The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1913-11-02
LABORERS $40 ,.a.s
REAL WEALTH CREATORS

AS the necessities of life. food, cloth
earth. our chief creators of real wealth
are agricultural laborers; yet they are
themselves not we'll clothed, not well
fed. and not we'll sheltered. Moreover,
they are regarded by their "betters,"
that Is to say, the upper and middle
class flunkies. as inferior beings en-
gagged In unskilled iunsdtry. Yet there
Is no more highly skilled workman
than the all-round agricultural laborer.
Those who despise him and call him
clod hopper. a yokel. or chaw ba-
con, would alter their opinion about
him perhaps If they tried their hand at
striking a furrow with plow across
20-acre field. or breaking In a young
colt, tanning a young bull, sheep shear
ing, hedging. ditching. matching and
tending to the thousand and one de-
during a years work on a farm. Agri-
cultural labor is a noble industry, and
ought to be highly paid, says writer
In Reynolds newspaper.
The farm workers today. however.
are not better off than were their an
cestors In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries Miss Jocelyn Dunlop, who is
a doctor of science of London univer-
sity and a we'll known authority on
economics. shows In her new book,
THE Farm Laborer" (Fisher Unwin),
that since the industrial revolution
created by the great mechanical inven-
lions and the application of steam
power to transit and industry, the lot
of the tiller Of the soil has been harder
than 1t was before. Another cause oil
this was the sanction by Parliament of
the enclosures of the common lands
robbed OF his right to grow his corn
and to feed his live stock on these COM
munaI lands. Later on he was de-
prived also of his right to NOV the
grass feed his COW or his pig on the
green swards of our picturesque coun-
try roadsides
Readers of Miss Dunlop's most inter-
esting book must wonder how the race
survived the horrors of the economic
condition Of the farm laborers In the
first four OF five decades Of the last
century The distress caused by bad
haryests. the blood and treasure poured
out over the wicked war with France,
the high protective duties on corn,
which kept out foreign supplies, ere.
ated appalling misery. such appalling
misery that the laborer had to be given
doles out of the rates. This allowance
system was abolished i'll 1884 and, bad
as 1t was. it had insured the laborer
starvation wages. Then followed the
adoption Of farm work by women and
children, as Miss Dunlop says, with
wages terribly low. with Unemployment
prevalent, and In the absence of all
other aid the laborer was compelled to
resort to any available means of in
creasing his income.
The waee-earning power OF his wife and
children had to be exploited The youny-
est children. who had hitherto brought
In 1ss sd. a week by their mere existence
we're driven by their parents necessity
into the fields to earn what they could
by the sweat Of their brows. Even had
the laborer heen less ignorant he was
too hard pressed to count the cost of the
romedy he now adopted. To tide over the
present hour was q struggle: the morrow
musN lock after itself. And on the NOR
row he found that the competition OF his
ciiidren's labor was keeping his own
va res down. and that the total family
Income tendet to ~ no higher than that
which he had h~cu@ht IN alons in none
tho prosperous days Yet a~atn. the Ia
horer's. attemrt 70 help himself had in.
creased his difficulties. For his insult
f.oient income now was won only by q
greater expenditure Of labor. food. and
clothing. Thus the dismal story Of wretch