It is a general complaint in the United States that there is scarcity of good labor. I have found the same complaint in parts of Europe, and Europeans lay much of the blame of it on America because their working classes migrate so much to this country; and they seem to think we must now be well supplied with labor. Labor scarcity is felt in the cities and trades, in country districts, in mines, and on the sea. It seems to be serious in regions in which there is much unemployed population. It is a real problem in the Southern states.
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 illustrate the nature of the situation.
(1) In a large way, the labor problem is the result of the passing out of the people from slavery and serfdom,—the rise of the working classes 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 companionship 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 passing 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 class of renters and owners, by lack of continuous employment, by relatively low pay, by absence of congenial association 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 class of owners who drift downward to tenants, to laboring men, and sometimes to shifters. 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.