14 THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



eral Department of Agriculture. These farm incomes 

 make no allowance for interest on money invested in 

 either land, buildings or equipment, which amount to 

 an average of $10,000 to $15,000; nor an allowance 

 for disease and accidents to live stock, nor taxes upon 

 land. No one man and one woman can properly till 

 eighty acres, even by working from twelve to sixteen 

 hours per day. 



Query: Why should these men and women leave 

 the packing plants, and go to the farm to work longer 

 hours for one- fourth of the pay? Answer: They 

 will not. 



Query : Why should not the able-bodied, intelligent 

 young men and women leave the farm and go to the 

 packing plants or elsewhere where shorter hours will 

 insure 300 to 400 per cent, greater remuneration ? An- 

 swer : They are going, and, because of vicious labor 

 and marketing conditions, have been going for twenty 

 years, and will continue to go until the handicaps are 

 removed and better inducements are held out to keep 

 them on the farm. 



A preponderance of all manual laborers of this coun- 

 try are foreign born or of foreign parentage. A very 

 small and constantly decreasing percentage of the orig- 

 inal American stock is engaged in agriculture. As 

 our immigrants have neither traditions nor sentiment 

 binding them to the farm, they leave it with less re- 

 luctance than the American. For this reason, the exo- 

 dus from the farms is rapidly increasing, and will con- 

 tinue to increase so long as existing labor and market- 

 ing conditions obtain. 



Some tell us that it is the glint and glamour of the 



