PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 101 



income from his business is inadequate to enable him to main- 

 tain the same scale of living as that provided through other 

 occupations requiring equal or even less preparation, industry, 

 or investment. 



Pushed for proof, he will reason substantially as follows : All 

 studies in cost accounting show a labor income from farming 

 which in the vast majority of cases is ridiculously small, failing 

 oftener than not to require more than three figures for its ex- 

 pression and recognized by the public as a joke. We are not 

 now considering the exceptional man, or what might be done, 

 but we are to study deliberately what the great mass of farmers, 

 our hardest working people, are accomplishing or indeed can 

 accomplish in earning power through the production of staple 

 foods under conditions that have prevailed and that are likely to 

 obtain at the close of the war and afterwards. 



The farmer will confess that he has long been criticized for 

 tight-fistedness in refusing to pay "decent wages" and that he 

 has thereby lost the bulk of his best labor, even his own sons. 

 He will point out that a Federal milk commission very recently 

 after six weeks' deliberation refused to allow a price that would 

 net him thirty cents an hour for the labor involved in milk pro- 

 duction, even though the same milk was delivered by drivers 

 getting a hundred or more dollars a month with no risks and 

 no expenses. 



He will point out how severely he has been criticized in the 

 press and from the platform for failure to provide bathrooms in 

 his home and modern conveniences for his wife, whom he loves 

 as other men love their wives ; but he will also point out that the 

 policy which refused him thirty cents an hour for his own labor, 

 permits the plumber in a country town to charge eighty cents 

 (by the latest information, to be exact, eighty-one and one- 

 quarter) with fifty cents for a boy helper, who for the most part 

 does little work, and the like of whom would not be "worth his 

 salt" upon the farm. 



This farmer will be able to show also that if he should attempt 

 to pay the minimum wage of Mr. Ford or of the labor unions 

 with an eight-hour day and time and a half for overtime now 

 recognized by the Federal Government, he would either speedily 

 lose his farm or else the cost of food would run to a level un- 



