FARM MACHINERY 8 1 



The accompanying table discloses a very strong tendency in 

 the wage rates of the different parts of the country, especially in 

 the region where white laborers are employed, to rise or fall 

 together. The reason for this sympathetic fluctuation in rates 

 lies, partly, in the somewhat characteristic dispositions of Ameri- 

 cans to go wherever there is a prospect of more profitable em- 

 ployment, 1 and partly in the ready means of communication and 

 transportation. 2 That the fluctuations are most marked in the 

 Pacific and Mountain States is largely due to the less perfect 

 means of communication and transportation and to the further 

 fact that farming operations in those regions are rather closely 

 confined to the production of a very few different crops, upon 

 the productiveness of which depends practically the whole of the 

 demand for labor. 3 



Lebensmittel meistens billiger zu kaufen. Der Arbeitslohn ist also nicht nur im 

 allgemeinen absolut, sondern auch im Verhaltnis zu dem Preise der notwendigen 

 Lebensmittel gestiegen. Inwieweit allerdings die landwirtschaftlichen Maschinen 

 zur Yerbilligung der Lebensmittel beigetragen haben, lasst sich zahlenmassig 

 nicht bestimmen. Wir konnen uns sehr wohl denken, dass die Intensitat des 

 Betriebes, die Anwendung der Maschinen, die Produktion so gesteigert haben, 

 dass sie eine Verbilligung der Lebensmittel zur Folge hatten. . . . Wir denken 

 dabei besonders an das klassische Land der Maschinenanwendung, an Amerika, 

 welches noch vor wenigen Jahren der deutschen Getreideproduktion am gefahr- 

 lichsten war. Wie hoch sind dort die Arbeitslohne und wie billig ist das 

 Getreide ! Bensing, " Einfluss der landwirtschaftlichen Maschinen," p. 73 



1 The United States perhaps affords the highest example of a body of labor 

 prepared and equipped to seek its best market wherever that market may be. 

 Walker, "Wages," p. 1S0 



L'Americain de pur sang a cela de commun avec le Tartare, qu'il est campe 

 etnon fixe sur le sol que ses pieds foulent. M. Chevalier, " Lettres sur l'Ame- 

 rique du nord," Vol. I, p. 196 



2 The mobility of capital and labor depend upon two factors, (1) means of 

 transport, (2) knowledge of markets. Both of these elements have been influenced 

 by machinery. Nicholson, " Effects of Machinery on Wages," p. 104 



3 The greatest irregularity of employment in the North, particularly in the 

 Northwest, is found where the farmers are engaged in raising one or two staple 

 crops to the neglect or exclusion of any wide system of diversified industry. . . . 

 There was of that irregularity far more in the early days of the West than there 

 is to-day, because the great central states of the North, where over half of our 

 products are raised, are tending naturally and inevitably, though slowly, toward 

 a diversity of crops that keep the men engaged on the farms for a greater rela- 

 tive proportion of the year ; and thus irregularity of employment, owing to this 

 change, is decreasing. L. G. Powers, "Report of the Industrial Commission," 

 1901, Vol. X, p. 172 



