102 agriculture; oi? Maine;. 



6 



tion to speak upon the topic, I asked them if they thought it 

 wise and best to exchange their thirteen to fifteen hours a day 

 at $1.50 for the mason's or carpenter's day in Boston at 50 

 cents per hour for eight hours, on equal terms? So long as 

 we are willing to do it, other industries are willing to accept 

 our long day and cheap pay for their shorter day and higher 

 pay. If farmers would cut their day down to other people's 

 hours, they would receive higher pay for the shorter hours than 

 they now receive for longer hours. At any rate, it is one of 

 the greatest industrial tragedies that the farmers who feed all 

 other workers and whose food cost determines the price of 

 every pound of steel and every product of the arts, should be 

 compelled to be the "hewers of wood and drawers of water/' 

 so to speak, of other industries. Equal pay for equal service, 

 and surroundings as congenial and uplifting as others have, is 

 the natural right of this most important of all industries as 

 compared with the pay and service of other industrial workers. 

 Your boys and daughters, in their Hegiras to the towns, pro- 

 claim that conditions are not satisfacto/y to them. Inadequate 

 income is one of the impelling motives. How shall we com- 

 m.and an income to support this larger life on farms that I 

 want you to have and that you should have? I cannot detail 

 but only in a very condensed and swift way generalize upon 

 phases of the methods by which I arrive at this increased in- 

 come. Our times are those of great captains of industry, of 

 enormous output whose volume of profits is made up of exces- 

 sively small margins and an enormous number of things turned 

 out. Our agriculture is still burdened by the slogan of- the era 

 when our sons went west for free farms, to the cities to organ- 

 ize new industries ; of small areas well tilled. Decrease of cap- 

 ital and of labor was followed by a decrease of tillage and by 

 a decreasing of farm operations until we used less of capital, 

 labor, plant food and other factors of modern agriculture than 

 those of any other civilized people. Our fixed charges of fam- 

 ily expenses are now double and triple those of past genera- 

 tions, and still expanding, while the fixed charges of tools and 

 teams, machinery and building, not only are great but greater 

 than heretofore, and all together absorb up close to the line 

 the gross income of the farm. We cannot live more broadly or 

 gain more revenue until our income, like that of everjr other 



