"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 class 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 competition 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 illustration. 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.
"In our present state of undevelopment or adjustment, I do not think it is possible profitably to pursue the production of crops with employed labor, such as we find in our manufacturing establishments; and it may be debatable whether that plan would be an improvement, so far as the social life is concerned, over the present family-plan, although I firmly believe that the time is approaching when the profits of the business will warrant a cash payment for everything done on the farm. As a connecting link between the family-plan and the future cash-plan, it seems to me we ought to take on in each neighborhood the same methods of supervision that are now employed in the factories. One man of skill and adaptability supervises the work of many. In agriculture we have but one illustration of this principle, namely, our butter and cheese factories, where one man has in charge the manufacturing of the milk of many. I think we could profitably use a similar agency in trucking, soil-handling, crop-growing, animal-feeding, and general farm-management. Furthermore, we are more in need, as the writer sees it, of this standardizing or coöperation in farm-management, than we are in the manufacture of milk products. This plan would use the family as a unit of labor on the farm, with the attendant light risk, or no risk at all; and in case of failure of crops of having to pay cash for the labor.
"The cow-test association is a part of this general plan of local supervision. I can foresee how there may come out of this cow-test movement, a growth which will mean just what I have tried to outline. The man who does nothing now but the testing of the milk from each cow may develop into an expert who will give advice on soils, crops, cow-feeding, and other things [(page 123)].
"When the communities around certain natural centers, as the cheese factories or creameries in dairy sections, perhaps a small hamlet in trucking sections, have become thoroughly organized or, more properly speaking, standardized, we shall find it comparatively easy to bring a number of these local units together, because the individuals who form a part of the movement have learned the true principles underlying coöperation. Until these local units are worked out, in my opinion we shall never be able to form any great coöperative movement which will not break of its own weight, because of a lack of annealing processes."
What is the farmer to do?
"How may I secure labor?" is probably the most persistent question now asked by farmers; but it is a question that cannot be answered, any more than one may tell another what crops he shall grow, what markets he shall find, or what manner of house he shall build. This is one of the great problems of farming, as it is of engineering, of the building trades, and of factories. Each farmer must work it out for himself, as he works out the problem of fertility and machinery. He must work far ahead, and consider it as a part of all his plans.
In many or most cases, it resolves itself into a question of personality,—of making a place that is worth while to a good man and then of the farmer interesting himself in the man. One can now hardly expect to secure labor on demand for brief periods, for the scheme of things is more and more in the direction of continuous employment; and the old range of prices cannot hold. If the farmer's scale of business is small and operates only for a part of a year, he cannot expect to secure the best and most reliable help.
The farmer will find increasing aid from public labor-distributing bureaus, for these agencies must extend with the extension of population and the complexity of industry. In time, the state and nation will provide competent machinery for placing working-men where they can best serve themselves and society, thus relieving both employer and employed from much waste of effort. As farm labor is not a separate difficulty, the problem will tend to better and better solution along with the rest. If the distributing agencies are not now wholly satisfactory, the farmer must recognize that they are only beginning, and that he should coöperate with them. The problem of utilizing the immigrant, for example, is one of distribution; but distribution is really not accomplished merely by sending a certain number of immigrants to a certain number of places,—immigrant and employer must find the situation to be mutually satisfactory.
Any effort which assumes that labor must necessarily come to the old-type farm, is only temporary. The farm must readjust itself to meet the labor problem. In the meantime, through the labor bureaus, by looking long ahead, by organizing a labor club in the community, by some person acting as a labor agent and supplying farmers as they need, by trying to make a year-round activity in the neighborhood, the situation may be met more or less.