Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1917-01-28
HIGH COST OF LIVING
By Sheldon S. Cline.
No. %.
The Eight-Hour Day and the Farm

Nothing has done more to make diff
ficult the problem of farm labor than
the agitation of organized industrial
workers for an eight-hour day. The
average farm hand is unable to discern
the advantage, so often cited. that his
outdoor work gives him over la Dor in
mine or factory. He thinks only of
the shorter hours of the industrial
worker, and grows more and more dis
contented with his lot.
Fifteen hours day, with an hour off
for noon, is the usual thing in summer
on many farms, and under the stress
of season the days work often stretches
to sixteen or seventeen hours. This is
for six days a week, and always on
Sunday there are the Chores to do.
The term chores is very elastic one
on the farm, but generally it includes
everything but actual field work. 1t
involves milking cows. feeding stock,
cleaning stables and currying horses,
and the thrifty farmer most always can
find harness to mend or broken imple-
ments to repair in order to keep time
from hanging heavy on the hired mans
hands IT, after the Nmid-afternoon
Sunday dinner, the hired men settle
themselves down in the haymow for
a quiet game or seven up the pesky
steers or a bunch of pigs are almost
certain to break into the corn field BY
the time they are chased out and the
fence patched IL IL Tune 10 40 the
evening chores. If they go to see their
best girls after supper they don't stay
long, for they know the farmer will
rout them out by 3 o'clock Monday
morning.
What do you suppose, now, these men
think when they read that the Presi-
dent of the United States has pro-
nounced 1t as his solemn conviction
that society has set it's seal of approval
on the eight hour day for those who
toll?
If society has set its seal of approval
on the eight-hour day for those who
toll. with Saturday afternoons and Sun
days off, 1t cannot in justice demand
This being the case, society no doubt
is prepared to pay the price. The
price. of course. is a still further ad-
vance in the cost of living.
If eight hours a day Is all the farm
hand should work there is no logical
reason why the farmer himself should
work longer. Work would not begin
until o'clock, five hours or more after
daybreak in the summer. With the
horses and other stock to feed, stables
to clean and cows to milk, the men and
teams might be in the field by O'clock
An hours incoming would be taken, and
field work would have to stop at
o'clock in order that the chores might
be done by 8, when the eight hour day
would be up. This would give six hours
a day in the field. The present average
is twelve hours or more during the
season of planting, cultivating and har-
vesting of crops. 1t will be seen,
therefore, that an eight-hour day on
the farm would just about cut crop
production in two unless the supply of
farm labor could be doubled.
* ;:
An eight-hour day on the farm, with
wages comparable to those of the
eight hour industrial worker. no doubt
would recruit the supply of farm labor
up to any required point. but it would
add to the cost of producing foodstuffs
of every kind. Because fooustuffs
would cost more. the industrial work.
ers would have to have higher wages.
Then. in order to keep the scales of
justice true. the wages of farm la
borers would go up again And the old
revolving circle. would have arrived
once more at the nothing it set out
from.
NeNt-Ihe Food supply and CONNER
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