154 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



values accrue, persons will remain in the country or will return 

 to it ; and the labor will remain or return with the rest. As the 

 open country fills up, we probably shall develop a farm artisan 

 class, comprised of persons who will be skilled workmen in certain 

 lines of farming as other persons are skilled workmen in manu- 

 factures and the trades. These persons will have class pride. 

 We now have practically no farm artisans, but solitary and more 

 or less migratory workingmen who possess no high-class manual 

 skill. Farm labor must be able to earn as much as other labor 

 of equal grade, and it must develop as much skill as other labor, 

 if it is to hold its own. This means, of course, that the farming 

 scheme may need to be reorganized. 



Specifically, the farm must provide more continuous employ- 

 ment if it is to hold good labor. The farmer replies that he 

 does not have employment for the whole year; to which the 

 answer is that the business should be so reorganized as to make 

 it a twelve months' enterprise. The introduction of crafts and 

 local manufactures will aid to some extent, but it cannot take care 

 of the situation. In some way the farm laborer must be reached 

 educationally, either by winter schools, night schools, or other 

 means. Every farm should itself be a school to train more than 

 one laborer. The larger part of the farm labor must be country 

 born. With the reorganization of country life and its increased 

 earning power, we ought to see an increase in the size of country 

 families. 



The real country workingmen must constitute a group quite 

 by themselves. They cannot be organized on the basis on which 

 some other folk are organized. There can be no rigid short -hour 

 system on a farm. The farm laborer cannot drop his reins or 

 leave his pitchfork in the air when the whistle blows. He must 

 remain until his piece of work is completed ; this is the natural 

 responsibility of a farm laborer, and it is in meeting this re- 

 sponsibility that he is able to rise to the upper grade and to 

 develop his usefulness as a citizen. 



It is a large question whether we are to have a distinct work- 

 ing-class in the country as distinguished from the land-owning 

 farmer. The old order is one of perfect democracy, in which 

 the laboring-man is a part of the farmer's family. It is not to be 

 expected that this condition can continue in its old form, but the 



