The Affable Stranger

by Peter McArthur

But the new law is already in existence, and as all I propose to do is modestly to discover its operations, I feel less compunction in the matter. But before making the announcement it is necessary to clear the ground by calling attention to another law that is apparently producing the chaotic conditions that are causing so much alarm at the present time. Then the new law may be offered as a balm that is to cure existing evils. Having reassured the mind of the reader we may now proceed.

Somewhere in his voluminous writings Karl Marx makes the arresting statement that "all capitalistic organizations carry within themselves the elements of their own destruction." (Solomon said long before Marx, "The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.") It might be demonstrated that the destroying element is "greed" for wealth and power, but it is enough to call attention to the fact that the work of destruction is at present in progress. Every morning our newspapers are calling attention to the fact that political parties are destroying themselves through lust for power and because they are dominated by the forces of organized Greed.

Capital is at present in a parlous condition because it is suspected of greedy profiteering and the plain people are in the mood to bring it to book.

Labor, that was enabled to organize because of the work done by Capital in centralizing industry for the purpose of increasing profits, is in danger of destroying itself by its exactions, by general strikes, and by making labor conditions in the cities so remunerative and attractive that no one wants to stay on the farms to do the necessary but heavy and mussy work of food production.

There are even those who point out that the churches are destroying their usefulness by a rage for over-organization and financial stability, but that is a question that no cautious man would care to review.

Now the cities, those organized centres of humanity, appear to be passionately intent on committing suicide. In this they are receiving material aid from governments, but it seems useless for any one to offer a protest. When a delegation of farmers recently waited on Governor Smith, of New York, to protest against the adoption of daylight saving legislation, he rebuked them severely for their class selfishness. No one seems to realize that daylight saving is simply a gesture in the progress of city suicide. The few laborers to be found on the farms naturally want to take advantage of the daylight saving law, with the result that they are idle in the morning hours when the dew makes impracticable the cultivation of root crops, corn, etc., and the gathering of hay and sheaves. And besides being idle at the expense of the farmers in the morning, they are idle for their own enjoyment in the late afternoon and evening when field work can be attended to most satisfactorily. Besides, the farmer is obliged to do his own milking and chores while his highly paid hired man goes to town to enjoy the movies. The result is that farmers are forced to limit their enterprises to the amount of work that can be done by themselves and their families. In many cases it would not pay them to employ a hired man. Indeed, cases have come under my personal observation where farmers found it more practicable to sell their farms and hire out with farmers who thought they could contend with the new adverse conditions. And presently these farmers who hired out followed the general trend of the rural population and moved to the cities where they could have shorter hours and more attractive conditions.

The "New York Sun and Herald" had an editorial recently in which it spoke of the farmers going on strike. They are not going on strike, but they are limiting productions to what they can do themselves—and the result is the same. They are not doing this from desire, but through the compulsion of circumstances.

Daylight saving, however, is only one of the many methods employed to uproot humanity from the soil and enable the cities to commit suicide by starvation.

Critics of the tariff have shown how the protection of manufactures causes higher wages to prevail in the cities and withdraws men from the productions of food. Agricultural education and the farmers' movement have tended to centre the attention of the farmer on money-making—rather than on home-building—and that is disastrous. The farmer is keeping books, and as home-making cannot be expressed either by single entry or double entry, he applies the dollar test to everything with the result that in many places food crops are being discarded for profitable cash crops, such as tobacco, sugar-beets, etc.