CHAPTER V. 



THE FARMER AND THE LABOR QUESTION. 



THE farmer does not sell his labor, but the products 

 thereof. He is largely an employer of labor, hoping 

 by the sale of the 'product thus obtained to make a 

 profit. The "laborer" — especially the skilled laborer — sells 

 his labor direct to capitalists, who hope to sell the resulting 

 product at a profit. With the money obtained from the capi- 

 talist from the sale of his labor, the laborer buys produce from 

 the farmer. Economically, therefore, the relation of the farmer 

 to the laborer is that of either a buyer of labor or a seller of 

 produce. It is to the farmer's interest to have labor cheap 

 and produce dear. It is to the interest of the laborer that 

 produce shall be cheap and labor dear. Nothing can change 

 these conditions so long as men are deemed entitled to the 

 products of their own labor and land, and permitted to buy 

 and sell as they may agree with each other. 



It does not follow that this economic antagonism should 

 produce enmity. All classes are in economic antagonism 

 with all other classes, and must remain so while men compete 

 with each other, and yet upon the whole they get on together, 

 because at the bottom they have an identical interest in the 

 fact that each has a surplus of what some other lacks. Their 

 mutual necessity to trade together is the bond which unites 

 all classes, and should prevent economic differences from 

 culminating in mutual hate. As between individuals brought 

 into personal contact, hostility does not ordinarily result from 

 trading. Occasionally it does, but friendship results quite as 

 often. As between classes whose members do not mingle 

 freely with those of other classes there is more danger. If 

 one class, upon the average, is prosperous, and the otlier, upon 

 the whole, unfortunate, enmity is quite certain to rei=nlt. In 

 this lies the danger to modern society, to be escaped only 



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