PROFITS IN AGRICULTURE 889 



print. A farmer who one year in a discouraging life made three 

 hundred dollars from a few pigs tells about it. One profitable apple 

 year makes the basis of a wondrous tale to which the paper refers 

 editorially when it tells for the thousandth time how much better 

 off the farmer is than anyone else. The agricultural paper gives and 

 the farmers themselves get the impression that the exception is the 

 rule and keep on living in their fool's paradise. That is a diminishing 

 number, diminishing relatively, at least, have done so, but cajolery 

 has lost much of its power. 



The farmer bumps along because he works more hours than the 

 town laborer and because his whole family work. The mill-hand 

 goes to work when the morning whistle blows. He has no preliminary 

 labor of preparation. His pay begins when his work begins. Before 

 the farmer can begin his ten-hour day of actual productive work, he 

 has to spend from one to three hours with his animals, tools, vehicles, 

 in order that he may use them in the work, and at night he works 

 one or two hours after the mill-hand is through for the day. The 

 farmer manages because the labor not only of himself, but of his 

 children and wife, is given to reach the wage return of a single worker 

 in an industrial employment. If the children of the mechanic work, 

 they get paid for it. They do not have to throw in their labor with 

 that of their father that he may receive a day's wages. People laugh 

 because rich men playing farmer spend more than their crops return. 

 Even the farmers, who should know better, laugh. Selling below 

 cost of production is the whole history of agriculture. Unpaid slaves, 

 underpaid peasants, and farmers. When the decline in the size of 

 families is advanced as one explanation of the unsatisfactory state 

 of agriculture, the nail is hit on the head. The Eastern farmer of 

 today simply cannot throw in enough gratis labor with his own to 

 make a living. 



There are, of course, exceptional farmers who make money, men 

 who raise special things for special markets, and men who, by the 

 ability to handle labor, make money from directing the work of 

 others, manufacturing wheat and corn. But every cobbler is not a 

 shoe manufacturer, and few farmers are more than agricultural 

 laborers after all. Be not deceived by big barns full of horses, big 

 sheds full of machinery. Look into the house. There may be twelve 

 horses in the barn. The house is more poorly furnished than that of 

 a factory hand. The family has fewer clothes than that of the factory 

 hand. The farmer in the West spends considerable sums in the 



