Abner E. Woodruff

“ With a considerable minority of farm laborers and harvest workers, organized and educated, with the knowledge of the principles of the Industrial Unionism, the rest of the world will be asking the Industrial Workers of the World, "What are we going to have for breakfast in the morning?" ”

“ The avenue of escape from wage labor was being definitely closed, the era of tenantry and wage farming was coming in—an era of dear land and cheap labor—and it began to pay better to raise 100 bushels of corn on an acre than to raise 100 bushels on four acres, as had been done before.
The higher land becomes and the cheaper labor becomes in relation to it, the more intense will the cultural methods become. In other words, the farmer will adopt the method that gives the best returns on the sum of the interest, maintenance and labor charges. ”

“ But in a region like the Atlantic slope of the Appalachian Mountains, where there are rich lowlands, fertile foot hills, streams full of fish, abundant plant life, great forests, and a climate favorable to agriculture, we may expect to find a people with a considerable range of choice in their food supply, clothed in the lighter skins or even in woven cotton garments, and living in hovels constructed from wood or mud or other permanent material, and rendered sedentary by the practice of some form of agriculture, though hunting and fishing are yet followed as equal sources of subsistence. ”

“ Indeed, so great is the progress of farming on the scientific side that it seems likely to enter the ranks of the learned and dignified professions.
At least, scientific research and methods have finally brought the art of agriculture to a paying basis and the up-to-date farmer, equipped with a scientific education and technical training steps forward very much in advance of the so-called business men and intellectuals of the rural towns. ”

“ So vast a movement in a single industry must have its social reflexes, and we see the development of the "cow towns"—Newton, Abilene, Great Bend, Ellsworth, Dodge City, Hayes City and Ogallala—with a life as colorful and exciting as that furnished by any bonanza, handled 400,000 cattle in the year 1884. ”

“ The cost of the machines with which the farmer could engage in the new farming and hold his own on a competitive market so greatly increased the capital necessary to embark upon the venture that the farm hand was forced to remain longer at his apprenticeship—the age at which men started farming for themselves began to increase—and many who would have continued on the soil, gave up the idea and sought employment in the other industries which were being developed by leaps and bounds. ”

“ We may well picture the first tree dweller that developed the human thumb—the thumb set so far forward on the hand and of such length that it could be opposed to the other fingers—and imagine the advantages he possessed over his fellows amid the leafy canopies. We may see him plucking the fruits and nuts with greater dexterity; swinging from limb to limb with greater certainty of grasp; clutching at the throat of his adversary with a deadlier grip; striking with the fist instead of slapping with an open paw; and, for the first time wielding a club in the enforcement of his developing will. ”

“ Natural environment determines the nature of the food supply for man and determines also what his clothing needs to be, what shelter he requires, and, through these what his domestic industries, and personal and social customs shall be. So in the Arctic region, where the major portion of the year is intensely cold, where the country is a barren, treeless waste, we may find a people dependent entirely upon animal life for food, clothing and tentage, engaging in hunting, fishing and bird nesting and without suspicion that such a thing as agriculture can exist. ”

“ A period in which the annual corn crop increased to almost one billion bushels, and wheat and oats were each above the 170 million bushel mark. In 1860, almost 21 million dollars' worth of agricultural implements were sold to the American farmers. The old, hard method of farming was due for the discard, and along with the new farmer and his vision of agricultural conquest came the farm hand. The Civil War closed this period and the whole country faced a readjustment of its ideas to suit the fact that the industrializing process was invading every avenue by which the people lived. ”

“ Socially, it has been a period of concentration; the open spaces have been populated and the dissimilar elements of the people so pressed together as to produce crystalization—the American type is commencing to appear. Economically the line of cleavage between the farmer and the farm laborer has widened into a gulf, across which they glare at each other in uncompromising hostility. ”

“ In the realm of Biology, the validity of the Law of Evolution cannot well be questioned, and we are quite justified in any attempt we may make to reconstruct that romantic period when the hairy denizens of the tree tops went through those changes that finally developed a creature bold enough to descend upon the ground, club in hand, and battle with the carnivorous beasts for the coveted right to live. ”

“ Agricultural colleges were established to spread scientific cultural methods so that the food supply might keep pace with the demands of an increasing industrial population, research work in the realm of agriculture was vigorously prosecuted by numerous experiment stations under State and Federal control, and the period closes with the establishment of a separate system of finance designed to place the agricultural capitalist on a par with the commercial capitalist in the money markets of the world by modilizing and standardizing the basis of his credit. ”

“ Slavery also contributed to continue the custom of "land killing" so common to the Americans—that is, the cropping of a field until it is exhausted and then moving on to a new one; it increased the tendency away from small farms to great plantations, and prevented the early adoption of more efficient tools and methods because the slave could not be trusted to use them.
The spread of the cotton industry was the only change the agricultural South experienced during this period. Tobacco spread Westward into Kentucky and Tennessee and the cattle industry thrived in the same region. ”

“ In the Middle States and in the North where general farming was practised, there was no genuinely rural proletariat, for the reason that the lands were cheap and the undeveloped West was open to every man who had sufficient knowledge of agriculture and enough energy to devote himself to the conquest of the soil. ”

“ In the North there was a population eager to advance, and as fast as the machines could be demonstrated they were adopted. It was so rapidly developing a region that but few rural traditions had taken root; there were no deep-seated prejudices that needed to be overcome. Most of the farmers were land-owners, the proportion of tenants was small, and the number of wage-earning farm hands very limited, so there were practically none to oppose the change because they felt their mode of living threatened. ”

“ The rapid rise of the factory system in the North, due to the use of steam and a flood of labor saving inventions with a consequent transfer of home industries into the shops, the invention of agricultural machinery such as the reaper, mower, thresher, etc., the extension of the railway system and the development of the prairie states caused an era of specialization which transferred agriculture into the commercial stage. Crops were now grown primarily for the market and incidentally for the use of the farmer and his family, a reversal of the former process. ”

“ HEN MAN reaches a certain stage in development he adopts Agriculture. In Asia, herding undoubtedly preceded the cultivation of the soil, but in America the goat and the ox did not exist, and agriculture was immediately imposed upon the hunting age.
The trend of agriculture was evidently from the South toward the North, and especially is this Northward trend evident in the case of the Indian corn, the principal agricultural staple of the Indian dietary. ”

“ THE EFFECT of the Revolutionary War was to nationalize the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, thus creating a public domain and laying the foundation for a national land policy. Indeed, since the relation of the people to the land is a fundamental factor in all history and the basic factor in economics, it is absolutely necessary to refer first to all the land policy and point out the methods by which a region of practically 296,000 square miles was transferred, in the course of about 130 years, into private hands. ”

“ THE EXPANSION of agricultural production was relatively more rapid after the Civil War than before it. This war did not check the Northern expansion, but did completely disorganize the cotton industry and involve it in temporary ruin. The improved machinery (reapers, threshers, corn planters, cultivators, etc.) , enabled the North to increase its production, though a large portion of its labor force was diverted into the army.
Women and children fed the North, their labor being rendered more efficient by the use of the machines. ”

“ THE THIRTY-FIVE years of this period saw the almost complete transformation of American agriculture from the self-sufficing to the commercial stage, and its record constitutes one of the most remarkable chapters in the economic history of the world.
European agriculture had taken up the breeding of better livestock, improved cultural methods, systems of crop rotation, the growing and feeding of roots, and the use of commercial fertilizers ”

“ The farm hand of today is no longer the potential equal of his employer, and all the old show of social equality is rapidly disappearing; only in the backwoods sections can it yet be found, and there the farm hand is usually the son of a neighboring farmer and therefore carries the status of his father. ”

“ Time and many earthly changes have so obscured and buried the evidence that, though our scientists delve and dig with ceaseless energy and painstaking care, they must yet resort to physical analogies for proof of the
contention that we are an evolution out of another and primitive species. The "link" to complete the chain may be missing—the absolute connection of the human race with the "tree dwellers" may never be established—but, among the educated and enlightened, it will never be doubted in the least. ”

“ The American census reports are utterly unreliable for the period prior to 1850, for the reason that they were entirely general in their character and failed to gather that particular information which would give an exact view of the condition of the rural population. The authorities are completely at sea as to many phases of the agricultural problem and hold divergent opinions regarding the same, thus making one man's idea quite as reliable as the other's and all of them open to question. ”

“ Next to the land policy, cotton plays an important part in the national development, and due to it slavery was prolonged as an American institution. Short staple cotton had been known from the earliest settlement, for it was cultivated by the Southern Indians, but the great labor attending its preparation for the spinning wheel had made it unprofitable to grow even with slave labor. But in 1786 the long staple cotton was introduced into the South from the Sea Islands, and in 1793 Eli Whitney invented the saw gin which enabled a single man to clean 1,000 pounds of the fiber in a day. ”

“ A public land policy was adopted by the Federal Government, cotton became the dominant agricultural product of the South and made slavery a paying and therefore a characteristically Southern institution, and the first efforts to apply science to agriculture were made. During this period, as in the first one, agriculture was practically self-sufficing, though in the South the specialization on cotton caused a considerable dependence on other regions for supplies that otherwise would have been produced at home. ”

“ Many intelligent writers have condemned the wasteful methods of colonial agriculture, but they have failed to consider the fact that land was cheaper than labor and we only economize in that of which we have a scarcity. ”

“ Wherever there are free lands in abundance free labor is difficult to secure. The laborer can usually make as much working for himself, if he has an outfit, as anyone else is willing to pay him, and this was especially so in Virginia. Laborers came under bond to work a certain time to repay their passage money and pay for tools, seeds and provisions to make a start for themselves, and when this time was up became farmers on their own account, so there was really no paid labor in the colony worthy of mention. ”

“ Immediately cotton was not only a commercial possibility, but became a highly profitable commodity. The invention of a remarkable series of textile machines in England, which was the home of the weaving industry, brought a great demand for the fiber, and the South, with a suitable climate, slave labor and Whitney's gin, was in a position to supply the demand. By 1803, cotton became the leading product in the South. ”

“ Instead of creating an era of small farms, the tendency is for the big farmer to finance further purchases of land through the credit banks, and these are a decided tendency towards concentration. The "Land Trust" is well upon the way.
The universal application of machinery to agriculture has definitely industrialized farming and created three distinct classes in the rural regions—the farmers, the tenants, and the laborers. ”

“ New England never was agriculturally independent. She had to rely somewhat upon other regions for a portion of her food supply, yet agriculture was always large among her economic interests.
The early New England land system was based upon the common ownership and use of a tract of land by a number of church members. The meeting house was the center of their community and only those who adhered to the faith were citizens. They allotted the citizens portions of meadow, plow lands and grazing and forest lands, together with a right to the commons which everybody used. ”

“ Law of 1862 was a great factor in the Westward expansion and the growth of agricultural enterprise. Practically free land encouraged the settlement of the public domain. The ease with which ex-soldiers could get land helped to prevent a glut of the labor market. The sale of army horses and mules to farmers helped to expand agriculture and it may be said that the close of the war marks the time when the ox, as a draft animal, was finally displaced by the horse. ”

“ The land owning farmers are now 35.2 per cent of the working rural population, the tenants are 15.1 per cent (occupying 30 per cent of all the farms) , and the farm hands, farmer's children, etc., equal 49.7 per cent of the tillers of the soil.
With the working population on the farms constituting but 13 per cent of the total population, we have arrived at the point where but little more than 4 1-2 per cent of that total are land owning farmers, a little less than 2 per cent are tenants, and the remainder (6.46 per cent) , are the children of farmers and wage hands. ”

“ The spirit of exploitation was rampant and the weaker, less advanced Indians went down before the superior shrewdness and unscrupulous ruthlessness of his Caucasian adversary. The history of the white man's dealings with the red man is a record of his cruelty, exploitation and dirty chicanery that bourgeois historians try hard to conceal, its last monumental infamy being the destruction of the buffalo during the seventies, by which act the Indians of the West were forced upon the reservation and reduced from freemen to that curious position of a "ward of the government"—"neither man nor boy ”

“ THE REORGANIZATION of American agriculture began with the passage of the Experiment Station Act in 1887. This act marked the beginning of a comprehensive and systematic application of experimental science to agriculture and was the signal for great activity in research work in all lines of agricultural endeavor. The Experiment Stations are really the foundation of the new agriculture. ”