106 AGRICULTURAL LABOR 



allowing for the laborer's garden and other privileges." Hourwich 

 thinks a market for agricultural labor may grow up in the future 

 with the eventual spread of intensive agriculture. But now even 

 many American farmers are migrating to Western Canada. In 

 1910 there were 103,984 emigrants from the United States to 

 Canada. Since the American farmer cannot keep his own sons on 

 the farm, there is certainly not demand enough there to attract 

 laborers from the city, except during the high demand and high 

 wages of harvest seasons. 



Transportation and Distribution Problem. One of the most 

 sensible remedial measures for dealing with the labor supply 

 problem has been proposed by W. R. Porter, Superintendent of 

 the Demonstration Farms of the North Dakota Agricultural 

 College. In his opinion the United States should find the same 

 solution that Canada has found in securing transient labor for 

 her great western harvests. The laborers live in eastern Canada 

 more than a thousand miles from the grain fields. The Canadian 

 laws strictly forbid the "stealing of rides" on trains, the custom 

 so universal in the United States. The Canadian railroads run 

 "excursion trains" from the East to Winnipeg and the West, 

 charging ten dollars to go and twenty-eight dollars to return at 

 the end of the summer. This practice, now twenty years old, 

 has resulted in the farmers of western Canada securing an abundant 

 supply of labor of the best quality. Many thousands of these 

 industrious young men, who went west to see the country, re- 

 mained as permanent settlers. In the United States this class of 

 young men will not pay the regular first class fare to go to the 

 western fields, neither will they "beat their way" on the railroad 

 trains. Consequently they do not go at all. A solution of this 

 transportation problem, in conjunction with the subsequent dis- 

 tribution of the worker, would go a long way towards solving the 

 farmer's labor problem. For factory work, like farm work, is in 

 many cases seasonal. 



Drift to the City. It has long been recognized that persons of 

 ability and capacity for leadership, born on farms, usually move 

 to the city. Thus during the hearings before the Industrial 

 Commission in 1899, the question was asked of Le Grand Powers : 



"Is it not true that the bankers, lawyers, doctors, the leading 

 men in all pursuits, in every city in the United States, were origin- 

 ally farmers?" 



Mr. Powers answered, "Yes, very largely so." It is now a 

 matter of common observation that if we call the roll of the mer- 



