Even where the total rural population of a State has increased since 1900, the maps given in the census bulletins show a few agricultural counties with a declining population. This depopulation of rural territory is due to emigration of native Americans of native stock. The figures for 1910 are as yet not available; the census of 1900 recorded in Kansas a loss of 2.8 per cent of the native population of native parentage in settlements of less than 2500 inhabitants, and in Nebraska a loss of 1.3 per cent of the same element. In New England, New York, and New Jersey the loss was still greater; the maximum was reached in Connecticut, viz., 16.7 per cent.1 The popular way to account for a social phenomenon is to seek an explanation in the personal tastes and dislikes of individuals or racial groups. "Much has been said of a mad rush to cities," said Prof. Charles H. Cooley before the Michigan Political Science Association, in July, 1902, "and the movement has often been spoken of as if it were altogether a kind of dissipation, like going to the saloon. But if there were no solider ground for the migration than this we should find the migrants plunged into pauperism and vice after they get to the cities, instead of pursuing useful remunerative labor as is ordinarily the case. The real causes of the decrease of rural population are chiefly economic. These causes affect the native and the foreign 1 Supplementary Analysis, XII. Census, pp. 620-627, Tables 10 and II. IV. Relative per-capita production of coal, agricultural staples and live stock. PERIODS PRODUCT 40 30 20 10 100 90 80 70 60 40 30 20 10 10 20 current to the cities alike. Since the early days of Irish and German immigration the growing industries of the cities have offered a better market for labor than agriculture. A comparative view of the demand for labor in agriculture and in industry since 1870 is furnished in Diagram IV, where the per capita production of the principal agricultural staples and live stock is compared with the per capita production of coal, the latter being chosen as the measure of industrial expansion.' Whereas the production of coal has quadrupled, the increase of the output of cotton is only about 90 per cent, the increase of other farm products less than 50 per cent, and stock breeding has not kept pace with the increase of population. It is patent that the demand for farm hands must have lagged far behind the demand for labor in manufacturing, mining and transportation. The relative number of persons engaged in agriculture fell from 21.79 per cent of the total population in 1840 to 15.43 per cent in 1870. This decrease was not confined to any one State or section, but was universal, with the exception of Florida. 'In New York and all New England States there was during the same period an absolute decrease of the agricultural population from 869,000 to 697,000, i. e., 20 per cent. The revolution wrought in American farming by the industrial development of the past seventy years has tended to reduce the demand for labor on the farm. The American farm of the first half of the nineteenth century was the seat of a highly diversified business, comprising not only the raising of food and of material for clothing, The figures for Diagram IV are taken from an article by Prof. Homer C. Price on "The Reorganization of American Farming" in Popular Science Monthly, May, 1910, p. 464; the Census Report on Mines and Quarries, 1902, p. 669, Table 6; and Statistical Abstract, 1911, Table No. 335. The figures for agricultural products are averages for each decade beginning 1866-1875 and for the quadrennial period 19051908. Coal production per capita is for each census year since 1870, 2 Bulletin of the Department of Labor, No. 11, pp. 400, 402. but also the preparation and manufacture of these products. Wakefield, in 1833, gave the following description of the American farmer: Free Americans, who cultivate the soil, follow many other occupations. Some portion of the furniture and tools which they use is commonly made by themselves. They frequently build their own houses, and carry to market, at whatever distance, the produce of their own industry. They are spinners and weavers, they make soap and candles, as well as, in many cases, shoes and clothes for their own use. 2 With such a variety of occupations there was work for a hired man at all seasons of the year. But the development of manufactures has differentiated from the farming business one industry after another and removed them from the farm. The time during which a hired man can be kept employed on the farm has been reduced in consequence to a few months in the year. Still until the middle of the nineteenth century the mills were quite commonly run by water power, the supply of which determined their location. The small country towns were alive with little industries, which offered to the farm laborer a prospect of employment during the winter when work was scarce on the farm. But the general substitution of steam for water power and the consequent concentration of industry removed the factories from the small towns to 'L. H. Bailey: The State and the Farmer, pp. 6, 7. 2 E. G. Wakefield: England and America, vol. i., pp. 21, 22. "At the present time, throughout probably the greater part of the country... butter-making is ordinarily done away from the farm,” but in 1870, "butter was made . . . on the farms and as part of farm work. The development of the agricultural implement industry is another instance. The manufacture of the implements and machines from being a feature of farm work has become a distinct branch of manufactures, employing, according to the returns of the XII census, during the census year reported on, an 'average number of 46,582 persons besides 10,046 salaried officials, clerks, etc."-M. W. Quaintance, loc. cit., pp. 44-45, 74. • Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x., pp. cl. and 889. Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, vol. ix., p. 48. the great manufacturing cities. The opportunity to earn a full year's wages in a rural community was gone, and the farm laborer followed the factory to the city.1 Along with the progress of division of labor between farm and factory, the invention of labor-saving machinery tended to displace the wage-earner from agriculture. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the agricultural methods of the American farmer were as primitive as those of the Russian peasant of the present. The first patent for a cast-iron plow was granted as early as 1797, but it took many years before it had overcome the prejudice of the farmers who believed that the use of cast-iron "poisoned the land." About About 1850, cast-iron plows had come into general use, but grass was still mowed with the scythe, grain was cut with the sickle and threshed with the flail. Flailing and winnowing grain was the chief farm work of the winter. As late as the year 1870, the editor of the New American Farm Book questioned the advisability of using the large threshing machines and advised for the "moderate farmer" the use of a hand thresher as the more economical, permitting the work to be done "in winter, when there is more leisure to do it." Corn was planted by hand, cultivated with the hoe, and shelled by scraping the ears against the handle of a frying pan or the blade of a shovel. The cultivation of a farm in this crude way required a great deal of labor and sustained a steady demand for farm help in all seasons. To-day "there is hardly a phase of farm work that has not been essentially changed by the introduction of some new implement or machine." For planting corn the farmer now uses a check-row planter drawn by horses and depositing the seed at regular intervals so that the rows may be cultivated with equal facility either in the direction of the planting or across. As a means of cultivating the corn . . . the farmer quite commonly uses a riding plow. Steam power corn-huskers and corn-shellers are found. Instead of the old hand-method of shelling corn. . . by which . . 1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x., p. cxlix. |