266 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [vol. ix 



Decline of Agricultural Employment Due to Machinery. 



The agricultural methods of to-day are very widely different from 

 those of 1 86 1, especially in the matter of the use of labour-saving machin- 

 ery, which has revolutionized agriculture. How great the change has 

 been may be shown from statistics of the United States Department of 

 Labour, published some years ago. Here we find that the nine principal 

 crops of the United States required 120,000,000 days of human labour 

 in 1895, with the methods then in use, while they would have required 

 570,000,000 days of human labour with the methods of 1850. In other 

 words, 400,000 agricultural labourers, working 300 days a year, could 

 do in 1895 work which it would have taken 1,900,000 labourers working 

 300 days a year, to perform in 1850. It is entirely probable, to say the 

 least, that the 4,000 people in Chinguacousy to-day can cultivate the soil 

 of that township quite as efficiently and thoroughly as the 7,000 could 

 in 1 86 1. Under the new conditions thirty persons to the square mile 

 are able to perform the work which once required fifty, and still demands 

 forty in the French-speaking districts, where agricultural methods are 

 backward and unprogressive. 



Labour has thus been displaced in agriculture, just as in the manu- 

 facturing industries, by the introduction of labour-saving machinery. 

 The displaced farm-labourers of the past generation have very wisely 

 migrated to "fresh fields and pastures new" instead of remaining at 

 home and attempting to secure employment by the hopeless method of 

 underbidding the machine. They and their descendants are now, as 

 a result, using labour-saving agricultural implements on their own Western 

 farms, and their position in life is vastly higher than it could otherwise 

 have been. The labour-saving machine, which would have crushed them 

 by its competition had they remained at home, has helped them to raise 

 themselves altogether out of the class of manual labourers, and the total 

 agricultural product of the country is vastly greater than if they had 

 remained in the East. 



Transfer of Other Employments to the Cities. 

 Not all the labourers who have left the farms of Southern Ontario 

 have migrated to the West. Thousands have gone to the stores and 

 factories of Canadian and American cities. But what of that? In 

 1 86 1 these people who worked on the farm were yet by no means ex- 

 clusively agricultural in their occupation. The farm household of 1861 

 produced all its own food, nearly all its own clothing, was quite capable 

 of building its own house, and often did so. Thus the three primary 

 needs of mankind — food, clothes, shelter — ^were satisfied within the 

 household, and the average household had few others. Some of the 



