867] Machinery and Labor 69 



transportation. 1 That the fluctuations are most marked in 

 the " Pacific" and " Mountain " States, is largely due to 

 the less perfect means of communication and trans- 

 portation and to the further fact that farming oper- 

 ations 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. 2 



THE INFLUENCE OF MACHINERY UPON THE LIFE AND 

 GENERAL WELFARE OF THE INDEPENDENT FARM 

 OPERATORS 



Statistical data showing the changed condition of the 

 independent farm operators, separate and apart from 

 the dependent operators, are not at hand. It will be 

 worth while, however, to note what showing can be de- 

 duced concerning the income of the independent farm 

 operators from the average income per agricultural 

 worker during the twenty-year period from 1880 to 

 1900. 



The value of agricultural products, per capita of per- 

 son ten years of age and over engaged in agriculture, as 

 reported by the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Censuses 



1 "The mobility of capital and labor depend upon two factors, (a) 

 means of transport, (b) knowledge of markets. Both of these ele- 

 ments have been influenced by machinery." Nicholson: Effects of 

 Machinery on Wages, p. 104. 



2 "The greatest irregularity of employment in the North, particu- 

 larly 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 irregu- 

 larity far more in the early days of the West than there is to-day, be- 

 cause 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 relative proportion of the year; and thus 

 irregularity of employment, owing to this change, is decreasing." 

 L. G. Powers in Rpt. of Ind. Com. (1901), Vol. X, p. 172. 



