New-York tribune., 1918-07-08
West Striving
To Make High
Harvest Record
Whole Families Are Toiling in
Iowa Wheat and Corn
Fields.
By Archer Wall Douglas
Miunenn0IiS .Ju1u :

. 1OU go nOrtnWarQ from Ot.
~ Louis to Minneapolis you are
struck by the we'll kept and
cultivated aspect of endless fields of
growing grain and forage. For the
farmer is doing his bit "from morn till
noon. from noon till dewey eve, sum-
mer's day." with his entire family, wife
and children, his hired man, pupils from
the rural high schools and merchants
and their clerks, who shut up shop in
the small towns certain days in the
week that they may help in the harvest.
So far there has been enough rain to
take the growing corn into July with
stand prepared for fierce midsummer
heats without hurting the wheat in
shock. So the rural scenery is thing
of beauty, and everywhere the crops
give out the promise told of in "The
Mikado" Of ID summer of roses and
wine."
Especially in Iowa do you note the
difference, and the reasons therefor. be-
tween what the travelling statesmen call
"a dead town and live one" Iowa is
filled with an unusually intelligent
class of farmers, and consequently
they are a prosperous lot Yet this
fact breeds their chief economic diff
Guilty. The people Of the town live
largely upon the surrounding country,
save for such local industries as some
towns possess. So business hangs
much upon the crops and the spending
power of the farmers. But ever and
anon you find town in rich agricult-
ural surroundings which is devoid OF
local pride and initiative, and which
fails to grow and expand with the
times Only too often it is the home of
retired farmers, who, driven by the
social ambition of their wives and
daughters, take up their residence in
the nearest attractive town and rent
their farms to tenants.
Rich Farmers Often Vegetate
In their new home they seem coatent
to vegetate, refusing generally to take
part in local development and progress,
or to cooperate in any movement when
means an expenditure of money. so
there grow up the evils of tenantry,
and absentee landlordism, of farm
ing lands held at abnormally high
prices, which force a would-be .pur-
chasers in the shape of young and ad-
venturous spirits to seek the virgin ter
ritorv and cheaper land of our own
Southwest and of the Northwest Cana
dian provinces. So it is that Iowa alone
of all the states showed a decrease in
Dopulation in the last census.
If you are wise enough when tray-
elling to spend your time in the day
coach, and in the small town when tar
rying you get much first hand in
formation Of the shortage of farm
labor and the farreaching and effective
governmental and state methods which
so far have largely overcome the diff
and the clean cornfelds plainly indi
cate.
Idle Men Forced to Work
There has been definite and cease
less rounding up Of the idle and the un-
on the part Of the willing, of which
there is scant knowledge and less ap
probation on the part Of the great out
side world. since such effort fails to get
into the limelight of the front page.
The lot of the Stacker in the small town
in the West is not a happy one these
days.
Further northward, in the Twin
Cities--St. Paul and Minneapols-thi
same shortage of labor is meeting a
new solution--new at least to us in
many ways, though already old in Eng
land and on the Continent. The only
available labor in industrial life for
time seemed that of boys under the
draft age, and as a whole it was most
unsatis factory ard most inefficient.
Constantly changing, sometimes for
better wages, sometimes for a mere
whim. it seemed to lack interest in it's
! work and to look upon its job with but
little seriousness and as mere passing
adventure.
So women werc called into the
breach, and they ere mostly max
ing good, especially where properly
directed. This employment has spread
rom manufacturing and retail bust
ncsses to the great distributing firms
and practically to every phase Of com
mercial life
Those who have spent waking hours
IN the Silly night ,ver this problem
tell me shat the principal difficulties
are those of the inherited tendencies
and apparently ineradicable traits Of
the eternal feminine. The best solu-