SOME ECONOMIC INTERESTS 153 



building trades have extended enormously. We are doing kinds 

 of work that we had not dreamed of a half-hundred years ago. 



3. In some places the labor difficulty is due to the working-men 

 being drawn off to other places, through the perfecting of in- 

 dustrial organization. The organization of labor means com- 

 panionship and social attraction. Labor was formerly solitary; 

 it is now becoming gregarious. 



4. In general, men and women go where things are "doing." 

 Things have not been doing on the farms. There has been a 

 gradual passing out from backward or stationary occupations 

 into the moving occupations. Labor has felt this movement 

 along with the rest. It has been natural and inevitable that 

 farms should have lost their labor. Cities and great indus- 

 trialism could not develop without them ; and they have made the 

 stronger bid. 



5. In farming regions, the outward movement of labor has 

 been specially facilitated by lack of organization there, by the 

 introduction of farm machinery, by the moving up of tenants 

 into the class of renters and owners, by lack of continuous em- 

 ployment, by relatively low pay, by absence of congenial asso- 

 ciation as compared with the town. Much of the hired farm 

 labor is the sons of farmers and of others, who "work out" only 

 until they can purchase a farm. Some of it is derived from the 

 class of owners who drift downward to tenants, to laboring men, 

 and sometimes to shifters. We are now securing more or less 

 foreign-born labor on the farms. Much of this is merely 

 seasonal ; and when it is not seasonal, the immigrant desires to 

 become a farm owner himself. If the labor is seasonal, the man 

 may return to his native home or to the city, and in either case 

 he is likely to be lost to the open country. 



There is really no "solution" for the labor difficulty. The 

 problem is inherent in the economic and social situation. It 

 may be relieved here and there by the introduction of immigrants 

 or by transportation of laborers at certain times from the city; 

 but the only real relief lies in the general working out of the 

 whole economic situation. The situation will gradually correct 

 itself; but the readjustment will come much moiv quickly if we 

 understand the conditions. 



As new interest arises in the open country and as additional 



