86o AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



United States Department of Agriculture}. The first paragraph is by 

 a Georgia correspondent, the second by one in Tennessee. EDITOR. 



I think we need compulsory education for children in the country, 

 so all the children could get an education; but until the farmers of 

 the South quit planting so much cotton the children will grow up in 

 ignorance. They cannot spare them from the fields; so the good 

 woman is compelled to see her offspring grow up without schooling. 



How few know that it is common for children five and six years 

 of age to have little sacks fastened about their necks and go into the 

 cotton fields and pick cotton as long as their little strength lasts. 

 Talk about "child labor" in factories! The factory child has Sunday 

 clothes, eats candy, chews gum, and knows Santa Claus, while these 

 poor little cotton pickers often are bareheaded and barefooted. Our 

 mails are burdened in behalf of our little brown brother, red, yellow, 

 and black brother, but never a word for the pale-faced blue-eyed 

 babies brought up in the cotton fields. 



D. The Coming of the Union 

 279. FARM HANDS ON STRIKE 



FORT SMITH, May 2, 1916. Farm hands employed at Moffett, 

 Oklahoma, and vicinity, opposite Fort Smith, Ark., went on a strike 

 Monday because their employers refused to increase their wages from 

 $i to$i.25a day. The number of strikers cannot be learned, but it 

 is understood that the movement has affected many. Several farmers 

 and planters from the Moffett region who were in Fort Smith Mon- 

 day stated that their employes were not in sympathy with the strike j 

 but refused to work for fear of being dealt with violently. 



Some planters assert that the Working Class Union, which has a 

 large following among the farm laborers in many parts of Oklahoma, 

 particularly in Sequoyah County, is behind the strike. 



280. AGRICULTURAL LABORERS' TRADE UNIONS IN FRANCE 1 



On the eve of the outbreak of the European war, M. A. Souchon, 

 professor of law in the University of Paris, published an important 

 work entitled La Crise de la main d'ceuvre agricole en France. He 

 gives a complete summary of the condition of the question on the 

 eve of the European war, i.e., just at the moment when this question 



1 Adapted from Monthly Bulletin of Economic and Social Intelligence, Inter 

 national Institute of Agriculture (December, 1915), pp. 17-32. 



