of social reformer Robert Owen. He believes that the goal of the community should be sharing labor for the benefit of all, that progress means that work could be rewarding in itself, and there should not be wide separation of classes. “Robert Owen said . . . if you make a man happy, you make him virtuous.