IX 



FARM LABOR 



THE great problem of farm life is not agricultural 

 credits nor rural banks, nor yet free markets and 

 capacious warehouses, but something that goes before 

 and ahead of all these, namely, the work on the farm. 

 It is indeed a small place that the farmer by himself 

 can till. 



In spite of the rapid strides of women towards equal 

 rights with men, there is a natural ineptitude in the 

 sex to farm work, which will practically reserve that 

 kind of labor for the male sex. It is true that in the 

 very populous regions of the Old World the women do 

 a large share of the farm work. It may likewise be 

 true, as claimed by many students of evolution, that 

 among primitive peoples the women practically did all 

 the work, while the men did the fighting and the hunt- 

 ing and the loafing. I believe this condition is true 

 yet in many of the aboriginal tribes of this country. 

 Woman, in assuming again her position in the indus- 

 trial world, will hardly care to press her claims to the 

 extent of becoming the dominant factor in farm labor. 

 While I claim to be a progressive of the most pro- 

 nounced type, and especially have been for forty years 

 an advocate for equal rights of men and women at the 

 ballot box, I still confess to a slight prejudice in favor 

 of men doing the farm work. I have not been impressed 

 with the conditions of life which I myself have seen in 



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