The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-08-23
A SERIOUS PROBLEM.
From the Atchlson Champion.

From the Atchlson Champion.
There is a screw loose somewhere, evil
IDENTIFY several of them, in our political
economy. While producers claim, and
properly so, that monopoies are making
the rich richer and the poor poorer, and
while able-bodied men and women and
children, a round million of them, as ex-
Senator ingalls, asserts, are in actual
want in this country, these men claiming
that they can not get work, and hence
are unable to support their families,
farmers in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa. Hi
nois, Missouri. Indiana, Pennsylvania,
New York, Ohio Michigan and all the
New Englan states, have, all this sum-
mer long, been clamoring for farm help
unable to get it; and, because of this
scarcity Of help, they have been COM
PEELED to carry on their work Indifferent
ly and at loss.
1t is one OF the most remarkable anon
allies of our time that, whereas machin-
cry has been invented to do away with
nearly all the hard work on a farm and
at equal cost, the machine does from
one to ten times the work of man, vet
the comparatively few hands necessary
to run these machines can hardly be had
even at good wages.
Forty years ago farmers had better
market than they heve today and had
no trouble to get hands, though hay and
grain were cut, raked and threshed by
hand, and everything else on the farm
was done by hand, land much more help
was needed. The fact is that the major
ity of men would rather half starve in
cities than work on farms.
Hod-carrying is harder work than
farm labor, which is diversified and
restful, and yet there is an embarrassing
surplus of hod-carriers, and their earn
ings do not average as much as those of
farm laborers. Street car drivers and
common laborers of all kinds required
to work from twelve to sixteen hours
per day for from 80 cents to Sill per
day, can be hired in all our cities by the
thousand, while a good farm hand can
earn about $50 a month the year round |
with board and washing, with an aver
age of only about twelve hours work |
per day, with a comfortable place to /
sleep in, and much better food than the |
city laborer ever gets, and with no OPP
portunities to squander his earnings in
dissipation. And yet, despite this, farm /
hands are remarkably scarce.
Not only is it difficult to get an ade- /
quate supply of men to do farm work. |
but even the boys and girls raised on /
farms are not content to remain at home |
and work. The girls seem possessed to
live in the village and city. to become |
dress-makers, typewriters, school teach
ers, book-keepers, store clerks or some
thing else which they think IS more at
uactive than pastoral life. Though
many Of them in after life see their folly
they eounot be made to see it now. and
many thousands of girls yearly leave
good homes in the country to work in
the city at less wages and pay their own
board The BOYS want to be lawyers.
doctors, preachers, merchants, clerks or
many of them get fairly
crazy 10 be railroad breakmen and fire
men. So they drift to the cities: few
OF them succeed, the masses fail, and not
q few 90 straight to moral and physical
ruin.
All over the northern and western
states this condition Of things prevails
and has for a number Of years past. Il
5 scarcely worth while 10 60 into an
analysis of the causes that have produced
his state of affairs. People may learn
he cure IN the expensive school Of ex-
but they will learn II In 10
)ther There Is no nobler or more inter
sting employment than intelligent
arming, but so long as boys and girls
'laCe the bliss OF life IN ostentstious
lisplav, and SO long as public teaching
Inspires this love there will be no i'm
,rovement until collapse brings 1t about.
History tells OF the inventor. or at least
f an early maker OF the sword, but his
orians seem to have taken no trouble 70
mbalm the memory Of the one who IN
ented the plow. and, though farming =
o many thousand years old, there : even
ct no one living who can tell the pro-
uctive capacity Of an sore OF ground
: nat we need Is industrial schools Of a
Ugh order. Every farmer should be 5
hemist and broadly intelligent man I
Us wife should be no less a cultured wo- {
lan. We ought 10 be able % turn OFT ]
nished workmen in all lines. instead 81
importing them. especially IN asrIcuI-
Ire. Z