The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-10-06
AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION. "

President JORDAN, of the LELAND STAN
FORD, Jr., university, discusses "Agricult-
ural Dep1 ession and Waste of Time in the
current number of the Forum, presenting
paper which furnishes much food for
thought, but which we apprehend will be
generally regarded as the elaboration of a
theorist, and therefore of little value. He
charges the farmers with idleness, and to
that fault attributes much of the depres-
sion to which agriculture is subject. He
cites as an illustration of his theory his ex-
perleDce one day at little railway station
in Indiana.
a commercial traveller, dealing in grocer
les and tobacco, got OFF; a crate of live chickens
was put on; and the cars started again. The
| stopping OF a train was no rare sight in that
village, for 1t happens two or three times every
DAY. The peop,e had no welcome for the com
merclal traveller, no tears we're shed over the
departure of the chickens; yet on the station
steps counted forty men and boys who were
there when the train came in-farm boys. who
ought 10 have been at work in the field: village
boys, who might have been doing something
! somewhere, every interest of economics and
aesthetics alike calling them away from the vii
! lage, and Of to the farms Two men attended
to all business of the station The solitary
passenger went his own way. The rest were
! there because they had not he moral strength
TO go anywhere else. They stood there on the
steps embodied ghosts dea to all life and hope,
With only force enough 10 stand aroLrd and
cape,
| just such incidents are happening ali the
time and may be noted at every station in
the country; but why should they be cited
to sustain the position that agricultural de-
preston is due to the idleness of farmers /.
AS we'll might it be argued that the de-
preston in the building trades is due to
the fact that lines of men and bows hang
abouta building in the course of erection.
Any day of the week we can find num-
Der OF men leaning on the fences surround
ing cellars being dug or walls being laid ::
but what does this teach? If one will in
qulre as 10 the idle men he will learn that
large percentage of them are loafers
from choice and that few are not work
ing for the reason that they can
find no paying employment. Their
Idleness tells Of depression" in their own
individual affairs and not in any special
industries. Professor JORDAN is undoubt-
eddy correct in the assumption that there is
TOO much ldleness, this applying to all
classes of laborers. If the farmers would
work harder and put in more hours they
would undoubtedly be more prosperous,
their labor being capital; so if masons, car
penters, artisans of every kind and laborers
generally were to work fourteen or sixteen
hours instead of eight, nine or ten, thew
would earn and receive more money; thew
would die earlier, it is true, but they would
leave more cash; if there were no idleness
In this world all men working all the time
they were not eating or sleeping at some
wealth producing industry, there would be
less OF want and suffering in this world
President JORDAN is correct enough in
theory as to the effects Of idleness, but why
should he make the application to the hard
est working of our laboring people. As a
class, the farmers are Woodworking and in
dustrious, giving more hours a day to toll
than the day laborer for wages would
think Of putting in. There are compare
lively few 'loafers" among agriculturists
and farmers sons are less given to the
habiis of idleness than the boys of other
people. If the professor had erraigned idle
ness in general and sought for the causes of
agricultural depression in bad legislation,
we believe he would have hit closer to the
mark, and his paper would certainly have
had better effect.