SOME PRESENT PROBLEMS 735 



A farmer's family arrives at the productive age when the parent is 

 between forty-five and sixty. The farm does not offer opportunity 

 for the sons because the father still desires to maintain his activity. 

 The farmer does not take the boy into his business to the same extent 

 that other business-men do. The result is that the sons must find 

 employment elsewhere, and in the nature of the case they most con- 

 veniently find employment on salary. By the time the father is 

 sixty-five to seventy years of age and feels the necessity of giving up 

 the farm, the sons are engaged in other lines of effort which it is not 

 practicable for them to leave. The result is that the farm declines 

 with the declining years of the father and on his death is sold or 

 becomes a rented farm. Occasionally a parent solves the difficulty; 

 and herein a distinct public responsibility rests on the individual 

 farmer. 



Is the farm-labor difficulty a too low wage-rate? Is farm-labor 

 inefficient merely because it is cheap? If so, how must the farm be 

 made to be able to pay a rate in competition with other labor? Has 

 the tariff contributed to the inequality? Is social poverty of the 

 country districts a cause? Is the lack of continuity or unsteadiness 

 of farm-labor responsible? Has the decrease in the size of the farmer's 

 family been responsible for part of the trouble? And if so, why has his 

 family decreased? Must the farmer of the future raise his own labor? 

 Must machinery still further come to his aid? If so, what effect will 

 this have on systems of agriculture? Will the urbanization of the 

 country tend to establish a regularity of farm-labor? Will cheap 

 railway rates from cities for laborers aid in maintaining the supply of 

 labor for those living on the land, making it possible for the laborers 

 to find work during winter in some neighboring community (it is 

 said to have helped in some parts of Europe)? Can we develop 

 a competent share-working system, in which the owner of the land 

 .still retains directive control? And if so, will social stratification 

 result? Must there come a profit-sharing system? Or must the 

 greater number of farmers themselves become employees of men of 

 great executive ability who will amalgamate and syndicate agricul- 

 tural industries as they have consolidated other industries? Is the 

 agriculture of the future to be a business of fewer and larger 

 economic units? If so, how will this affect the centres of popula- 

 tion and the social fabric? Will the lack of farm-labor force us 

 more and more into "nature farming" -the hay and pasturage 

 systems? What, in short, is the farm-labor problem? 



The country as well as the city must be made attractive and habit- 

 able. It must express and satisfy the highest human ideals, else it 

 will not attract the best men and women. In area and population, the 

 country is the larger part of the national domain : the improving of 

 the ideals of the persons that live therein is one of our greatest public 



