Evening star., 1923-11-13

ohS VI <tHEeIlCd greatest 6IIlS Is
its waste Of manpower. With all its
iaborsaving machinery. America is
wasting more manpower than it is
using. Mismanagement and misap-
pfication of effort are held to be re-
sponsible. Economists assert that mis-
applied labor is the worst kind Of
waste. for it not only squanders
wages Cor the equivalenD, but It
lowers the morale of the workers.
Mr.. Ethelbert Stewart. United
States commissioner of labor statis-
tics, has prepared statistical table
(hitherto unpublished) whose facts
constitute an arraignment Of Amer
lean agriculture. The commissioner
took the farmers of Illinois as repre-
senting 100 per cent. for the purpose
Of comparing those of other states
In productivity.
The per capita value of the crop
produced in Illinois is ssI4. In Iowa
1t averages 1875. In all other states
!! it falls far below. Alabama averages
only s2o7. Virginia, 1851; West Vir-
ginia. S226; Pennsylvania, 1886. We
hear of abandoned" farms in Maine.
yet the farmers Of that state average
s455-twice as much as the farmers
of North Carolina ($21s) and nearly
twice as much as the farmers of
South Carolina (S269).
Mr. Stewards statistics suggest
that. IL the government could, son1e-
how. require all farmers to work as
effectually as the average farmer of
Illinois works, and to produce as
much as the average farmer of ILL.,
nois produces. It might recruit from
the surplus farmers an army for
needed industries as large as the en-
tire army Modified in our world war
and the army in training camps in
this country.
Working on the Illinois standard.
only 3,513,0S1 farmers would be need
ed to cultivate all the land that is
now under cultivation and the dir
and the. S,132.453 farmers who are
now working the same acreage would
release for other useful work 4,6l9.-
372 men.
Compare such waste of manpower
the world war and note that Year ar
after year the 4,619.372 surplus
farmers Of today are wasting their
time in misapplied energy. A Common
laborerr in the city expects not less
e,
and on the basis of eight hours a
day lost from useful industry, the
surplus farmers are squanderfng in
waste of labor s1S.477.4SS a day. This
economic waste causes a loss every
four years equal to the cost of the
ought to let this army of surplus
farmers continue to do rights and
Iefts' in misapplicatfon of labor. while
we invite the surplus labor of Europe
to do our work.
Not only could the reduced number
Of farmers cultivate the acreage, bat
they could deliver the goods" IL they
only came up to the average farmer
of Illinois. The increased productivity
Of American farmers in the last Gen.
tury is one Of the wonders Of human
development. It far surpasses the
worlds increase since the beginning
of the Christian era to 1900.
In 1900. one farmer. with his sickle.
could out an acre of wheat from sun
,, rise to dark. It then required s5 per
cent of the men OF America to raise
the other per cent. In 1881. one
| man, with a cradle. could harvest
two and one-half acres of wheat. In
1870, with a Mccormick reaper, one
man could cut six acres a day, but
the s,seaves. In 1880. with the self
binder, one man could cut and bind
twenty acres a day. (What became
OF the surplus five men who had fol-
lowed the old reaper?) Today. one
machine will cut bind, thrash and
sack forty acres day. CWbat has
become of the fifty men displaced by
that, modern machinery
X u Il ];
Why do farmers accomplish so lit
tie. even with all the labor-saving
machinery? In Florida one farmer
can cultivate only 90 acres; in Illi-
nois, 45.3; in Georgia, 1922 in Iowa,