Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-05-24
LABOR FOR THE FARM.
Acres Of Land Standing Idle for Want
of Help to Plant Them.
YET CITYIDLERS ARE ABUNDANT.
Not Matter Of Wages Because Country
Work Is Well Paid For.
BOYS AND GIRLS COMING TO CITIES

There is screw loose somewhere, eyi.
IDENTIFY several of them, in our political
economy. While producers claim that mo-
nopolies are making the rich richer and the
poor poorer, and probably few, compare
lively speaking, will deny the assertion;
yet, while able-bodied men and women and
children are in actual want in the merry,
merry spring-time in this city, and these
| able-bodied men claim they cannot get work,
almost within sound of the groaning steam
engines and clanking forge-hammers of this
industrial hive, farmers are tearing their
hair because they cannot get help, either
male or female, to run their farms. 1t is
remarkable anomaly, as a writer in
the New York Eresing Post puts it,
that whereas machinery has been invented
| to do away with nearly all the hard work on
a farm and at equal cost, the machine does
from three to ten times the work of man,
| yet the few hands necessary to manage
these machines cannot be had at good
| wages.
Forty years ago farmers had better mar
ket than they have to-day and had no trou-
BILE to get hands, though hay and grain were
cut, raked and threshed by hand and much
more help was needed. Men had rather
half starve in the cities than work on farms.
Better Wages on Farms.
Hodcarrying is harder work than farm
| labor, which is diversified and restfuI vet
there are plenty OF hodcarriers, and their
earnings do not average as much as those Of
| farm laborers. Men can be had to drive
street cars at 81 75 per day and work 16
hours day, less money than is paid
for farm laborer at 25 per cent
less hours for work. A good farm
hand can get SIG month the year round,
with board and washing, and can sleep
better and have better food than in the city,
and is out of the way of the temptation to
dissipation, and an extra good man can get
$50 month "and found" yet three adjoin-
ing farmers in Robinson township, within
eight miles of the city, while able-bodied
men with long visages, are telling tales Of
inability to get employment, have been un-
able to secure help this spring, and in con-
sequence must leave a considerable portion
of their farms implanted.
1t is true they can get hands, but many of
them are tramps they fear to employ, and
the majority are unable to speak English
and do not know enough to do
farm work requiring any measure of skill.
One hired himself in that locality
last year and protesting to know all about
farming was intrusted with the care of q
place. He was told to SOW a small plot
with turnip seed, and he bought and put /
two pounds on it, quantity sufficient to /
have covered the entire farm. Then there
are SO many cutthroats coming from
Europe nowadays that farmers who cannot.
be protected by police are afraid to hire ,
strangers. They fear they may get q;
butcher like Artwein. Some of the tough
est characters to be found offer to works.
but they either loaf and get fat or "do ups
their employers, generally both.
Fleeing From the Country.
As rule, neither the farmers sons norJ
daughters elect to stay home. If the girlsi
cannot get the husbands they want, thal
next thing considered is to be a
dressmaker, typewriter bookkeeperi
or something else that they thfned
more attractive than pastoral life. Thougf,
many Of them may in after years see theiRi
folly they cannot be made to see it now,
and many thousands of girls yearly leaFa
good homes in the country to work in thas
city at 81 day, or less, and pay all theya
make for board. The boys want to be lawS
yers, doctors, preachers, bookkeepersH
clerks or mechanics, and it is easier to bed
come member of one of the learned pred
fessions than it is to get chance to learn a
these lines they drive street cars or do anN
manual labor they can find in the cities.
ALI over the Northern States the SAND
condition prevails. New England farmsr5
cannot get their spring planting done and id
is said that In Hartford, Ct, 200 farm hands,
can get employment at S16 to S25 month";
and board, and yet thousands of able bodied
men are hungry nearby, in New York Citys
ARatffer Gloomy Outlook.
Il Is scarce worth while to 90 into sds L.
analysis of the causes that have produced
this state of affairs. People may learn the,
cure in the expensive school Of experisncsI
but they will learn it in no other. There 10 a
nobler nor moro interesting employment thaA
intelligent farming, but so long as boys end
girls place the bliss of life in ostentatiouA
display, and so long as public teaching inS
spires this love, there will be no imprgys}
ment until collapse brings It about q
History tells us of the inventor oF-a4
least an early maker Of the sword, but hisd
torians seem to have taken no trouble 70 ezn9
balm the memory of the one who invented
the plow, and, though farming b 80 mAnH
old, there is no one hyin6
who can tell the productive capacity Of Sd
acre of ground We need industrial schoolBl
and Of high order. Every farmer should
be chemist and broadly intelligent mani
and his wife should be no less cultured
We ought to be able to turn out
finished workmen in all lines, instead Of ind
porting them, but in view of4the fact that an
art school few years ago failed In Pittsd
burg to get the small encouragement neededd
when the teachers offered their serYice2
gratis until it should be self-sustainins,l
here is but very slim prospect that thiS
century will see the accomplishment of anya
hing substantial.