Agricultural laborer

“ Agricultural laborers are always sure of abundant employment and high wages. The labor of agriculture is of various kinds, and may be performed by any man accustomed to work, with little or no previous instruction. It consists principally in cutting up weeds with the hoe, cutting down sugar-cane, and throwing it into boats on the canals, to be transported to the sugar-house ”

“ In the first place there is a large generation of agricultural laborers in England, now in the prime of manhood, who have just graduated, as it were, through all the scientific processes of agriculture developed in the last fifteen years. The ploughmen, cowmen, cartmen, and shepherds, even, have become familiar with the established routine; and every set of these hands can produce one or two active and intelligent laborers who will gladly and ably fill the post of under-foreman for a shilling or two a week of advanced wages. ”

“ And, so it has been with the agricultural laborers since 1915. Nearly every man who is eligible throws his whole spirit into the work of organizing and agitating his fellow man and many thousands of new members are taken in every year.
The I. W. W. came as a mighty boon to the harvest workers. What they have done for themselves in the past few years is but a marker in comparison to what will be accomplished in the future. ”

“ In another particular farm labor differs from that of other forms of labor even more widely. There are sociologic as well as economic questions involved. Baldly stated, custom permits, and necessity often requires, the laborer to eat at the same table with the farm owner and in other particulars he mingles intimately with the farmer’s family. In all its bearings, this is a very important fact. It constitutes one of the greatest difficulties in the problem of securing suitable farm help. Industrial corporations employ as common laborers largely Italians, Hungarians, 198 Poles and negroes. ”

“ Agricultural labor must, therefore, be much more versatile than labor employed in large-scale industry. Most industries, moreover, are able to run along at an even pace throughout the year, 345affording steady employment to a fixed number of workers. But in most forms of agriculture, the amount of labor required is much greater at some seasons of the year than at others, thus giving the farmer a labor problem of great difficulty to contend with. ”

“ It is to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at those frequently recurring times when English agriculture, so careful and intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or temporary needs of the cultivation of the soil. ”

“ They work all day at the severest agricultural labor, wielding a heavy, clumsy hoe, digging potatoes, grubbing up stones from the soil, stooping on the ground in weeding, and compelled even to the unfeminine and offensive employment of spreading manure. For a day's work at what men alone should be required to do, they receive but a shilling! ”

“ Wherever the farmer sows not a full abundance of good seeds, weeds are certain to spring up. The farm must provide a fair and liberal income, [56] because want brings lack of true pride, breeds carelessness, even hatred of others, filches self-respect and courage. Therefore, if profits are desired, good land, land of wide agricultural capabilities, should be selected. The greater variety of crops the land is capable of producing and the more varieties the farmer raises, provided he does not exceed his mental and executive capabilities, the better will be his education and training. ”

“ Even the peasant has five acres of land allotted him by the government; and in his home garden he raises carrots and turnips and pumpkins and melons. The larger farmers raise wheat and corn and sugar beets, oats and all the cereals; and cattle in large numbers. [Pg 89] They raise their own food and they are chiefly vegetarians; and they carry their surplus in ox-teams to the nearest market. Prices are regulated by the Agricultural Society. Every farmer gives one or two days a year to the State and pays his taxes in kind. When crops fail, the Coöperative Agricultural Society lends him money. ”

“ We encourage him in every way in our power to be economical, industrious, and prudent, to surround his home with comforts, to plant an orchard and garden, and to raise his own meat, and to keep his own cows, for which he has free pasturage. Our object is to attach him as much as possible to his home. Under whatever system we work, we require the laborer to plant a part of his land in food crops and the balance in cotton with which to pay his rent and give him ready money. ”

“ The general introduction of agricultural machinery and agricultural chemistry has an inevitable tendency to demand a race of skilled labourers, instead of unintellectual serfs. But how do we deal with the labourer and his family? ”

“ But the person who introduces an entirely unimproved piece of land into the service of production, stands to the laborer as well as to the capitalist in a relation which is entirely incomparable with any other. (See § 156.) The doctrine of former agriculturists, that one-half of the harvest was to be ascribed to the soil and the other to the manure, would not suffice here, even if it were correct. ”

“ And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. ”

“ Regulation of agricultural labor would seem absurd, and the difference between a family, with or without hired help, working in comparative freedom on a farm, and scores of individuals working at the 117 same tasks, day after day, under more or less tension was slow to take shape in the popular consciousness. ”

“ TACOMA BUILDING. ordinary laborer are ten hours, and to more favored classes eight or seven, or even six, are to the farmer as a rule at least fourteen in twenty-four. His work is never done, any more than woman’s.
As a natural consequence he always is tired out. Custom and the demand of the markets restrict him generally to a single crop. Whether this be wheat, or corn, or oats, the seeding time is comparatively short. ”

“ And often the agricultural labourer, having tramped to town, may find no work ready to his hands. I read in the reports of the Société Nationale d’Agriculture of a certain farm in Brie, which has been bought by the Assistance Publique, in order to give work to those unhappy labouring men who have fallen into beggary among the unfriendly streets. Here, on the fields and furrows of La Chalmelle, they touch their mother earth again, like Antæus; thence they repair, sadder and wiser men, to such glebes or vineyards as are short of hire. ”

“ In fact, formerly, the agricultural labourers were but the smallest of the small farmers, and formed for the most part a kind of rear-guard of the medium and large farms on which they found employment. ”

“ The contributions of this nation's agricultural sector are not limited to its capacity to produce a plentiful supply of food. Once agricultural commodities leave the farm gate, they generate economic activity which creates job opportunities for 19 million nonfarm workers. ”

“ In all of this activity of cultivation, the rush of harvest, and regularity of day-to-day chores, the farmer worked, not alone, but in conjunction with his family. Unlike the industrial worker, whose employment was discrete and separate from his home life, the farmer's home was his workshop, and his labor directly connected to his sustenance. ”

“ His agricultural labour consists in superintending the cultivation of the small squares left for the growth of grain in the centre of the copses, to feed and attract the pheasants, and to keep them from wandering. These have to be dug up with the spade—there would be no room for using a plough—and spade-husbandry is rather slow work. An eye has therefore to be kept on the labourers thus employed lest they get into mischief. ”

“ Yes, we begin to see that wheat no more than wool is entirely devoid of human labor; but, at least, the agriculturist has not, like the manufacturer, done all by himself and his workmen; Nature aids him, and if there is labor, it is not all labor in the wheat. ”

“ How much has been effected by the unassisted, unencouraged industry of a few individual settlers! We are all eating the produce of our own fields, and how sweet our bread! This is made in the simplest way—we grind the wheat in our own hand-mills, troubling neither flour-dressers nor millers, for a reason we have. ”

“ The chaff-cutter and pump, and so on, all depend on human hands to keep them going. Such is but a very brief outline of the innumerable ways in which arable agriculture gives employment. So the labourer and the labourer's family flourish exceedingly in the corn tillage. Wages rise; he waxes fat and strong and masterful, thinking that he holds the farmer and the golden grain in the hollow of his hand.
But now a cloud arises and casts its shadow over the cottage. If the farmer depends upon his men, so do the men in equal degree depend upon the farmer. ”

“ In harvest time, the superintendence of work continues till late, and in the autumn labour is not unfrequently prolonged into the moonlight, in order to carry the corn. It is a life, on the whole, of hard work.
In all this I speak of the ordinary middle-class farmer. The life of the higher class of agriculturists, who possess large capital, and employ bailiffs and all kinds of machinery, is of course not by any means so onerous. ”

“ An agricultural labourer, if he is fortunate enough to have—what he ought invariably to have—a rood of garden ground as part of his occupation, which he may cultivate after he has done his wage-paid work,—will grow upon it vegetables sufficient to yield him a return, after payment of rent and for seed, of at least 4l. ”

“ Such a farm must be hand-tilled, and, if skilfully hand-tilled, would certainly produce as much food as a market-garden. It would employ an enormous amount of labour, and would at least pay its labour bill. I am not advocating that such [87] a farm should be used as a playground for the semi-criminal, semi-imbecile, and generally incompetent class who go to form the 'unemployed'; for the trade of agriculture, to be successful, demands both skill and energy. ”

“ Wages of ordinary agricultural labourers are now, as detailed in Bara Banki, five pice or six pice, according as they offer their services or are sought; or they get grain. Handicraft-men are of course better paid, carpenters get three annas in their villages, four if they leave them, smiths the same. Local weights and measures. I have referred to this subject at great length in the Kheri and Bahraich articles. ”

“ Then landlords were appealed to in a quiet friendly spirit to let allotments and cow land, and even under some favourable conditions a co-operative farm to the labourers. The consequence has been that gradually and without any serious ill-feeling a comfortable and satisfactory relation between employers and employed has been established; the men have not taken advantage of the farmers at the harvest, and the wages have been satisfactorily settled without any pressure. ”

“ In the most developed regions the same relations prevail upon the farms as are found in the other industries, with the exception that the work is largely seasonal and therefore the employment is irregular and precarious. The farm hand has become a migratory laborer, possessing all the characteristics of his industrial brother, and faithfully reflecting the influences of so unstable an environment. ”

“ The expression "agricultural labourer," for the purposes of the Labourers Acts, is defined by section 4 of the Act of 1886 to mean "a man or woman who does agricultural work for hire at any season of the year on the land of some other person or persons, and shall include handloom weavers and fishermen doing agricultural work as aforesaid, and shall also include herdsmen." ”

“ A part of the agricultural labourers, which, however, grows less day by day, dwells still on the holdings of the farmers in over-crowded huts, whose hideousness far surpasses the worst that the English agricultural labourers offered us in this way. ”

“ The produce of the ground, generally potatoes and grain, makes a considerable addition to his income, but the human aspect of the system and the contentment produced, with the attachment and interest in the soil, in what is most striking in the result, and the time snatched perhaps from the public-house and the zeal and care called forth in the labourer elevating him as a man and improving him as a workman. ”

“ It would seem expedient that every Colony or Labour House should follow a mixed economy of agriculture and industry. Wherever possible, a farm should be an essential part of it, in order that all such primary necessaries of life as milk, butter, meat, roots, and vegetables, might be produced, as far as practicable, by the aid of the inmates' labour. ”

“ A stranger will have remarked with surprise that there are but few, very few, of the knee-breeched, top-booted, double-chinned, jolly, old-class farmers amongst the numerous groups who are either watching their sample-bags and waiting for customers, or chewing and smelling handfuls of wheat and barley, and casting what they do not swallow on the flags, already carpeted with grain. ”