212 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



common mobile supply. At the same time, it is more favorably 

 situated for keeping up a steady flow of new workers born and reared 

 within the families of the old. In the past, however, agriculture has 

 been conspicuously unsuccessful in inducing the best of such workers, 

 or at least those of large ideas, to remain in its ranks. For agricul- 

 tural work has shown also a lack of specialization upward in the 

 direction of large executive opportunity or to any high degree of pro- 

 fessional expertness. Our captains of industry, though many of them 

 born on the farm, have found scope for their talents and energies only 

 irrthe city. Though the stay-at-home brother was, at least some- 

 times, as able as the brother who went to town, he has remained mute 

 and inglorious. 1 



It may well be asked whether this situation does not mean a loss 

 in total labor power in the country. The demand is held rather 

 rigidly at certain set specifications for all workers, with agriculture as 

 a single trade to be carried on by apprentice, journeyman, and master- 

 farmer. But God casts men in many molds, from those of extraordi- 

 nary constructive and executive ability through countless gradations 

 down to those who attain merely to a sort of vicarious efficacy by faith- 

 fully following a routine laid out for them. Can agriculture devise 

 ways of fitting appropriate tasks to each of these human powers, 

 utilizing the greatest but not neglecting the least ? Until we do, the 

 most valuable of all our productive resources runs to waste. To no 

 small degree this becomes the problem of proper organization of agri- 

 cultural production, and as such will be returned to in chapter vi. 



A. Population and the Labor Supply 



59. THE SUPPLY OF FARM LABOR 2 

 BY GEORGE K. HOLMES 



Industrialism and city expansion have advanced in this country 



faster than agriculture. The lure of the city and the city's illusion 



., of higher wages are robbing the farm of its laborer and of the farmers' 



' children who would otherwise be the potential farm owners of the 



future. 



1 To complete the allusion: Is he also to be congratulated on being "guiltless 

 of his country's blood" a satisfaction foregone by some of those city-migrating 

 Cromwells who have captained our industrial revolution ? 



* Adapted from "Supply and Wages of Farm Labor," Yearbook of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, 1910, pp. 189-200. 



