Industrial freedom. [volume] (Edison, Wash.) 1898-1???, 1898-12-03

Der of laborers could possibly secure
in Olden times, and the products of all
lands are easily carried to where they
are needed. For time in this coun-
try cheap land, superficial methods of
cultivation, rapid development offarm
machinery, and the swift increase of
population engaged in mining and
manufacturing enabled our farmers to
extend their operations with profit,
and to give employment to thousands
of new men. But gradually, and
more rapidly within the past twenty
five years, invention has gained the
mastery in agriculture in other arts.
The brain of man has triumphed over
his hand here as elsewhere Enough
is produced to feed and clothe the
world. Fewer workers per acre are
required. The horse or the machine,
steam or electricity, has taken the
place of the boy or the man. Make
farm life never so attractive, and there
will be but little difference. There are
more birds in the nest than the par
ents can take care of. Some must
get out and pick up their own living
abroad, or else all will be poorly
nourished. 1t is not love of the town
so much as necessity to earn a liveli-
hood off the farm which drives bows
to the town and makes them Compel
itors in the great industrial struggles
at the centres population.
The clear apprehension of the great
fundamental fact that the conditions
of agriculture are steadily approx
mating to those of our other great in
dustries is very important at this
crisis in the Industrial life of the world.
The individual farmer needs to see
this in order that he may conform in
his business to those sound rules of
procedure which experience has shown
to be necessary to success in other
branches of industry. To be success
full to-day the farmer must think and
work as other business men think and
work. In order that he may come in
to sympathy with the workers in
other lines who are studying and
struggling to improve their industrial
environment, he needs to see that the
industrial problem of agriculture is
the same as that of other industries.
Hitherto it has been common among
a certain class of conservative think
ers on industrial problems to set the
farmers off by themselves as a class
firmly fixed in old ways and tradi-
tions, who could be safely counted on
to oppose change, and who could be
used politically and otherwise to
counterbalance the radicalism ofwork-
ers in other industries. The farmer is
beginning to arouse himself to the
real merits of the great labor contro-
versy, to feel that he cannot afford to
be a mere buffer against which agita-
ton may recoil, to see that at bottom
his interests are one with those of the
toilers in the factory and the mart.
On the other hand, the city worker
needs to be brought more fully into
sympathy with the farmer, and to see
that the changes going on in agricul-
ture are promoted by the same gen
eral causes which affect the city indus
tries. He should see that the farmer
is forced to leave the farm, that he
comes to town to compete III the labor
market on the same terms as other
men, that in the working out of plans
for lettering industrial conditions the
surplus IdiJOl III lllS lStl III llluSN DS XIV
en- it's proper share, and large share,
of attention. 1t is well also that the
city worker should realize that his
competitor from the farm brings to
town a stock of firm health and per-
sistent vitality which will be a great
factor in determining success i'll indus
trial efforts and effecting changes in
industrial organizations in both
places. When once men in both town
and farm come to see that this is so,
when they join hands to promote
their mutual interests, we shall come
more rapidly to a wise and permanent
solution of the problems which per-
pick and annoy us all.
AS long as the farmer says to him.
self, II am not needed on the farm,
there must be place for me in the town.
I will go and niingle in the busy lie
there, trusting to my superior yigor