The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-05-13
Draining the Farms of Laborers.


In a letter received recently by the
( MORNING News, from one of its CORE
spondents residing in an interior town,
mention was made of young man from
1 that locality who had secured a position
as a conductor on a street car line IN
I Savannah, and it was stated that his
/ friends were rejoicing at his good fortune
Evidently those friends of his thought he
was a particularly fortunate individual,
/ and that in little while he would be
man of consequence. If they could hear
the young mans experience after
/ he had been on the street car line
for a month or two, it is probable
they would not feel like cougrat-
ulating him. They would even conclude
that life on the farm or in a village at
! less wages, is much preferable.
| A great many young men, within the
| last year or two, have come to this city
| from the interior of this state and South
! Carolina to accept employment on street
car lines and to occupy other places that
offer little or no opportunity for promotion.
They did not earn much in the country
and they thought the wages offered them
in the city were large. Their experience,
however, has not been encouraging. Their
earnings are not more than enough to
procure them food and clothes, and the
work is much harder than they expected.
They have very few hours for recreation
and the prospect for lettering their ma
! terial condition is not promising. The
most of them no doubt have wished many
times they had remained on the farms
they left so willingly.
The movement of young men from the
rural districts to the cities is going on in
| all parts of the country, draining the
farms of laborers and congestlng the
cities. The result is, the cities are full of
misery, and the farmers, at certain sea-
sons Of the year, find it difficult to get
sufficient help to plant and harvest their
crops. The supply of labor in the cities
| is greater than the demand. In every
city there are plenty of strong, healthy
young men who cannot get steady en-
ployment. They finally become dis
heartened and many of them become
tramps, or drift into evil ways.
In recent article the Galveston News
asserted that the labor unions
have much to do with draw
ing young men from the farms to
the cities. The unions do not
invite immigration from the country to
the cities, but their constant struggles to
keep up their scale of wages leads young
men in the country to think they can earn
! two or three times as much in the cities
as they can on the farms, and that they
will not have to work So many hours a
day. AT distance the wages and the
hours of work the labor unions contend
for seem very attractive, and a young
farm laborer who is getting SIS or 500 a
month and is working ten or twelve hours a
day improves the first opportunity to go to
the city. He may succeed in getting work
at once, but the chances are he will not
If he ignores organized labor and attempts
to fix a scale of wages to suit
himself he is likely to find his
position an uncomfortable one If
he allies himself with organized
labor he discovers that health, strength
and ability count for little, and that
the poorest laborer gets as much as
a good one. That is, of course disheart-
CuluB IL uS uhDpSuS W Do superior W LQe
average laborer.
The great majority of those who go to
the city from the farms have no particu-
lar merit, and, consequently, are often
out of employment. But, however dis
tressing their condition may become, they
never go back to the farms. Not few of
them become tramps. They get reckless
and don't care what becomes of them.
There are hundreds of them in the vari-
Gus branches of Coxey's army
If the young men on the farms could
get glimpse of the experiences Of the
majority of those who seek the cities in
search of livelihood they would stay in
the country, hard as their lives often are
there. In the country they are reasona-
bly, certain of living, and are compare
lively free from worry and responsible
ties. No amount Of advice, however, will
induce the young men of the rural dis
triets to stay upon the farms. The lone
illness and hardships of the farm life seem
to them uncomfortable in comparison with
che attractions of the cities. 1t is not
long, however, before the most of them
who seek the cities admit they have made
mistake.