818 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



potential supply of farm labor has been diverted from the farm. The 

 movement of farm labor to town and city, and to industry and 

 transportation, is to be accounted for quite as much by the student 

 \l of psychology as by the student of economics. To the farm laborer 

 who has been in the city little if at all, there is a glamor in city life 

 which has a powerful influence upon his volition. The case is similar 

 to that of the boy who runs away from home to hunt Indians. When 

 this is joined to the greater nominal rate of wages that can be earned 

 in the city, the combination of a little reasoning with a good deal of 

 imagination is likely to rob the farmer of his hired man. 



When employments are competitive, their wage rates must be 

 competitive. Many an agricultural laborer can become the conductor 

 or motorman of a street, suburban, or interurban electric car; he can 

 find employment in numerous directions in the near-by town or city, 

 or shop or factory. If the farm does not meet the competition of 

 other employments, it must suffer the loss of some of its laborers. 

 This in fact is what has happened in this country. The farm has lost 

 laborers and has been unable to obtain laborers because it has not 

 met the wages of competitive employments. The effort of the farm 

 to meet the competition for its labor is often apparent within a rim of 

 country surrounding cities of considerable size. In the nineteenth 

 investigation of the wages of farm labor made by this Bureau, the 

 farm wage rates of counties containing cities of more than 25,000 

 population are compared with wage rates in the rest of the state. The 

 difference between the farm wages of such counties and the rest of 

 the state is sometimes small and is often higher in such counties, but 

 not everywhere so. In case of a lower wage rate in a county containing 

 a city of 25,000 persons or more than in the rest of the state, it may 

 be that the sort of labor required by the farms in such county is not 

 of as high an order as that required by farms in the rest of the state. 



262. GETTING THE IMMIGRANT ON THE LAND 



a) THE EFFORTS OF THE BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION 1 

 BY T. V. POWDERLY 



Up to the present time the laboring population of Europe has 

 been in ignorance of the resources of the United States; today the 

 principal information on which foreign workmen emigrate to the 



1 Adapted from Report of the Chief of the Division of Information, Bureau of 

 Immigration and Naturalization, Department of Commerce and Labor, 1908, p. 275, 

 and 1909, pp. 329-30. 



