Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

in markets outside his general vicinity was very small; his average trade with the outside world would not probably exceed $50 or $75 a year. He received very little money, and kept it almost no time at all; his currency was the notes of banks that he knew nothing about and smooth Mexican silver that would not circulate elsewhere. The young man got his "start" by being permitted to raise a pair of steers or a colt or two on the family farm, and by working out at odd jobs. If by the time he was twenty-five he had saved a couple of hundred dollars, or his father could help him make up that sum, he would buy a piece of timber land, cut the logs for his house, which the neighbors would help him raise, marry, and start to follow his father's footsteps. He would have a sheep or two from the farm, his wife would bring a feather bed and bedding, a cow, and such crockery as could be gotten hold of, and a new family was founded. This was the lot of the thrifty. The unthrifty married earlier, got hold of some kind of a house, worked out for a living, multiplied rapidly, and died off. But for the most part they were thrifty after a fashion and prospered. The land was new and abundant, with plenty more "out West," and the people had all the knowledge required to put it to the best economic use possible at the time. They were, therefore, in the main well nourished, sturdy, free from worry, and therefore happy. The farmer of those days was a producer and manufacturer, with the knowledge requisite for conducting his business, and a standard of comfort which his business would maintain. He was the independent man.

T

CHAPTER II.

THE NEW FARMER.

HE new farmer is primarily a business man. He is assumed to know how to make crops grow, and usually

he does. The main question is whether he knows how to produce crops which will sell for more than they have cost. If he can not in the long run do this, his inevitable destiny is to become the servant of some one who knows how to direct his labor to profitable results. Below this lies the problem as to whether the majority of men possess the business ability requisite to successful farming under modern conditions, and upon the answer to this question depends the future of our rural civilization. If it be decided in the affirmative, the race of independent small farmers will continue; if in the negative, farm labor will come to be exploited by able men conducting huge agricultural operations, just as mechanical labor is now exploited by Captains of Industry.

In this age no such life as is described in Chapter I is possible to the farmer in America, nor, with our changed habits and desires, would it be agreeable. It would involve a distinct lowering of our present standard of comfort, which, with all our complaint, is far higher than formerly, and would not result in the same content and consequent survival which the same conditions formerly induced. The impossibility of the life will be seen by any farmer who will trace out what would happen should he attempt it. Doubtless the farmer could produce more for his own consumption than he does, but, in the main, under the changed conditions of modern life, he is compelled to sell, for money, most of his products, and buy, for money, most that he consumes. The mechanical facilities of modern times have enormously reduced the cost. of production, and improved transportation has made every farmer of the civilized world the competitor of every other

farmer in the sale of products consumed at his own door, and he who can produce cheapest will survive. The farmer, therefore, must have the best machinery, and make it available over the largest possible area, and this, again, restricts the small farmer at least to the production of the specialty best adapted to his location. There is another reason for this; formerly, when his surplus product was consumed near by, he could know the capacity of his market, and the competition to be expected; now, when his surplus is often consumed many thousands of miles away, and sold at the price fixed by the competition of the world, it is very difficult for any farmer to inform himself of the probable profit of production of many articles. And yet this knowledge, while far more difficult than formerly for the farmer to obtain, is far more essential, because, while formerly the farmer was interested in the money value of but a small portion of his product, he is now interested in the money value of nearly all of it.

Still other elements now have to be considered by the farmer. The increased use of money involves borrowing and debt. With proper business knowledge, borrowing is legitimate and profitable to the borrower; nearly all business men are large borrowers; but borrowing in excess of the knowledge to use wisely involves risk, paid for by high interest, and often leads to disaster. The farmer, unaware of his ignorance, has become greatly indebted, and is now profoundly interested in a stable currency. From being a very small buyer he has become a very large one, and is vitally interested in the control of trusts and other combinations affecting the price of the necessities of life. As all that he sells and all that he buys are necessarily transported over the great routes of commerce, he has come to have a money interest in the conduct and control of transportation companies. Paying more taxes than he did, the farmer is more interested in the maintenance of a just system of taxation, and the economical conduct of all public affairs. All these and kindred subjects form part of the great science of economics, as to which it is highly necessary that the farmer be well informed, in order, in the conduct of his business, and by his vote when necessary, to intelligently protect his own

interests. From the lack of this knowledge he is continually misled by agitators, and often by the partisan press.

It appears, then, that from being a producer and manufacturer on a small scale for the home market, he has become a producer and merchant on a large scale for the markets of the world. While once little knowledge would serve him, and that mostly such as his own observation could supply, it is now essential that he be a broadly-educated man, familiar with the conditions affecting his own business in all parts of the world. Henceforward the successful farmers will be only those so educated. If the product of the small farm will not justify the expense of this information-and it will not-there remains but the alternative of the combination of farmers to secure it at the common expense for the benefit of all, or the gradual absorption of the small farms by the strongest, and the extinction of the small farmer, who will sink into the condition of dependent. This process, of course, will not be sudden, but gradual, as the world always moves, beginning with the weakest.

This conclusion is not to my liking, but I know it to be the opinion of such business men as I have heard express themselves, and I believe it to be the teaching of science and the judgment of all competent to form one.

CHAPTER III.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE FARMER.

F, as the result of some natural cause, the mean annual temperature of the United States should be reduced ten degrees within the space of a few years, it is evident that many plants which now flourish in that region would find it impossible to survive. Others would struggle on in the effort to live, and among these the hardier individuals would pull through. They would not, however, have altogether the same character that was before typical of the species, but would be more or less changed. The natural conditions would no longer suffice to produce a product identical with the former, but the organs of the plant would be made use of to produce something more or less similar. The place of those species whose entire organism was destroyed would be filled by new species calculated to thrive under the new conditions. Between those plants which died outright and those which promptly adapted themselves to the new environment, there would be some classes which would struggle hard and long, and of which some would eventually survive in a modified form, while others would give up the fight and perish.

This illustration is but a supposed application of a universal law operating through all nature, animate and inanimate. Had its bearings upon brute animal life been chosen for the example, other factors would have had to be considered, as the power of locomotion, the power to choose food, and to protect themselves in various ways, as their instinct might prompt them. The law, however, would operate. With still greater limitations, it would also operate on man.

What has been supposed as having happened in the natural world is almost exactly analogous to what has actually happened in the world of affairs. The prodigious activity of man in his conflict with nature has caused changes of conditions to

« ПредишнаНапред »