FARM MACHINERY 77 



ordinarily, neither machinery nor the capacity for using it, he 

 is practically shut out from all chance of participating in its bene- 

 fits. His wages, of necessity, are limited by the standard of his 

 efficiency. It is inevitable, therefore, that the unskilled laborer 

 should, relatively at any rate, sink ever lower and lower in the 

 scale of industrial society. 



That we have been experiencing a transition period, not only 

 with respect to the agricultural industry x but also with respect 

 to all other industries, seems almost self-evident. I do not believe 

 that the transition period is passed, nor do I believe that it ever 

 will be safely and finally passed until the State, in the interest 

 of the general welfare and in its capacity of agent for the whole 

 social body, shall have provided for and required, as now so all 

 but universally provided for and required in the more purely 

 intellectual field, that every child shall be taught at .least the 

 rudiments of industrial art. 



Monthly Wages Sympathetic Variations in Wage Rates 



McMaster 2 cites authorities showing that, in 1794, " in the 

 states north of Pennsylvania," the wages of common laborers did 

 not exceed three dollars per month, while " in Vermont, good 

 men were hired for eighteen pounds a year, which was equal to 

 four dollars per month, and out of this found their clothes." 

 Speaking of wages, generally, in 1802, he says: 3 "The average 

 rate of wages the land over was . . . sixty-five dollars a year, 

 with food, and, perhaps, lodging." In 181 1, "throughout central 

 Pennsylvania eight dollars per month of twenty-six working days 

 was paid to farm hands when fed and clothed." 4 At Adrian, 

 Michigan, in 1 849, according to an apparently reliable authority : 



he presses upward and secures a larger share of an ever enlarging product, 

 machinery becomes an uplifting force. Henry White, " The Problem of 

 Machinery," American Federatio7iist, Vol. X, p. 86 



1 The introduction of improved agricultural implements and machinery during 

 the latter half of the nineteenth century was a development of such importance 

 as to amount to an industrial revolution in agriculture. Report of the Industrial 

 Commission (1901), Vol. X, p. xiv 



2 McMaster, " History of the People of the United States," Vol. II, p. 179. 



3 Ibid., p. 617. 4 Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 510. 



