NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE 29 



by New York could be readily produced within a radius of 60 to 

 70 miles without serious disturbance to any existing industry, as 

 against the existing radius exceeding 300 miles. 



In other words, there is enough land here within sixty or seventy 

 miles of New York City to supply all the milk that New York 

 needs, and at a vast saving in freight, if it was properly cultivated 

 and tilled. Why isn't it? It is because of these forces that I have 

 just referred to not all of them, but a part of them. 



I live within five miles of the city of Hartford, a city with prac- 

 tically 100,000 population. There are good roads right into the 

 city. It is five miles to the center; not to the outskirts. Within 

 three years, more than a hundred cows have gone out of business, 

 as you start and drive from my house to that wonderful market 

 of Hartford going right toward it. The buildings are there, 

 the land is there, the equipment is there; everything except the 

 cows. The sun shines there just as it used to. The rain falls and 

 moistens the land, and the grass grows as luxuriantly as ever. But 

 still, as Hartford grows and the demand for milk grows, just be- 

 cause of these conditions that I have mentioned, those owners have 

 been forced out of the milk business because they did not get 

 enough for their milk. And that is the effect these conditions are 

 having right around me and around every other large community. 



The labor problem, on dairy farms in particular, is exceedingly 

 unsatisfactory. Explanations of this are too emphatic in ascribing 

 the causes thereof to the gregarious instinct of man, which is urged 

 with greatest frequency as the most prominent cause. The princi- 

 pal difficulty rests upon the fact that farm labor, when compared 

 with the units of energy and skill required with that in most all 

 other industries is the lowest paid class of labor. Any doubt re- 

 garding this statement may be removed by consulting the eigh- 

 teenth report of the U. S. Commissions of Labor published in 1Q03. 

 The disparity then existing has become intensified since then. The 

 significance of the great changes wrought in the disposition of 

 labor during the past forty years is overlooked. By the intense ap- 

 plication of the law of division of labor which has in its application 

 made such rapid progress during the period just mentioned, the 

 demand for skilled labor has largely disappeared. In former times 

 a man followed his work the position is now reversed, and the 

 work is brought to the man. 



You find a good illustration of this in the trade of a locksmith, 

 or even of a watchmaker. And you haven't got to look very far 

 until you find any number of such trades that have become obsolete 

 because of the operation of this law of labor, whereby the work is 

 divided or sub-divided. A man is placed at a machine to make only 



