The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

Working in this way in troups of wandering labourers, there was no room for any permanent human relationships between themselves and their employers; such relationships, for example, as exist, in spite of the differences of race and colour, between every white planter in the South and his Negro tenants. On the other hand, the labourers, working and living together in the way I have described, come to have a strong sense of their common interest, all the stronger, perhaps, because they are looked down upon by the rest of the population, and particularly by the small landowners with whom they were associated up to the time of their emancipation, in 1848.

About 1890 a series of bad harvests—coming on the heels of other changes which, for a number of years, had made their lives steadily harder—helped to increase the discontent of the farm hands. Thus it was that when, about this time, the Socialists turned their attention to the agricultural population of Hungary, they found the people prepared to listen to their doctrines.

What made Socialism the more popular among the lowest farming classes was the fact that it not only promised to teach the farm labourers how they might increase their wages, but declared that the state was going to take the land out of the hands of the large landowners and divide it among the people who cultivated it.

What made the situation the more difficult was the fact that the agricultural labourers, as soon as they were thoroughly organized, had the landowners, during the harvest time, at a peculiar disadvantage, because when work in the fields stopped, the standing grain ripened and spoiled and the landowner was ruined.

In the emergency created by these strikes the Government came to the rescue of the landowner by establishing recruiting stations for farm labourers in different parts of the country. Collecting labourers in those parts of the country where labour was abundant, they shipped it to other parts of the country where, because of strikes, labourers were scarce and crops were in danger. Thus, the Government had at one time a reserve force of not less than 10,000 strike-breakers with which it was at any moment able to come to the rescue of a landowner who was threatened.

In many cases the Government undertook to regulate wages between landowners and their hands. In some cases they even sent troops into the fields, and in the course of the struggle there were frequent bloody collisions between the labourers and the troops.

One effect of these disturbances was to greatly increase the amount of immigration to America. In 1904, when the struggle was at its height, no less than 100,000 persons, mostly from the country districts, emigrated from Hungary. Thousands of others left the country and moved into the cities.

Hungary is about half the size of Texas, and it has nearly five times its population. Those who remember the "Negro exodus" of thirty years ago, and the apprehension that was created when some 40,000 Negroes left the plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, will be able to understand the effect if for a number of years the South should lose annually by emigration to the cities or to other parts of the country 100,000 of its labourers in the cotton fields.

The exodus of the farm labourer from Hungary threatened, in spite of the rapid increase of the population, to permanently check the rising prosperity of the country. It was soon found that the great landowners could not rely upon repressive measures alone to solve their labour problems. Something must be done to redress the grievances and to improve the condition of the agricultural population. As a matter of fact, a very great deal was done by the state for agriculture, and something was done for the agricultural labourers. For example, relief funds were organized in sixty-four counties and boroughs to aid temporarily disabled workmen. Public prizes and diplomas were offered to labourers who were faithful to their masters.

Something was done to brighten the monotony of the agricultural labourer's life and to strengthen the ties between the labourers and their employers. At the suggestion of the Minister of Agriculture, an attempt was made to revive the harvest feasts, which brought the farmer and his labourers together. Workingmen's clubs, libraries, friendly and coöperative societies were encouraged by the Government. A popular weekly paper, printed in seven different languages, was started for the benefit of agricultural labourers and as a means of agricultural education. A bill for insurance against accidents and old age for the benefit of agricultural labourers provided that if a labourer loses more than a week's time he shall receive, in addition to the expenses of doctor and medicine, a sum amounting to about 25 cents a day for sixty days. In case of death of an agricultural labourer, his family receives a sum amounting to something between $40 and $50.