The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-12-05
PERSONS BEYOND HELP.

Domestic service in the great cities at
the East is Stunned by American women,
who prefer starvation wages in shop to
decent work and a comfortable home in
private family. Society cannot help such
people. They are like hundreds of men
who will starve in squalid corner of a
great city when there are cheap lands
within twenty miles of New York. There
are lands within 100 miles of New York
and Boston which anybody can have for
cultivation who will pay the taxes, and
there are few taken.
The social curse of this country il the
vile education which makes pecessitous
men shun agriculture and necessitous
women domestic service. Every country
boy would rather be shop boy or rail-
road brakeman than till the Aoil; every
girl would rather be . shop girl, . sewing
woman or factory hand than be q do
mestic in decent family. What can new
laws or labor agitation do for such people
when they elect to suffer unless they can
get sit that suits them?
For the shameful greed of merchants
and manufacturers; for the atrocious am
bition of rich women to buy at bargain
that compels competition which cuts down
women's wages, there il no cure save
more Christian humanity and thought
fulness. Law cannot help . woman
against the greed Of her employer,
or the selfish avarice Of her own sex;
nothing but the future spread of the gospel
of Christ, which walks as we'll as talks, can
do that, but neither law nor gospel can do
anything for men who scorn the work of
the soil, or for women who shudder at
domestic service; whose social prejudices
must be satisfied even if they starve.
Working men and women who are today
poor and discontinued, because they pre-
fer hard life from hand to mouth in the
city to life on farm or in the service of
respectable family, will always be poor
and disconnected, because they cry for
help when they would need no help if
they only had sense enough to leave an
overcrowded field of labor which they
love for a far more comfortable, less
crowded and more decent employment
which they are silly enough to despise. If
man or q woman elects to be wretched
in city because they cannot pocket their
pride and pick out their employment there
ton of such people; SO long as they prefer
to starve rather than tickle the soil with
hoe or do the domestic service they now
pass over in contempt to green and clumsy
emigrants.
A young farmer q years Of age recently
wrote his uncle in New York city that
while his father was willing to give him
all he could make on part of the home
farm, he was not going to farm 1t if he
could get anything else to do. The young
man proposes, ~ we learn from his letter
published in the New York Sun, "to enter
the business college at Lexington, KY,
and learn telegraphy, stenography, type
writing and possibly bookkeeping" Farm
life In the South is one Of small hardship
compared with farm life in New England
and the Middle states. and yet this young
man is restless and is ready to do any
thing but farm. He is today only super
intendent of farm labor, for the negroes do
the work of farming for him, and yet
this comfortably situated young fell
low wants to leave the farm,
although the chances are that
he could not today make more than
his living when he leaves the "business
college at Lexington, XVI" it is not
certain tina. he could do as well as
that, for all the caliings that he names,
telegraphy, stenography, typewriting and
bookkeeping, are SO crowded that even
superior experts get small pay.
This universal discomfort with farm
life; this agricultural unrest, is trans
ferring the farm lands of New England
to the hands of the foreign-born; for the
sons of the American farmer have drifted
to the city and the town. What are
farmer boys doing in great cities? Some
OF them have succeeded splendidly, but
what are the mass of them doing2 Let an
advertisement appear in q New York news
paper saying that "a bookkeeper is
wanted; pay SIS week." and it will Sc
cure the presence of at least 500 applicants;
most of them men past so years of age,
competent bookkeepers. of fairly good
habits. These are some of the boys who
scorned the farm and came to the city;
married some inefficient girl, whose face
was her fortune, and who proved as
fecund as rabbit. The house is full of
children; the father has been carrying this
kind of q full knapsack for ten years in
the heart of great city; there are hun
dreds and hundreds just like him, and at
forty-dve, even when a sober and fairly
competent accountant, the competition
obliges him to be glad of q Job that brings
him SIS week. Is that any better than
farm lifef Is it as good9 On the farm
you are generally sure of living, and you
are independent of an employers caprice
and never out of your lob.
THE FEATURE OF THE MESSAGE