Cheerful little Charles. He had much responsibility on his shoulders.
There were some big farms along the road, and near Metamora I had the privilege of seeing a dozen cows milked simultaneously by a petrol engine, rubber tubes being fixed to their teats and the milk pumped out. It was astonishing, the matter-of-fact way in which the latest invention was applied to farm life.
"It's rather ugly," said I.
"Well, what are you to do when labour is so scarce?" was the reply.
Land is rich here, but labour is scarce. I fell in with a garrulous farmer who told me that land now sold at 150 dollars (£30) the acre, and that in a few years it would rise to 250 dollars. The days of large farmers were over. All the big ranches were being sold up, and the farmers were taking holdings that they could farm themselves without help. Labour was expensive, owing to the high wages paid in the towns for industrial work; even at two and a half dollars (ten shillings) a day it was difficult to get a decent gang to do the work in the harvest season. You could do better with a small piece of land. Fields here were forty and fifty acres, and the steam plough was not used. In the old days land was dirt cheap, and you could buy vast tracts of it; there were no taxes, no extra expenses, and you just went in to raise tremendous crops and make a big scoop. To-day things were different. To work on a large scale a horde of labourers was necessary. But now the Socialists were stopping the flow of immigrants into the country. Socialists said that it was too difficult to organise newcomers. The newcomers behaved like blacklegs, strike-breakers, all the first year of their stay in America. They didn't know the language, were very poor, suspected their brother workmen of jealousy, and just took any wage offered them. The Socialists wanted to keep the price of labour up, and my farmer friend bore them a grudge because it was difficult to develop the land unless the price was reduced.
A little later, outside Fred M'Gurer's farm, the jovial farmer himself came and squatted beside the fire and chatted of affairs. He had insured his house for 1000 dollars, but it would take 1800 dollars to rebuild it. "I think it's only fair to take some of the risk myself," said he; "and if the place burns down the company will know I didn't set it alight o' purpose."
Fifty-eight years old is Fred M'Gurer, and his son is now coming to live and work with him altogether, after seven years spent wintering in the city and summering in the country. Irish once, and of an Irish family—but they go to no church. The old man feels that he is a Christian all the same, and will get to heaven at last, because he "deals square with his fellow-men."
Fred and his son work the farm all by themselves, outside labour is so expensive. The beet-fields take all the immigrants. Did I see the red waggons as I came along, full of Flemish and Russians living by beet-picking on the beetroot farms near by?
I saw them.
"America is a high hill for them that don't speak the language," said Fred. But he said that because he likes talking himself, and can't imagine himself in a land where he could not hold converse. The immigrants manage very well without the language, and scale the hill, and rake in the dollars easily. Perhaps they do not glean much of the American ideal, and the hope of the American nation. But I suppose Fred did not mean that.