Most interesting of all, I had found their attitude toward the question that was widely raised of a right the workmen were said to have in the property at Homestead, apart from their wages, on the ground of their having created its value. Here was the real issue of modern industrialism, and on it I found the farmers conservative, to say the least.
The American farmer is a landed proprietor with a gift for logical tendencies that does him credit. His chiefest aim is to maintain, if possible, his economic independence, and a doctrine that would give to his hired man an ultimate claim to ownership in his farm is not one that is likely soon to meet with wide acceptance among his class.
It was with the physician that I talked these matters over, and I was interested to find my experience confirmed by that of so expert an observer, whose chances were so good.
Very reluctantly I parted from him at his door and made in the direction of Neola. Owing to rains that delayed me on Thursday, I did not enter Neola until the middle of the afternoon of that day, and there I did not stop in passing, but pressed on to Underwood, where I spent the night.
Friday was clear again and hot, but the roads were difficult, and I had to desert them for the lines of the St. Paul and Rock Island railways, that parallel each other side by side for several miles into Council Bluffs.
For the past day I had not had a single offer of a job. The farmers, as I approached the town, seemed either less in need of men or less willing to take up with a chance wayfarer. No doubt I should have had no difficulty had I set about a search for work. Certainly I could not have fared better than I did for dinner at a farm, where I was allowed to lend a hand with a load of hay. And after dinner, when the farmer and I talked together for an hour, I found in him the same contentment which struck me as so general among Iowa farmers.
But my letters were in the Post-office at Omaha, and I felt impatient of delay until I should get them. I did not get them on that day, however, nor for several days to come. In Council Bluffs I met the unlooked-for barrier of a toll-bridge across the Missouri. Five cents would give me a right of way, but I had only one, and must, therefore, look for work. I counted myself very fortunate when, at nightfall, I got a job in a livery-stable.
I had crossed Iowa, and Mr. Ross’s promise had been abundantly fulfilled. On any day of the march I could have found a dozen places for the asking, and scarcely a day had passed that I had not repeatedly been asked to go to work. I should have thought this a condition peculiar to the harvest time, had not many of the farmers told me that, while their need is greatest then, it is so constant always that no good man need ever be long without work among them.
A SECTION-HAND ON THE