The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-08-27

i But the customary employers, under | the stimulus of better profits, an in- | creased demand for the products of | labor. larger consumption. etc. wish | to enlarge their operations. They have /. all along had reserved resources of | material; they now wish to enlarge 1 their business. So these and other 1 conditions conspire to increase the de- mand for labor, while at the same 1 time the supply of labor may be actu- l ally diminished, thus forming and I widening the gap between the de- nand for labor and the supply. House. | hold service is particularly straitened and embarrassed. Many families who l have heretofore been doing their own work" now feel able to hire help. | Many want more help" On the other l hand there are doubtless many who have therefore hired out in domestic service, who now feel that they aren't obliged to do 1t any more" And so 1t goes. and so it will continue | to do, so long as prosperity lasts. When hard times" come again (and who l doubts their coming) conditions will resolve themselves into their old state, and we will have lower wages, more Iaborers hunting for work, more young men 'out of a job,' etc, without any in the ratio of the number of employ CTS to the number of persons seeking 1 employment.
 I am new looking at and consider ing the question mainly from the agrI- cultural standpoint. What is the so- lution that is to relieve the farmer? Immigration? doubt 1t. In the first place 1t is too remotely in the future to serve the present and the immediate future.
 Let Us turn to the business man or to the manufacturer and see if their | methods will not give some hint that will help in solving the problem. The merchant endeavors. in every practicable way--apparently regardless of expenses--to substitute mechani- cal contrivances in his office and store that will enable given number of sa1esmen and office men to do 8 great CT amount of work, to do 1t more effec- lively and with the least expenditure of musuular and mental effort. Tie manufacturer halls with delight every new invention that promises to in- crease its output Of products without increasing the number of his employees. The railroad manager does the same thing. He will hitch two locomotives to train of forty cars or more and save two or three in the number of the train crew. In every industrial shop machinery Is made to displace hu- man muscle. Better machines take the place of less effective or antiQuated appliances.
 Cannot the farmer learn a valuable lesson from the men engaged in these other industrial pursuits. Of course he can. Many have partly learned the lesson and are applying 1t to the prac- tical management of their farms, 9th CTS are slowly catching on," while others are still carrying a pumpkin in one end of the bag and 6 stone in the other"-just as their fathers did. What many farmers need to learn is not to do dollars worth of work for fifty cents worth of results. Not to cultivate field with high priced labor that would not pay to cultivate even with low priced labor. Not to use an implement of preparing or cultivat- ing his 6fop that will involve a labor cost of fifty cents to go over an acre one time, when a few dollars (what he would save in weeks use) spent for an improved implement would ena- ble him to do the same area at an outlay of 25 cents. Will a farmer con- trive to employ an ablebodied laborer, costing him $1 Cor thereabouts) a day, to follow an S00-pound mule, pulling scooter and scrape," going twice to three-foot cotton row. when the same might be done at once to the row with the same man and the same mule?
 How can he afford to work land that-with the most favorable condi
 tions of weatner-wilI not produce more than eight bushels of corn, or 800 pounds and very often (much less) of seed cotton per acre7
 The alert reader has perhaps already discovered that this article is nothing more or less than @ plea for intensi fcation. Yes, and for concentration, because the one involves the other, and the two are insenarable. When a far mer determines to intensity he must concentrate his energies and his skill and his expenditures on a more pro- ductive soil. To do this. as a rule. would require a contraction of area. and the throwing out of expensive cultivation a very considerable por- tion of land that has heretofore been planted in corn and cotton, or other hood crops The idea is, and the re- suit will be, to reduce area and re- duce the labor account. Why there are a few farmers who are not at all disconcerted by the increased wages of labor. Their methods of culture and the resulting profits enable them to meet these just demands for in- creased wages-just when a full equtv- alent, both In the quantity or quality of labor is assured.
 There are two ways in which the gap between the demand for labor and the supply of labor may be closed up: abroad, or (2). to reduce the area un- der cultivation. The first we can not accomplish at will the second we can, and in so doing ''cut our garment according to the
 R. J. Bedding
 In Atlanta Constitution