a ae 
a 
enforces his demand for higher rates of labor. “The result is, at the present time, 
higher monthly pay than any other State in the Union, except California, viz: 
$38 94 per month for farm labor, without board. And*while the necessaries of life 
are also high, there is no State in which the agricultural laborer enjoys the com- 
forts of life to a greater extent, or is better fitted to act a creditable part in his 
sphere in society. 
The advantages of great variety in industry are manifold, one of the highest 
of which is the fact that all classes and capacities, young and old, male and fe- 
male, are furnished with something to do, and with a motive for doing it, and 
thus labor in some form becomes the rule, to which there are few exceptions. 
Consumers and producers are at each other’s doors, or commingled in the same 
household, and carriers and go-betweens absorb but a small portion of the profits 
of industry.. There is no glut of the markets from excess of production or the 
deficiency or great expense of transportation. There is no occasion to sell corn 
for ten cents per bushel, or eggs at six cents per dozen, or cattle, as in Texas, 
at five dollars per head. 
It is fashionable in communities with but one prominent industry to decry 
the promoters of these industrial enterprises as monopolists and heartless oppress- 
ors, Thirty-eight dollars per month for farm labor, and twenty to thirty for 
light employments of females, are sufficient answers to such ill-natured charges. 
Tidy and well-furnished houses, and evidence of refinement in humble life, are 
not the concomitants of the oppression and tyrany of capital. These same 
communities must adopt the same variety in industry which they might have 
done and should have done many years ago, or the compulsive idleness and re- 
sultant poverty of large masses of their people will continue, and become in- 
tensified and-chronic, until their whinings over the prosperity of more in- 
dustrious communities shall become an envious wail of misery. 
This path of progress has been equally open to all; laws supposed to favor a 
diversified industry have been applicable to all States alike; the best water- 
power and the cheapest coal are in States that make no extensive use of eitlier ; 
milder climates and superior facilities for cheap transportation have furnished 
advantages that have not been transmuted into net profits; and yet such com- 
munities, daily inflicting irreparable injury upon themselves, by neglecting the 
gifts of God and spurning the labor of man, are wont to deem themselves in- 
jured by the prosperity flowing from superior industry and a practical political 
economy. 
Will States that are almost deserts from a suicidal policy of growing agricul- 
tural products for exportation, and importing everything, learn wisdom from 
poverty, and grow prosperous and wealthy, with laboring classes comfortable 
and intelligent, and advancing in moral and mental culture ? 
The rate of wages in the several States differs just in proportion to the multiplica- 
tion of separate industries, modified in new States in process of settlement by 
the increased demand for consumption occasioned temporarily by incoming 
settlers who are as yet non-producers, or in the mining States and Territories 
by the employment of the majority in mining. The following is a table of aver- 
age wages per month of farm laborers employed for the year, in the different 
sections of the country : : 
--Hastern States...:....... ae sa Bees gk A Shs OE Beal Bd teh uy Bed, 9 fapk As Dis Seno. a. 
Middle States ss255-.. 35. co yee mete. Ty eae ie Ee Ap eh ga mes OF 
UETICEN SO LAlCsenmten cue roc tect asad dan an caae's Eady vgn. (20 9k 
Southern States ......... sb pia p nt tall Bi As aie A Sa yea ee et ie atate <> . » 16 00 
Sreriie it... ../. 5 cee: = CRA EA ATED are Nas Soda) SOME 
Crimpers... .  e eg ee  e Tie pele 45 71 
One cause of high rates of labor in this country is the superior intelligence 
@ and activity of the laborers. Nowhere else is so much agricultural labor done 
