PUBLIC POLICY AND FARMERS' ORGANIZATIONS. 29 



3By such care and attention you prepare the Avay for labor to possess education 

 And own capital, and in its turn become the employer and educator of other 

 labor. 



I have referred to surplus labor. So much of this class crowd our villages, 

 rtowns and cities that the farmer does not so fully feel its pressing demands. 

 Where does it come from? Well, my friends, owing to the boundless freedom 

 which our National constitution offers to the people of the world much of it 

 comes from foreign shores. In 1885 there came to this country 326,411 

 foreign-born people. This number was 76,819 less than the number of those 

 -who came in 1884. Of this 326,411 foreign-born people who came in 1885, 

 104,904 came from England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland; 106,910 came from 

 Germany; 114,597 came from various other countries, among them 15,689 from 

 Italy. Some of these were undoubtedly mechanics at home, but already the 

 workshops and manufacturing industries here are overcrowded, and all become 

 ^seekers after any kind of labor. A portion may have brought funds sufficient 

 to settle on the new farm lands of our western country. The question is, what 

 shall be done for those who want work? Already labor organizations through- 

 •out our land are agitating the reduction of the hours of labor in many indus- 

 tries to eight hours per day, thus hoping to create a demand for the unemployed, 

 -as well as secure greater opportunities for mental and physical improvement of 

 those already employed. What can the farmer do to assist in reducing the 

 •quantity of surplus labor? Have we not answered the question already? Use 

 the capital produced by labor to aid labor in becoming the possessor of capital. 

 "This does not express a socialistic idea of dividing property with others who 

 ►have not earned a right to it, but it simply means what we have said before, 

 'that labor employed at fair remuneration adds to accumulations already started 

 .^nd helps to its own accumulation. 



PUBLIC POLICY AND FARMERS' ORGANIZATIONS. 



BY ROBT. ALWAED. 



[Read at Hudsonrille Institute, February 3, 1886.] 



I shall not follow the beaten path usually taken on this subject, but will ask 

 ;you to consider with me from a standpoint above and beyond partisan politics. 

 Whether the existence and rapid spread of private corporations which invade pri- 

 Tate enterprises is not a standing menace to the progress of our country, and the 

 •existence of the liberties of the people; if on the one hand I condemn organi- 

 ..zation, and on the other hand advise the farmers to organize, my excuse is, we 

 must meet the invaders with an armed force, and if private corporations are 

 invading our interests and diminishing our profits then it becomes our duty to 

 -organize in self-defence. There is, perhaps, no higher or more important duty 

 •devolving upon an American citizen than that duty which requies him to study 

 -closely every danger than menaces civil liberty in this government, and tends 

 »to usurp the rights of private individuals. 



If we turn to the history of the old world, and nearly every page of it is writ- 

 ten in blood, we find that nearly every instance of internal dissentiou and revo- 



