102 , RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



a'pproacneci by the present war prices. Specifically, this would 

 mean that milk would have retailed in Chicago last winter at 

 some seventeen cents a quart instead of twelve, as allowed by a 

 Federal commission, or the thirteen that would have satisfied the 

 farmers, and that present prices of meat and butter would ex- 

 pand some twenty or twenty-five per cent. 



If he reads the daily papers, as he probably does, this farmer 

 will also point out that under Federal management of the rail- 

 ways, his local station agent (not a telegrapher) has just been 

 granted a minimum wage of ninety-five dollars a month on the 

 basis of an eight-hour day, pro-rata addition for two days over- 

 time and time and a half for further excess. Any good farm 

 laborer can do this work; how, therefore, shall the farmer com- 

 pete at less than thirty cents an hour and with what arguments 

 shall he preserve the independence and initiative of his own son 

 over against a government job, protected by the civil service, 

 backed by a powerful union, and guaranteeing with no invest- 

 ment and no risk a minimum wage far in excess of what the father 

 has ever made upon the farm, with an eight-hour day and time 

 and a half for overtime, spent wholly under shelter and mostly 

 in an armchair ? 



The situation is illustrated by my own experience within a 

 fortnight wherein a farm laborer protested against his wage of 

 seventy-seven dollars per month upon the ground that his son 

 of seventeen was making one hundred and sixty-five dollars a 

 month in the railroad yards a mile away. 



There are vast wheat growing regions in this country under- 

 lain by coal deposits. Here farming and mining come together. 

 Here the farmer's income from wheat growing and the miner's 

 wage may be directly compared. When this is done, it will be 

 found that the farmer is unable with the most modern machinery 

 and methods to cultivate with his own hands land enough to 

 produce a labor income equal to that of the soft coal miner, 

 working and living in the same neighborhood, trading at the 

 same stores, attending the same churches, and sending his 

 children to the same schools. 



Here we have a class of artisans largely of alien birth and not 

 yet citizens, but protected in their earning capacity by a power- 

 ful organization whose existence and demands are now recognized 



