The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1909-10-14
Some Hard Work You and Your Wife
Should Stop Doing.

Should Stop Doing.
Many farmers in the South have no
conception Of the value of labor.
That is, they have no real idea as to
what a days labor should accomplish
on the farm. People in other Sec
tions often claim that the Southern
farmer is lazy. AS matter of fact,
he probably does more muscular la
Dor than the farmer In any Western
or Northwestern State. He not only
works hard, but he Is wasteful OF
hard work, works hard unnecessarily,
and goes out of his way to do hard
work even when it would pay better
to do the work in easier fashion.
Consider moment. In late is-
sue we told of seeing ten one-horse
plows in operation last spring to one
two-horse plow. To do as much
plowing with the one-horse plow as
with the two-horse plow, the men
who follow these plows have to do
twice as much work. It probably
took them one and one-half times as
long to get over the same amount of
land as it would have taken them
with good plows. Here is sheer
and an enormous waste of labor-an
absolute waste of labor, because
these men who are doing this walking
are spending this time unnecessarily,
putting their labor against that of
horses and mules. Man is supposed
to be an intelligent being and able to
direct the efforts of his work stock,
but when he chooses to reduce the
work on the farm to matter of mere
mucular effort aud to put his own
muscles against those Of the mule he
comes perilously near putting himself
in the same class with the mule as a
worker on the farm. The Western
farmer measures his efficiency large
ly by the number of horses or by the
amount of horse power he can con-
troll and direct. We Of the South re-
main content to direct the labor of
only one horse and to 80 direct this
labor that we must do almost an
equal amount with the horse.
III.
Then after our crops are planted
we tend them largely with plows
which necessitate our going four or
five times to each row where we
should 60 only once. Is not this an
obvious waste of hard labor and of
valuable time? Can we expect to
make our labor profitable so long as
we do only one-fourth as much In a
day as we might? It takes man
with a turn plow or single sweep
four times as long to work an acre
of corn as it takes the man
with the two-horse cultivator.
This is a virtual waste out of this
man's~life of this misused time. Is
it any wonder that so many men work
hard all their lives to accomplish 80
little?
Then in the fall when our crop is
made, if it is a corn crop, we pull the
fodder off of it, spending here twice
as much labor as would be required
to save food of an equal value If the
corn were cut up and shocked. Is 1t
any wonder that some farmers do not
find live stock feeding profitable
when they depend upon food which
has cost them twice what was neces-
sary? The labor put into the pro-
duction of any commodity Is part
of the cost of that commodity
self-evident statement it would seem,
but one which thousands Of farmers
evidently forget every day OF their
lives. We must learn to economic
in the expenditure of time and labor
as we'll as in the expenditure of mon
ey, and it is the height of folly to de-
vote twice as much labor to the pro-
duction of crop as is necessary and
then to expect prices high enough to
give US profit on this labor.
The same thing is true Of labor In
the farm home. In thousands OF
homes the women and children have
spent time enough carrying water
from a distant spring or drawing 1t
out of a well by sheer muscular effort
to have paid a half dozen times for
the installation Of a good pump or
for the digging Of well or cistern
near by. The woman who spends
four hours each week doing wash
ing by hand that could be done In
TWO uOuTS WILL q WooAAA6 ue@SAAAS
wastes enough labor in one year to
more than pay for a machine that
will last ten years. 1s 1t any wonder
that the women of our farms are
over-worked and are yet unable to
keep the farm home as it should be
kept, or to find time for the recre-
alton and self-culture to which every
woman ia entitled?
w.
To work - to perform honest,
healthful and productive labor-is
the highest privilege which any OF us
enjoy; but to do work which is un-
necessary and unfruitful and to be
compelled to do such work day after
day and year after year, is a doom
which Dante might we'll have added
to the horrors of his Inferno. If we
appreciated the value of the time
which is ours and the dignity of la
Dor which accomplishes the end
which it seeks-in other words, if
we appreciate the difference be-
tween intelligent and unintelllgent
labor, we would bend every effort to
oL 80 conditions and