Dissatisfaction and the Farm-Nonfarm Work Context

Much has been written on the peaceful agrarian contentment of the farmer and the ways in which the farm as a work context gives rise to a certain work satisfaction. Much has also been written on the alienation and dissatisfaction of those involved in factory work settings and employed in bureaucratic work contexts. This paper indicates that neither occupational sector may be any more dissatisfied than the other. Rather a more fruitful explanation appears to rest in the degree of integration of the worker into either setting. Thus we find that older workers are more dissatisfied than either young or medium workers independent of whether they are farming or working off the farm. Also, it is found that although farmers are consistently more dissatisfied than those presently working off the farm, this result becomes more inconsistent after those who have worked off-farm in the past are removed. It appears that this latter group are more dissatisfied than either of the other two sets. It is also found that increases in education and income serve to reduce dissatisfaction regardless of work context. M W / 'uch has been written on the contentment and blithe happiness enjoyed by those residing in the ignorance of a gemeinschaft setting where interpersonal relationships are largely face to face and interpersonalistic (Redfield, 1947; Toennies, 1955). When the impersonalism of bureaucracy and the organization required by technology is interjected between the individual and this sort of social system, it is maintained that the sources of alienation and dissatisfaction increase uniformly (Marx, 1967:394-507; Gerth and Mills, 1958:216). But it appears, in the light of more recent specification of this problem that much remains to be done. Inkeles (1960) in a study of five nations found no support for the proposition of "the poor but content." Recent research in peasant societies and societies dominated by primary industries has found little support for the differential contentment and satisfaction of these communities when compared to more gesellschaft-like structures (McPhee, 1965; Foster, 1960-61; Foster, 1965; Lewis, 1951). From the standpoint of industrial sociology, Marx was responsible for pointing out the alienation of the proletariat from the means of production which they increasingly did not own (Engels, 1959:95). It was this alienation of the interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat that Marx perceived would result in their inevitable conflict (Engels, 1959:110-111). Yet in no industrial society has this been the case (Mills, 1962:469). Indeed, one might make the case that farmers have been more politically active than the proletariat in many highly industrial nations (Wiley, 1967). This paper, then, is directed toward the question of what are the sources of dissatisfaction between the farm and nonfarm work context and what are the consequences of these in a highly industrial context? The burden of the explanation suggested is placed upon the degree of integration of the individual into the work context regardless of whether it is ag*I wish to acknowledge the assistance of the Agricultural Experiment Station at Michigan State University who supplied the initial support for the data collection. A grant from the Canada Council facilitated the analysis and the Department of Rural Sociology, Cornell University provided encouragement in the completion of the final manuscript. Professor Denton E. Morrison has been helpful in making the data available and John M. Steeves assisted patiently in the computer analysis. Professer Steeves is now Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.115 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 04:36:36 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms FARM-NONFARM WORK DISSATISFACTION 225 ricultural or nonagricultural, rather than either the Redfield or Marxian explanations already described. Within the American social structure, the agricultural sector has had to adapt to the increasing economic and political dominance of the nonagricultural industrial sector. With the technological revolution has come a declining value of labor and declining control of the factors of production by agriculture. Given this trend, one would expect high and increasing rates of dissatisfaction in the agricultural sector as the nonagricultural industrial structure steps into power and agriculture is forced to adapt to the "dominant ideology" with an institutional structure that is lagging (Bonnen, 1965). These considerations, on the basis of most economic and political conceptions of man, lead one to expect farmers in industrial societies where the industrial institutional structure is pervasive to be more (rather than less) dissatisfied than those who have found nonfarm jobs and thus managed to increase their reward and opportunity structures. Farmers prevented from making this transition because they lack appropriate skills-"trapped in agriculture" (Schultz, 1961), should be increasingly discontent with their lot as the rewards to labor in agriculture decline relatively and as urban reference units are accepted as increasingly relevant (Steeves, 1967). There is also increasing evidence in the United States that the institutional structure of the rural areas is increasingly deficient and that a new order is rapidly replacing the old. The rise of increasingly anomic conditions as evidenced by: the growth of a viable farmers' movement (Morrison and Steeves, 1967); the rising rate of rural crime (New York Tines, 1968); the comparatively high rates of rural suicide (Schroeder and Beegle, 1953) ; and the decline of small communities (Stein, 1960), alert the investigator to the rate of change now ongoing in these settings. Given this attempt by farmers to adapt to the dominant ideology of the industrial setting with a lagging institutional structure, one would expect off-farm work experience to serve to reduce work dissatisfaction. Secondly, the greater the involvement in the structure of the industrial sector such as participation in labor unions, one would expect to minimize dissatisfaction. Thirdly, one would expect dissatisfaction to increase with increasing time spent managing a farm and for it to decrease with number of years spent at off-farm work. Education and income, to the extent they indicate greater participation and involvement in the socialization of the industrial institutional structure, ought to diminish the level of dissatisfaction.' It is relevant to control age variations in such a study for one would expect the more aged, socialized to an agrarian set of institutions and therefore having internalized different expectations than the young, to be more dissatisfied than the young to the extent that they have not been able to adapt successfully to the new institutional mechanisms (Stouffer, 1955: 109-130). In conclusion then, the hypothesis is that farmers will be more dissatisfied with the institutional structure of agriculture than will be those who have off-farm work experience. OPERATIONAL PROCEDURE A 1 percent area probability sample of all Michigan farm operators was interviewed in the Spring of 1965 (Hathaway et al., 1966). The interviewing took place four to five months after the 1964 Census of Agriculture data had been collected in December of 1964. This temporal proximity enabled the cross-checking of a number of criterion variables against the parameters obtained by the Census (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1967). Survey parameters were found to approximate those of the Census satisfactorily (Steeves, 1967:163-166). Finally, 804 usable questionnaire responses were obtained. Substantial proportions (43 percent) of these farmers were working off the farm 20 hours a week or more at the time of the study. Another 33 percent of the sample had worked off-farm full time in the past. 1 For it is increasingly the case that the curricula of rural schools are dominated by the information required to survive in an urban industrial setting. High income might also be taken as a successful adaptation to, and participation in, an essentially industrial enterprise with substantial specialization and technology regardless of industrial sector. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.115 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 04:36:36 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms