Part 8 (1/2)
While farmers seem now to complain most of the labor shortage, the difficulty is not peculiarly rural. Good farmers feel it least; they have mastered this problem along with other problems. As a matter of fact, it is doubtful whether there is a real labor shortage as measured by previous periods; but it is very difficult to secure good labor on the previous terms and conditions.
_Reasons for the labor question._
The supposed short labor supply is not a temporary condition. It is one of the results of the readjustment and movement of society. A few of the immediate causes may be stated, to ill.u.s.trate the nature of the situation.
(1) In a large way, the labor problem is the result of the pa.s.sing out of the people from slavery and serfdom,--the rise of the working cla.s.ses out of subjugation. Peoples tend always to rise out of the laboring-man phase. We would not have it otherwise if we desire social democracy.
(2) It is due in part to the great amount and variety of constructive work that is now being done in the world, with the consequent urgent call for human hands. The engineering and building trades have extended enormously. We are doing kinds of work that we had not dreamed of a half-hundred years ago.
(3) In some places the labor difficulty is due to the working-men being drawn off to other places, through the perfecting of industrial organization. The organization of labor means companions.h.i.+p and social attraction. Labor was formerly solitary; it is now becoming gregarious.
(4) In general, men and women go where things are ”doing.” Things have not been doing on the farms. There has been a gradual pa.s.sing out from backward or stationary occupations into the moving occupations. Labor has felt this movement along with the rest. It has been natural and inevitable that farms should have lost their labor. Cities and great industrialism could not develop without them; and they have made the stronger bid.
(5) In farming regions, the outward movement of labor has been specially facilitated by lack of organization there, by the introduction of farm machinery, by the moving up of tenants into the cla.s.s of renters and owners, by lack of continuous employment, by relatively low pay, by absence of congenial a.s.sociation as compared with the town. Much of the hired farm labor is the sons of farmers and of others, who ”work out”
only until they can purchase a farm. Some of it is derived from the cla.s.s of owners who drift downward to tenants, to laboring men, and sometimes to s.h.i.+fters. We are now securing more or less foreign-born labor on the farms. Much of this is merely seasonal; and when it is not seasonal, the immigrant desires to become a farm owner himself. If the labor is seasonal, the man may return to his native home or to the city, and in either case he is likely to be lost to the open country.
_The remedies._
There is really no ”solution” for the labor difficulty. The problem is inherent in the economic and social situation. It may be relieved here and there by the introduction of immigrants or by transportation of laborers at certain times from the city; but the only real relief lies in the general working out of the whole economic situation. The situation will gradually correct itself; but the readjustment will come much more quickly if we understand the conditions.
As new interest arises in the open country and as additional values accrue, persons will remain in the country or will return to it; and the labor will remain or return with the rest. As the open country fills up, we probably shall develop a farm artisan cla.s.s, comprised of persons who will be skilled workmen in certain lines of farming as other persons are skilled workmen in manufactures and the trades. These persons will have cla.s.s pride. We now have practically no farm artisans, but solitary and more or less migratory working-men who possess no high-cla.s.s manual skill. Farm labor must be able to earn as much as other labor of equal grade, and it must develop as much skill as other labor, if it is to hold its own. This means, of course, that the farming scheme may need to be reorganized (pages 86 to 90).
Specifically, the farm must provide more continuous employment if it is to hold good labor. The farmer replies that he does not have employment for the whole year; to which the answer is that the business should be so reorganized as to make it a twelve months' enterprise. The introduction of crafts and local manufactures will aid to some extent, but it cannot take care of the situation (page 115). In some way the farm laborer must be reached educationally, either by winter schools, night schools, or other means. Every farm should itself be a school to train more than one laborer. The larger part of the farm labor must be country born. With the reorganization of country life and its increased earning power, we ought to see an increase in the size of country families.
_Public or social bearings._
It is doubtful if city industrialism is developing the best type of working-men, considered from the point of view of society (page 59). I am glad of all organizations of men and women, whether working-men or not. But it seems to me that the emphasis in some of the organizations has been wrongly placed. It has too often been placed on rights rather than on duties. No person and no people ever developed by mere insistence on their rights. It is responsibility that develops them. The working-man owes responsibility to his employer and to society; and so long as the present organization of society continues he cannot be an effective member of society unless he has the interest of his employer constantly in mind.
The real country working-men must const.i.tute a group quite by themselves. They cannot be organized on the basis on which some other folk are organized. There can be no rigid short-hour system on a farm.
The farm laborer cannot drop his reins or leave his pitchfork in the air when the whistle blows. He must remain until his piece of work is completed; this is the natural responsibility of a farm laborer, and it is in meeting this responsibility that he is able to rise to the upper grade and to develop his usefulness as a citizen.
It is a large question whether we are to have a distinct working-cla.s.s in the country as distinguished from the land-owning farmer. The old order is one of perfect democracy, in which the laboring-man is a part of the farmer's family. It is not to be expected that this condition can continue in its old form, but the probability is that there will always be a different relation between working-man and employer in the country from that which obtains in the city. The relation will be more direct and personal. The employer will always feel his sense of obligation and responsibility to the man whom he employs and to the man's family.
Persons do not starve to death in the open country.
Some persons think that the farming of the future is still to be performed on the family-plan, by which all members of the family perform the labor, and whatever incidental help is employed will become for the time a part of the family. This will probably continue to be the rule.
But we must face the fact, however, that a necessary result of the organization of country life and the specialization of its industries, that is now so much urged, will be the production of a laboring cla.s.s by itself.
_Supervision in farm labor._
It is doubtful whether we shall extend the industrial organization of labor to the open country, and yet there should be some way of administering farm labor. The growth of the tendency to coordinate farming industries, in order to overcome the disastrous effects of much of the compet.i.tive farming, will allow for supervision of labor, however, and will make for efficiency. The standardizing of agricultural practice will also do much to produce the community mind that is so much desired (p. 97). On this line, Dean H. E. Cook, who has given much thought to labor questions, writes me as follows:
”The production of iron, paper, and manufactured products generally has been standardized, and the cost laid down in the market is well known, and therefore placed squarely on a cash basis. Directly the opposite is the case in the manufacture of farm crops, and so we find the family to be the farm crop-producers. The wife and the children are a part of the working force of the farm, which is not found in any other industry. In fact, our laws are very rigid in preventing the employment of women and children in nearly every cla.s.s of work, except on the farm. We find no provision by statute or moral sentiment which says that the farmer must not employ his eight- or ten-year-old boy, as is very often the case, in most laborious tasks. This state of affairs is not the desire of the farmer, but has become a necessity because of the very low prices for his products, occasioned by the intense compet.i.tion of the rapidly extending area. Our government has taken every means within its grasp to populate these large areas of cheap rich land. Of course it meant wealth to the nation, but it meant poverty to those who had established homes and investments in the older sections.
”Our methods, unlike other manufacturers and producers, are not standardized. That is, we find in every community persons having each his own conception of soil-handling, crop-growing, and marketing. In a single locality can be found an endless variety of corn, as an ill.u.s.tration. Especially is this true in the East. Surely corn growing fourteen feet high and corn growing six feet high are not calculated to bring the same results. The farmers themselves are unlike. I suppose we are distantly removed from the time when we shall have a uniform type of men and women bred for the farm. It seems to me that methods which would unify or standardize our practices and prices--within certain limitations, to be sure--would tend to unify the tendencies and the type of the people.