ment of 42 per cent of farm labor. Since the number of farmers had meantime increased, there must have been an actual decrease in the number of hired farm hands. In North Dakota a farmer who owns two quarter-sections of land generally takes care of the farm himself, with his family, until spring, and employs very little help during his busy season. As a rule, agricultural laborers are in demand only during the harvesting season.

In consequence of limited demand, "agricultural labor is ... the least paid of all the great groups of occupations, even allowing for the laborer's garden and other privileges."3 Aside from the consensus of expert opinion, this fact is established by statistical evidence for Kansas and California. The former is predominantly agricultural, the latter industrial, but the XIII. Census shows an increase of 71.2 per cent in the value of implements and machinery since 1900, an increase of 89.2 per cent in the value of live stock, and an increase of 34.5 per cent in the rural population of California. Judged by the increase in the value of buildings and machinery since 1900 both States are representative of the average for the United States.4 Their wage statistics may therefore be accepted as typical (see Tables 14 and 15).

The hours of labor on the farms are longer than even in the steel mills of Pennsylvania. In the Northwest and in the South the general custom is to work from sunrise until sunset; in Maryland the hours of labor in the dairying business are generally from 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning to 7 or 8 o'clock at night, and about the same in other agricultural pursuits. It is true that the hours are so long

5

'Quaintance, loc. cit., pp. 32-33.

2

Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x., p. 846. More than one half of the farms of North Dakota at the XII. Census were of a smaller size.—XII. Census, Agriculture, Part I., Table 4, pp. 30 et seq.

3 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x., pp. xx. See also Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72 (September, 1907), p. 406.

4 XIII. Census, vol. i, Population, p. 62, Table 39; vol. v., Agriculture, p. 79, Table 29.

5

Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x., pp. xx., cxix., cxx., cxxi. The witness from Maryland testified that he "once heard a public

TABLE 14.

AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS OF FARM LABORERS IN KANSAS, COMPARED WITH EARNINGS IN SIMILAR NON-AGRICULTURAL OCCUPATIONS IN

DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE Male laborerS, EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE
AND OTHER PURSUITS IN CALIFORNIA, BY RATES OF WAGES
PER WEEK (WITHOUT BOARD), 1906.3

speaker say that the farmers settled the eight-hour question by having eight hours before dinner and eight after."

1XVI. Annual Report of the Kansas Bureau of Labor, pp. 128-13l, 153, *Including the cost of board for ten months estimated at $90, given in Table 2, p. 122.

Compiled from XII. Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California (1903-1906), pp. 76-77, 80-161, 165.

only in harvest and threshing time. After the rush is over the working day averages about ten hours. But at that time very few laborers are retained on the farms.

Long hours, small pay, and irregular employment are what the immigrant can expect on a farm. His preference fog other employment seems to call for no explanation by special racial characteristics; it is merely another illustration of the rule that immigration follows the demand for labor. "In the settlement of agricultural districts a point is reached beyond which any considerable growth of agricultural population is possible only if there is a change to more intensive forms of agriculture. . . . If there is no such change, the further growth of population must consist in the development of urban or non-agricultural communities."'*

This point has been reached in the United States. The public domain has practically all passed into private occupation. Land values during the last decade have climbed to unheard-of heights. At the same time Western Canada offers to settlers vast areas of public land practically free.

'XII. Census, Supplementary Analysis, p. 303.

The highest average value per acre in 1900 was found for Illinois, viz., $46. At the XIII. Census the following States exceeded that maximum:

The lowest average value in 1900 was in Wyoming, viz., $2.88; in 1910 the average value in that State reached $10.00 per acre. The lowest average in 1910 was $8.77, computed for New Mexico. The average value per acre for the United States doubled from 1900 to 1910, but the maximum increase was as high as 475 per cent, viz., from $6.00 to $34.00 in Arizona. XIII. Census, vol. v., Agriculture, p. 80, Table

It seems that for some time to come the Canadian Northwest will furnish the same opportunities for extensive agriculture as the Western States did a generation ago. Western farmers find it profitable to dispose of their land in the United States and to take up public land in Western Canada. The emigration of American farmers to Canada has reached considerable proportions. In the United States a market for agricultural labor may grow up in the future with the eventual spread of intensive agriculture. But this is a problem for the American farmer to solve. The immigrant should not be burdened with the mission to reform the methods of American agriculture.

'The average value of land and buildings per farm in Iowa increased from the XII. to the XIII. Census by more than $8000. Practically all of this represented increased land value. "Canadian officials estimate that in the fiscal year 1909 the United States emigrants brought to Canada, in stock, cash, and effects, upwards of $60,000,000." (Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 2, p. 616.) This is equivalent to an average of $1000 per individual immigrant, or to $4000 per family.

In 1910 the number of emigrants from the United States to Canada reached 103,984.—Ibid.

CHAPTER VI

A

UNEMPLOYMENT

A. The Causes of Unemployment

S far back as 1901 Prof. John R. Commons, in his report on immigration prepared for the Industrial Commission, reached the conclusion that immigrants come to this country "in obedience to the opportunities for employment." Still the force of statistics must apparently yield to the living proof, furnished by the ever-present "army of the unemployed," that there are already more men than jobs in the United States. There seems to be no escape from the conclusion that every new immigrant, in order to live, must take away the job from some one else who has been here before. A study of the sources of unemployment shows the fallacy of the premises upon which the popular argument is based.

2

Unemployment in its present form is a problem peculiar to our industrial system, but alternations of work and involuntary idleness were incidents of the life on the old New England farm as well. The disappearance of slavery in New England was in no small degree due to the long winters during which the time of the negro slave could not be fully

* Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 309.

"The popular conception is of industry as rigidly limited—a sphere of cast iron in which men struggle for living room; in which the greater the room taken by any one man the less must there be for others; in which the greater the number of men the worst must be the case of all."—W. H. Beveridge: Unemployment, a Problem of Industry, p. 11.