INTERNATIONAL CONSOLIDATION 211 



receive for their superhuman exertions the lowest pay known 

 to the world of toil. 



As long as the American farmer and members of his fam- 

 ily are compelled to toil at least twelve hours on the average 

 day ; as long as his wife is overwhelmed by the work prac- 

 tically never done ; as long as his babes have to work from the 

 time that they are strong enough to walk — and are extremely 

 happy — if they are not kept out of school during planting, 

 harvesting, corn-husking and fruit pickings; as long as the or- 

 dinary farmer hires a man only during seed time and harvest, 

 just for three or four weeks altogether, it makes no essential 

 difference in the situation if he owns or rents a farm of three 

 acres, or three hundred acres, and if he hires annually a man 

 or one hundred men. There are thousands of hard workers in 

 this terrible sweating trade of the large cities of the United 

 States, who undertake much more work than they can per- 

 form by themselves, and to get through hire a few of their 

 fellow workers, more or less systematically, paying them out 

 of their own wages. Still such undertaking resulting in the 

 hiring of help does not turn them into employers or capitalists. 

 In the mining industry of this country there are also thou- 

 sands of workers who, possessing a great experience in the 

 trade, undertake the work on a much larger scale than they 

 can perform by themselves, and in order to perform it, period- 

 ically hire a few of their fellow workers, paying them out of 

 their own wages. But this does not turn them into any labor 

 employers, in the proper meaning of the word and capitalists 

 of any description. The more so with the farmers. They hire 

 a few men periodically for very short time altogether, paying 

 them, as we have shown already, higher wages than they get 

 themselves, to say nothing of their wives and children. The 

 returns of the last census show quite conclusively that the 

 average size of the farm in the United States is decreasing 

 (Reports of Twelfth Census, Vol. V, p. XXI), while in the 

 same time the tenancy is permanently growing. Here is the 

 table showing the growth of the tenancy in this country, com- 

 piled by us from two different tables relating to the subject, 

 which we find in the same Reports: 



