Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1888-07-27
Sarn Copies.
FARM HELP.
HON. D. r. DOUGLAS EIGHTH ARTICLE IN
RUTLAND HERALD.


all whose business requires the employ
ment of laborers of any description. One
of the greatest impediments to successful
farming at the present time is the search
ty of faithful, competent farm help of
both sexes. This evil is constantly in
creasing. The deficiency is not so much
in the lack of numbers. as in the charac-
ter of the help which the farmer finds it
necessary to employ.
The present broader field for female
employment has resulted in the removal
of large proportion of this class of help
from service in families, especially in
rural districts. This has added much to
the labors of the female portion of the
farmers household and rendered farm
life on their part much less enjoyable
than it otherwise would be. Hence the
discomfort so often observed, and the de-
sire expressed, on the part of the wives
and daughters of farmers, to abandon the
farm.
| know of but two practical remedies
for this unpleasant situation. The first
is the provision of every labor-saving
appliance and convenience. by which
homework can be made less laborious.
and more pleasant. The removal from
the household department of all work
which can consistently be done in other
places. More laundries should be estab-
lished and patronized. Some form of
associated dairying should be more gen.
orally adopted in dairy sections, and thus
the heavy burdens which private dairy
inglnow imposes upon the wives of dairy
men where practiced, be removed.
The second remedy which | will sug-
gest, is the reduction in the size of the
family, by the introduction of more farm
machinery by the substitution of horse
power for man-power. In this manner
there can be much more accomplished on
most farms, and this with great ,reduc-
ton in the amount of help employed, and
with a corresponding increase in farm
profits. This reduction in the size of the
family, in connection with modern i'm
provements in home architecture, and
with the improved appliances which may
now be employed in domestic affairs,
should fully compensate for the reduced
amount of available female help. Another
remedy may be found in the payment of
sufficient wage to attract this class of
help back to the farm, and the ability to
pay must come from an improved agri-
culture.
Not so with male help. The wages
which they now receive are quite out of
proportion with those paid the opposite
sex. when we consider the difference in
hours employed and the nature of the
service rendered. The wages now paid
male help, especially where little farm
machinery is used, are also out of pro.
portion with the profits of the business
in which they are employed. Farm help
are often paid eXorbitant wages, while
the farmer and his family get little OF
nothing for the labor which they per-
form, while working many more hours.
The relations existing between employ
er and employed are in this country often
the reverse of those in foreign countries.
Here the employer is sometimes compell-
ed TO pay wages which he knows to be
ruinous and thus becomes the oppressed
rather than the oppressor. In most for
eign countries starvation wages cause
distress and suffering among the laboring
classes. In this country easy earnings
and spendthrift habits are the chief source
of poverty among laborers. High wages,
leisure hours and strong temptations to
vice are, collectively, the blighting curse
of our American labor system.
Place young men in the streets of one
of our cities or large villages, with the
usual almost utter absence of good moral
training, with plenty of money easily
earned, with fourteen or sixteen hours
per day of unemployed tine upon his
hands, with strong temptations to vice
around him, and he is morally sure to go
to ruin. If lie does not become a vaga-
bond he will at least be quite sure to be-
come a spendthrift-to contract those
improvident habits from which, in this
country, poverty, discomfort and strikes
among laboring classes originate. There
are, of course, less temptations upon the
farm, and young man is here less ex-
cusable for poverty thus induced.
The fundamental conditions of success
in every industrial calling are industry
and economy. These are absolutely in
dispensable to accumulation in those call
ings where little but muscular force is
required as this class of labor must
necessarily command but low price in
the labor market. If the so-called labor
| ing classes, in the rural districts of Yer
mont, would apply themselves as dill
gently, and practice the same rigid econ
omy, as the average of their employers
they would soon become owners of real