Omaha daily bee., 1916-09-01
BY GARRETT p. SERvIss.

A trip. from whihc have just re-
I turned, among the rich farms of the
Mohawk valley and its bordering hills,
{ furnishes, to my mind at least, solu-
tion to the problem OF what the work.
ers at the present war industries
can find to do when the war is over
| found farmers families taking
breakfast at 5, and even 3 or o'clock
in the morning, and working as long
as there was light enough to sec by,
not because the nature of their occu-
patton demands such endless hours
OF labor, but because they can get no
help
Productive fields are being aban-
doned or left uncultivated, splendid
herds OF mich cows are being sold
and sent to slaughter, some of them
worth several hundred dollars apiece,
because not enough hands can be
found to care for them, even when the
labor is reduced to minimum by
such devices as ranks of milking
machines, driven by engine power
an invention surely as notable and as
admirable as any submarine mechan-
ical monster or any explosive shell
that will destroy fort or knock a
peaceful village into ruins.
In my opinion the machines that
the modern American farmer en-
ploys are as interesting to work with,
As easy to manage and as inspiring
to the imagination OF the operators
as anything that the machine shops
and factories possess, besides being
incomparably more healthful and
stimulating, and yet it is almost i'm
possible to find men willing to handle
or supervise them. Again and again
II asked; what has become Of the
help that you used to have" The
reply always was: Gone to the NUM-
ton factories"
One immediate consequence of the
helpless situation of the farmers has
been that the prices Of farm and
garden stuff in the villages and small
cities have been climbing higher and
higher, so that those who have thrown
up their healthful farm work and
abandoned the pure air Of the coun-
try to flock into the congested CEN
tiers Of population and manufacture,
find that their increase in wages has
been Offset by equal and sometimes
greater increase Of the cost Of living.
1t is both useless and unjust to
blame the farmers for this state of
things. When the supply of milk and
butter, for instance, falls off because
there is not enough helpers to keep
up the production at the former level.
while, at the same time, the number
of mouths insistently demanding
food, without doing anything directly
to produce it, grows constantly
greater, an increase of price is abso-
lutely inevitable.
| heard Of an old friend, farmer,
who was mourning, almost with tears
in his eyes over his forced sale OF
a splendid herd OF cows, famous pro-
duccrs of milk and butter, but which
he could not, keep simply because
there was no help" to be had. They
had gone, as he said, TO be cut up and
fed to the munition makers" Thus
Europe's war reaches across the sea,
and not only saps the immediate
sources of life, but tends permanently
to lame and weaken the common mo-
Their Of us al1--agriculture-for the
workers who leave the farm almost
never go back again.
This fact might seem to be, in itself,
a condemnation Of farm life. But it
is not truly condemnation. 1t is
the result OF an illusion, or a decep-
ton. 1t is recurrent phenomenon,
which has repeated itself often in
history, and its final result has always
been the same. One great example
is sufficient. When Rome's fields
ceased to be cultivated Rome quickly