The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1880-10-07
Idlers, to the Fields

The professions are full. "There is
always room at the top" but in them
there is no vacant place which the man
of ordinary gifts may hope to fill. Law
yers without briefs, clergymen without
congregations, physicians without liv-
ing Enthusiastically we have enough
and to spare of these in every city aud
village.
"Living by ones WITS" which has
been to many q pleasant and profitable
business in times past, is not now an in
viting one. Money is too scarce, peo-
pie are too suspicious. too cautious, too
calculating. We want no more mer-
chants. Every village has two where
there should be but one, and our cities
swarm with bankrupt traders and starv-
ing clerks.
It used to be said that che who has a
trade is SAFE" He was, once, it is
true; but everybody knows he is not
now. A large percentage of the meA
now out of employment are skilled arti-
sans, who, through long years of expe-
rience have become good carpenters
and masons and millwrights and shop
hands. They are idle now, not because
they are not good workmen or because
there is not work to be done, but be-
cause machinery is doing the work they
used to do.
Statisticians tell us there are in use
in this country alone 100. 1000 planning
machines, which, when in operation,
do the work of 10000, 900 carpenters,
showing laboriously the Old-fashioneN
implement for making shavings; in
other words that one of these machines
will turn out just as much finished work
per- diem as 400 men skilled in that
particular form of industry. The same
authorities inform us that the number
of sewing machines in the country is
about 4, DOC, 900, capable of performing
the work of 100, 600, 900 sewing girls,
operating with needle and thread by
hand; that single boot and shoe fac
tory in Massachusetts, averages the pro-
duction of 5000 pairs of pedal cover
ings daily throughout the year; that
when running full the 1000, 900 cotton
spindles of Fall River manufacture
more yarn in one day than 5000, 900
persons could do in the same time, the
latter operating with the old-time spin
ing wheel.
To issue 100000 copies of o news
paper daily. using the appliances of
fifty years ago. would require the max
ing up of $50 "forms," and the
services of 1000 compositors and 1000
pressmen, mixers, etc. All this makes
clothing and houses and reading and
other necessaries of life cheap, but it
has reduced the demand for skilled
mechanical labor to mere fraction of
what it would have been had "the
human machine" been left to do the
world work alone.
And now the population of the earth,
or of our country at least, must shape
its labors to meet the changed condi-
ton of things. The young man who
stands upon the threshold of active life
queryin;g what he shall do, finds. as we
have said, the professions full, the
stores and exchanges swarming with
bankrupts, and the way to the factories
and shops crowded with idlers who only
want an opportunity to work.
But the fells are not fill. If our
counters are filled with goods for which
there is no demand and our cities are
full of houses for which there are no
tenants there is no glut of food in any
of our markets. and for all which labor
can coax from the earth, for everything
which the intelligent worker can gather
from the soil there is a call. There is
one calling which is not full. New
Hampshire, which passes for an agri-
cultural State, produces but three
fourths of the food she consumes, and
leaves thousands of acres of her soil to
grow up to bushes or to return less
than half the crops they should. And
while doing this, merchants stay behind
their counters until the Sheriff locks
the door, mechanics stand about the
street corners and complain because
they can get no work, and young men
grow into chronic loafers because they
can't " find an opening" And what
is true of our State is true of others.
Isn't it about time there was q new de.
parture, a turning from the factory to
the field, from complaining and suffer
ing idleness to cheerful, earnest, food
producing work on the farm?-Mirror.