In Pastures Green

by Peter McArthur

At this point the observer usually begins to pound the pulpit, but I am in no mood to usurp the prerogatives of the preacher. If fellows of this sort want to leave the country for the city, let them go. There are altogether too many useless people in the country now. There are men spoiling land who ought to be putting in their time as dock-wallopers or at some city occupation that requires no brains. At the same time, there are a lot of struggling doctors, lawyers, preachers, and business men in the cities who have just the education and brains needed to make the best kind of farmers. Don't make any mistake about it. The farming of the future is going to be the best of the learned professions, and the only one in which a man of brains and character can find scope for his individuality and abilities. Farming is about the only man's job left.

The city has changed as much as the country in the last twenty-five years, and it is no longer the place for a man of wholesome ambition. The change is due to two things—machines and organisation. The machines have made trades a thing of the past, and organisation is doing away with individual enterprise. There are no more trades where skilled artisans work in wood or metal or cloth or leather. There are machines now that do the work, and men and women can get jobs to wait on them. You cannot realise what it means to be the slave of such a machine unless you have been one or have seen such slaves at work. Some years ago I was conducted through one of the largest shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts, by its proud proprietor. I could not help noticing the clock-like regularity with which the men and women who were at work performed every motion. In making a shoe there are seventy-two separate operations, and each is made by a different operator with a machine. No one person in all that factory could make an entire shoe. The skill of each individual was confined to one operation, such as sewing in the tongue or pegging on the heel. While we were passing through the factory and the proprietor was explaining to me how things were done, not one of those workers paused or looked up. I commented on their unflagging industry. The proprietor smiled. "I have figured out to a nicety just how many operations can be made in a day by each machine, and have the speed regulated to perform just that number of operations. Of course, the operator can stop the machine if not ready to go on, but he is docked at the end of the day for each operation he misses."

I never was so near being an anarchist in my life as I was while the memory of that incident was fresh in my mind. The workers in that factory were not simply slaves to their employer, but to merciless machines. And that is only a sample of what you can find in any industry that has been perfected along modern lines. In the factories work has none of the charm it had for the old-time artisan who performed every operation himself. It is simply machine-driven drudgery, and the man who thinks that kind of work preferable to work on a farm deserves no better employment.

So much for the physical workers. The case of the mental workers, while apparently better, is really worse, but the subject is a dangerous one to handle. Still enough may be said to suggest some lines of thought. The fact that almost all business enterprises are conducted by organisations or companies has entirely changed the positions of all employees, from office-boy to the president of the company. To parody Tennyson: "The individual withers, and the company is more and more." The shareholders, through their directors, adopt a money-making policy for their company, and that policy must be enforced, no matter how heartless it may be. For instance, I know of a lithographing company which has the excellent rule that it pays for only the work done by its employees. That seems all right, doesn't it? Well, one day I was lunching with the superintendent of manufacture and he was very much depressed. I asked what was troubling him, and he explained:

"One of my best printers has had a hard winter of it on account of sickness in his family. He is an entirely sober, industrious fellow, but I know he has had a hard time to make both ends meet. Well, he had to stay out one day this week to bury his little girl, and when pay-day came he was docked for that day."

"Surely if you called the attention of the president to the case he would have fixed things."

"He couldn't do a thing. It is a rule of the company. All the president could do would be to do what I have done myself—open the man's envelope and put in the pay out of his own pocket."

Now, it is safe to say that not one pious shareholder of that company would justify the treatment that faithful printer would have received if the superintendent had not been foolishly soft-hearted, and yet, as a shareholder, each one would share in the increased dividends caused by such savings. That is only a trivial example of the results of organisation. Ruthless methods of competition and of increasing profits are not adopted from choice by the executive officers, but from necessity. As individuals they would not stoop to do the things they do as officers of a company. Above everything else the company must be successful. No one asks it to be charitable, or kind, or even moral. But every one insists that it must be efficient. As John D. Rockefeller, the greatest of all business organisers, blandly informed the Senatorial Commission which was investigating his business methods: "I am merely a clamourer for dividends." He had nothing to do with the methods by which dividends were secured. What he wanted was dividends, and the employee who failed to provide them would not be long in receiving his discharge.

In the country matters are different. Such machinery as is used only serves to relieve farm work of its drudgery. Seedtime and harvest still have their olden charm. As for organisation, it will be many years before the farmers have enough of it to enable them to get the just returns from their labour. In all their work and business dealings the farmers are their own masters and need not be driven, either in matters of work or conscience. And the way scientific farming is developing the farmer's work can give as much scope to his brain power as any of the learned professions. Neither are the financial returns to be despised. A successful farmer can make as good an income as the average city man. When these things are understood as they should be I expect to see an exodus of intelligent men from the cities to the country, where they can develop themselves physically, mentally, morally, and financially. Indeed, a day may come when we shall hear people preaching: "Boys, don't leave the city."

April 19.—It is just possible that the hen has been studied too much from a utilitarian or practical point of view. If allowed to pass the succulent broiler stage she is regarded simply as an egg-producing machine, and after a useful life she sinks unsung into the pot-pie or fricassee. If instead of being born a hen she had been born a water wagtail, or some bird of no economic value, her charms and social habits would be embalmed in a Saturday editorial. Her cunning little ways would be closely observed and set down with delicate humour, and exceptional literary grace would be used to give her a niche in The Globe's gallery of nature friends. These thoughts were in my mind as I went out of the house this morning, and, as luck would have it, the first thing that caught my eye was a Buff Orpington that was pursuing the early worm to its lair in a flower bed. The fact that that flower bed is placed where no flower bed should be, and was so placed against my earnest protests, reconciled me to what was going on. I decided at once that the time was favourable for a study of the hen. Betaking myself to a sunny corner of the coal box, I sat down and began to observe. The hen was of robust habit, but apparently in thorough athletic training. The soil in which she was scratching was of the kind that would be given a low classification by a constructive engineer or a Parliamentary investigating committee. It was a sandy loam, and I had to mind my eyes whenever she scattered it in my direction. The first outstanding fact that I gathered was that this particular hen had a definite method of procedure to which she adhered with remarkable singleness of purpose. Lowering her head, she examined the ground first with one eye and then with the other. Then she stepped forward with the confident air of a baseball star going to the bat, scratched once with one foot and then twice with the other. If she scratched first with the right foot she would scratch twice with the left, and vice versa. Then she would step back and carefully examine the field of her depredations. If no worm was in evidence she would step forward briskly and repeat the performance. As I had never read this in any book or paper dealing with the hen and her habits, I took out my notebook and began to secure material for a future scientific article. But I was doomed to disappointment. At this moment a door bulged open and an apparition with a broom swooped down on that hen. She fled squawking, and I discreetly slipped around the corner of the house. I might have found it hard to explain why that hen hadn't been shooed away.