Rural worker

“ Neither the Eastern nor the Far Western section presents aspects of special interest to the foreign student of the Rural problem in the United States, but in both the constructive statesman and the social worker will find a rich field for their efforts. In the New England States—more especially in the manufacturing districts—the competition between town and country for labour is as marked as in Industrial England. ”

“ There is good reason to believe that the state of the agricultural labourers does not differ much, at least in kind, from that of the working people in towns. The remedies for the evils in both are of the same nature; and whatever results are arrived at with respect to the health of towns may generally be adapted, without much difficulty, to the wants of the rural population. ”

“ As the bad years were generally twice as numerous as the good years, the conditions of the rural workers were generally most miserable. Ill-treated Nature, receiving no encouragement from man save the “tickling of her face with a stick,” refused to give of her bounty, and the people who depended on her for life suffered accordingly. ”

“ The World of Rural Workers. Figures are dull or they would be marshaled here to show that the producers of the world’s food live in a world to themselves. There are many divisions in this world, and many cross-sections of the life of the people. That the rural church is not succeeding is evident. Its sons and daughters of the past generation are the leaders in the world of finance, art, commerce, and letters ”

“ In the preceding chapter we discussed those forces at work in rural life which tend to drive people from the farm to the city. It was shown that, on the whole, up to the present at least, farm life has not been as pleasant as it should or could be made. Some aspects of it are uncomfortable, if not painful. Hard manual labor, long hours of toil, and partial isolation from one's fellows usually and generally characterize it. Of course, there are many who by nature or habit, or who by their ingenuity and thrift, have made it serve them, and who therefore have come to love the life of the country ”

“ If there were such a person as a youth of the working-class who considered bodily health the greatest of all blessings, so that it should be the main object in life, he would choose to be a rural labourer. ”

“ The question that may be raised on such a subject is not, Have our rural labourers been left stationary while the classes above them have all been elevated in their social condition? but rather, Are they worse off, and do they enjoy fewer advantages, than those in the same class of life—the industrious poor who inhabit our large cities and manufacturing towns and villages? ”

“ The rural home need no longer be a place where there is nothing but ten hours’ work and six hours’ chores. The farmer of to-day, with his daily paper, his market reports, his books and magazines, his furnace-heated and electric-lighted house, his automobile ready at hand, is better off, more independent, and should be more happy and contented than those who dwell in the murky city. ”

“ Then the true desirability of rural life will become manifest.
By co-operative working of the land, and the village plan of living, the work can be reduced to the minimum for both the men and the women, and the greatest enjoyment be attainable. ”

“ Economic activities in the main are associated with the farm home. The common occupation in the country is agriculture. Individuals are born into country homes, learn the common occupation, and of necessity in most cases make it their means of livelihood. Rural people are accustomed to hard labor for long hours. There are seasons when comparative inactivity renders life dull; there are individuals who enjoy pensions or the income of inherited or accumulated funds, and so are not compelled to resort to manual labor, and there are directors of agricultural industry ”

“ But this consideration does not lessen the need for a sternly practical treatment of the rural social economy under review. In this chapter, I propose to go right down to the roots of the rural problem, find what is wrong with the industry by which the country people live, and see how it can be righted. ”

“ Such themes might not only be expounded with profit to those who work their fellowmen, but should also be impressed betimes upon those who work the soil for the good of their fellowmen.
The Paramount Problem. The paramount problem, therefore, is to make the conditions of rural life desirable—to convert farming into an enjoyable vocation; to make farm life and its labors a business to be envied and not despised. The fact is, planning for beauty and comfort in the city has progressed far and away beyond the country. ”

“ The rural community is industrially homogeneous. There exists here no such a diversified mixture of industries as in the city. All are engaged in the same line of work. Agriculture is the sole occupation. ”

“ The laborers employed on the farm are received into the farmer's family under conditions of social equality. The man who is this year a laborer may in a decade be a farmer. The dignifying of personality with land ownership has been such a general social experience in the country that every individual is thought of in the farmer period as a potential landowner.
The institutions of the rural community of the land-farmer type are the country store, the rural school, and the church. ”

“ It is possible you have no capacity for farm life, and, since you cannot buy a capacity, better go directly to town and there fit yourself into your environment. I have known men to toil many years on a farm, and near the close of life to be driven to town by the sheriff. There they made not only a living, but secured a modest competence in conducting some little one-horse business, the profits or losses of which could be counted up every night. ”

“ However, farmers and ranchers do not live or work in isolation; the labor of many people, both rural and urban Americans, helps provide the agricultural products so vital to our health, our prosperity, and our quality of life. What connects farms and ranches with urban stores and consumers is a network of farmers, ranchers, agribusiness industries, scientists, inspectors, shippers, retail distributors, and others who work together to grow, process, and share the bounty of our great land. ”

“ It need not surprise us that, under such circumstances, a race of men habituated to the incessant labour of a rude and unskilled agriculture, and habitually fond of social enjoyments, congregated together in rural communities, occupying portions of the wholly unappropriated soil, sufficient to provide each family with material comforts, far beyond their ancient means, or almost their conceptions ”

“ The landlord, wise in his generation, provided newspapers liberally as well as beer, and had his reward. The people who gathered there of an evening included two or three farmers, a couple of professional gentlemen—not the vicar; a man of property, the postman, the carrier, the butcher, the baker and other tradesmen, the farm and other labourers, and last, but not least, the village sweep. A curious democratic assembly to be met with in a rural village in a purely agricultural district, extremely conservative in politics. ”

“ We must go out into the rural districts for there it is that the people are a hungry and thirsty crowd, and there it is that the harvest is great, but the laborers are few, and there it is the work of the world must be done. ”

“ Our manufacturing towns are not at all what they ought to be; not sufficiently pure, wholesome, or well-regulated. But the rural labourers regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. ”

“ A class of laborers was arising who depended entirely on the wages of industry for their subsistence. The cloth workers in rural areas were isolated and weak and often at the mercy of middle-men for employment and the amount of their wages. When rural laborers went to towns to seek employment in the new industries, they would work at first for any rate. ”

“ The phenomena of rural labour are becoming more remarkable every year. The faster the use of machinery spreads, the more deficient does labour become. We hear suggestions of letting soldiers be employed in harvest-labour, and the few able-bodied inmates of workhouses. ”

“ The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country, has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. ”

“ Moreover, in a country where advanced farming is the rule, there is a remarkable, and, from the standpoint of national stability, most valuable, steadiness in employment. Good farming, by fixing the labourer on the soil, improves the general condition of rural life, by ridding the countryside of the worst of its present pests. ”

“ It seemed to me sufficient to hold one-half of the able-bodied men in the county! And it would do it too, and do it well! Such a system must come to an end, and the end must be dreadful. As I came on the road, for the first three or four miles, I saw great numbers of labourers either digging potatoes for their Sunday’s dinner, or coming home with them, or going out to dig them. The land-owners, or occupiers, let small pieces of land to the labourers, and these they cultivate with the spade for their own use. ”

“ We may rather be entitled to infer that there has been a considerable change in rural economy. For the cultivation of his demesne land the lord begins to rely less and less on the labour of serfs whom he feeds, more and more upon the labour of tenants who have plots of their own and who feed themselves. ”

“ For we cannot properly judge the significance and the relation of the different industrial activities of our farmers, and especially the value of the various social agencies for rural betterment, except by the standard of class status. It is here that we seem to find the only satisfactory philosophy of rural progress. ”

“ Differentiation of Occupation.—If community life is to continue there must be the producers who farm or mine or manufacture; in rural districts they are farmers, hired laborers, woodcutters, threshers, and herdsmen. ”

“ With this remarkable explanation I am glad to think that I have nothing to do here. The point is that, according to a business man with lifelong experience in rural matters, country labourers now have time at their disposal. ”

“ But the wages soon attracted immigrants from the more or less distant countryside, where at certain seasons of the year there is little work to be done on the land. It became the custom for an increasingly large number of rural districts to send their men into the towns, where they worked for a few months. ”

“ Meanwhile though governments with expensive commissions, and individuals with knowledge more or less imperfect, seem to have exhausted the subject, the condition of the rural labourer, especially in parts of the south and west of England, is yet an unsolved problem. ”

“ There are many difficulties, which seem almost insoluble, if we propose to ourselves to integrate the rural laborer into the general economic life of the country by making him a partner in the industry he works on. But what I hope for most is first that the natural evolution of the rural community, and the concentration of individual manufacture, purchase and sale, into communal enterprises, will lead to a very large co-operative ownership of expensive machinery, which will necessitate the communal employment of labor. ”

“ But this does not solve the problem. The flux to the town or city still goes on, and will continue to do so until the natural desire for social and intellectual opportunities and for recreation and amusement is adequately met in rural life.
Farming as an industry has already felt the effects of a new interest in rural life. Probably no other industrial occupation has undergone such rapid changes within the last generation as has agriculture. ”

“ Unfortunately, too, the women on the farm have often been the chief sufferers from close confinement to the drudgery of housework, with little opportunity for recreation and less chance than the men have to enjoy the companionship of other people.
The very nature of farming entails hard work and long hours, especially at certain seasons. Under existing conditions it is hard to see how the farmer's working day could be limited to eight hours as in most other occupations.
The citizen farmer who lives in the same community with the miner ... must invest in land and buildings, tools and livestock. ”

“ I have diligently perused all the different reports that have been published for the last five years upon the present state of the rural economy of the country, and they all concur in stating that there is a slight improvement in the value of land; that idle people are seldom found; and that there is sufficient work in which to employ the labouring population.— (p. 291.) ”

“ In view of this apparent change in the attitude of people toward the farm problem, it may not be idle to suggest some possible errors that should be avoided when we are thinking of rural society. The student will doubtless approach his problem fortified against misconceptions—he probably has thoughtfully established his view-point. But the average person in the city is likely to call up the image of his ancestral home of a generation ago, if he were born in the country, or, if not, to draw upon his observations made on a summer vacation or on casual business trips into the interior. ”

“ But the rural population were in a very different case; those who worked on the land were indeed poor, fared coarsely, dressed meanly and wore no shoes, but they were sober and industrious and lived in decent homes, and their wives and children were properly fed and clothed ”