8l6 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



require extra laborers to operate them at the same season in order 

 to handle the crop as harvested. The towns in these agricultural 

 districts are usually small, and their surplus labor supply is employed 

 almost entirely in these allied establishments. The specialization of 

 most agricultural communities limits the demand for many laborers 

 to short seasons, and there are usually no other industries to keep 

 many extra men there after the seasonal ranch work and canning 

 and packing-house work are finished. 



C. Forces Affecting the Supply of Agricultural Labor 



260. SOME FACTORS CURTAILING THE SUPPLY OF 

 AGRICULTURAL LABOR. 1 



BY ALFRED H. PETERS 



There is a marked disaffection on the part of a growing number 

 of eastern-born men and women toward agriculture as a vocation. 

 The slow and moderate return upon capital invested in agriculture 

 is one cause of this disaffection. Whosoever follows any vocation 

 solely for the amount of money it may yield, can exercise his powers 

 to that end in many other ways better than in agriculture. The 

 Hebrew, that unerring scenter-out of gain, never is a husbandman. 

 The homage paid to wealth in the Northern United States for the 

 last quarter of a century has turned into the ways most productive 

 of gain the greater part of those young men whose career is generally 

 determined by the common ideal. 



Another cause of disaffection toward the agricultural life is its 

 isolation. The young people envy the easier intercourse of the town, 

 think their own life dull, and want to live where it is not so lonesome. 

 The day laborer hi a great town may fare better, find better schools, 

 and, dearest of all, behold a thousand times more of the passing show 

 than the small agricultural proprietor in a remote country region. 

 A man who had served at different times as valet, waiter, barber, 

 usher, and what not, was heard to say that, in case of need he would 

 do anything except work on a farm. It was living, as he would have 

 said, "out of the world," away from the novelty and fashion and 

 excitement the only world he could appreciate. 



A further cause of disaffection toward the agricultural life is the 

 growth among us of physical squeamishness and tenderness of the 



1 Adapted from the Quarterly Journal of Economics, IV (October, 1889), 27-30. 



