laborers are attracted to the cities by the demand for common labor in manufacture, trade, transportation, and public improvements so actively carried on at the present time.

Hired labor in our agricultural operations is only in part distinctively agricultural. No small part of it is of a mixed character, rural in summer, industrial in winter. Though the laborer may not claim to be "jack-at-all-trades," he often has two. It is a necessity of his case, as soil cultivation is not carried on throughout the year in Northern climates. This is the reason why the farm laborer of almost exclusively agricultural districts complains of nonemployment and hard times. A third of the time in idleness is not conducive to prosperity. In the districts where from half to two-thirds of the labor is nonagricultural it is not difficult in good times for the ordinary farm laborer to find winter employment.

Thoughtful leaders in agricultural progress realize the necessity of finding more winter employment on the farm. The care of stock, cattle and lamb feeding, and dairying require winter work, but grain growing, and the production of hops, flaxseed, hemp, and many other specialties break up the continuity of farm labor, injure its efficiency, and encourage tramps and "hoboes" in a semimendicant life. Professor Roberts, of Cornell, urges the building of cottages for married laborers, and finding continuous employment by a change of crop and amount and kind of live stock kept. Farm improvements in many directions can be conducted in winter; farm betterment, for conservation and increase of fertility and more effective and economical management, is the great agricultural want of the day, and continuous and permanent service of the better class of laborers is a necessity of this work.

SUPPLY OF FARM LABOR.

In the New England States a relatively small amount of labor is required to supplement that of the resident farmer and his boys (if any remain on the farm), yet laborers are comparatively scarce, and difficulty is found in obtaining reliable and satisfactory help. In New York there is no superabundance, and a scarcity of efficient and desirable men is reported. It is nearly the same in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Throughout the West the demand for men of experience and skill is greater than the supply. In the grain districts of the Northwest, where the principal demand is crowded into a short season of harvesting, there is serious difficulty in obtaining men, and the dependence is mainly upon a floating class from the cities, tempted by large wages to go into the country, moving as harvest progresses from the more southern to extreme northern grain fields, and returning to hibernate in the winter, to find temporary and often precarious employment, or to swell the ranks of professional tramps. There is a strong demand`at`high wages for agricultural laborers in the mountain States and on the Pacific coast. A few years ago, for the first time in the history of California and Oregon, there was a surplus of labor and lack of employment. Now the activities of agriculture, mining, and public improvements, with the absence of many now in the Philippines, causes a scarcity and high prices. There is an especial demand for Americans of skill and experience in various lines of agriculture.

The South, in a large part of its area, has a surplus of farm labor, as much the larger portion of it is employed in agriculture and must ever be until manufactures are more disseminated; until, in the progress of diversification and development, the constructive arts and public improvements demand a larger share of the local labor. Thirty to 40 per cent of the population in agriculture will suffice to provide for home consumption and possible exports; 60 per cent will depress prices of products and rates of wages, and keep a large contingent of labor in a congestion which is semiidleness. This condition causes discouragement to farmer and laborer, represses ambition, and impairs efficiency. However, the progress of manufactures, of coal and iron mining, is rapid in the South, and the tendency is to rapid industrial development, which should make this a highly prosperous section of the country.

EFFICIENCY OF FARM LABOR.

An inquiry into the relative efficiency of our farm labor at the present time brings a mass of interesting expert testimony. It reveals elements of advance in certain classes of labor and in others of retrogression, the results of certain prevailing conditions. The great variety and wide dissemination of agricultural implements and machines has stimulated the intellect and trained the hands of the laborer wonderfully. Thirty years ago the reaper manufacturer was obliged to send out a trained mechanic to set up the machine and teach farmer or laborer how to run it. This was one reason why it was so expensive. Now the skilled laborer requires no such teaching.

Another powerful influence for increased efficiency (which is treated at some length in another chapter of this report) comes from the agricultural colleges, through their graduates on the farm giving object lessons of advanced practical methods on a scientific basis, becoming examples which, by superior results, compel imitation. It is not long since these institutions were decried for assumed failure to send their graduates to the farms. The statements of some of these colleges may prove a revelation to many. The oldest agricultural college-the Michigan-has trained 4,000 students, and of these three-fourths returned to the farm, the dairy, the orchard, and other fields of labor. The agricultural college at Cornell has had 2,000 students, mostly within the last 10 years, and nine-tenths of them are interested in agriculture. The college of agriculture of the Ohio State University, since 1892, has sent out 376 graduates and ex-students, and of 300 that have been traced only 46 are in other occupations. The Wisconsin College is doing a great work in its short course, taking young men from the farms for instruction during two winters, of which Professor Henry

writes:

"Last year our short-course term closed on the 1st of March, and in 3 weeks from that date we had placed 101 young men on farms in all capacities, and as far as Staten Island on the East, California on the West, and Texas on the South."

The Minnesota School of Agriculture, since the opening in the winter of 1888-89, has had 3,200 students on its rolls. Of those who have graduated, 85 per cent have returned to the farm, 10 per cent are in kinds of work closely allied to agriculture, and only 5 per cent in professions and other callings unrelated to farming. In the Illinois College of Agriculture the students "are all land men, and will go upon the land." The California and other Western institutions are doing a similar practical work, and the universal testimony is that they are exercising a powerful influence in advancing the efficiency of farm labor, as well as in promoting the cause of scientific agriculture.

On the other hand, the annual inundation of grain fields in harvest time, hop yards in the picking season, fruit picking in districts of extensive market orchards, and similar harvest seasons requiring large numbers of hands for a short time, has a demoralizing effect on farm labor, reducing its efficiency in those lines. Such employments demand little skill; the requirements of each are simple and easily satisfied. They constitute a low order of farm labor, if worthy to be classed with it at all, and are excrescences upon its fair face.

In all that pertains to skilled labor, to improved processes more or less in evidence in all parts of the country, in practical applications of scientific principles in farm practice, and in the use of new and more or less complicated farm machinery it is safe to say that the efficiency of farm labor is increasing; but in the lower grades of labor, those requiring little training or skill, which do not come in close contact with the influences that are elevating the superior labor classes there is less efficiency than in the common farm labor of 40 years ago. This is the tenor of testimony of keen observers and the natural result of the influences for degradation affecting it. The general testimony from the Eastern States indicates a lower average efficiency than 20 to 30 years ago, from the decrease in the proportion of natives whose place has been taken by foreigners of less intelligence. Only in the more responsible positions are now found those of American nativity. Similar conditions exist in the Middle States. There is no decrease of efficiency in the skilled labor of the farm, but the laborers in less important and transient services are not equal to the average reliability and value of the labor of the past generations. In Delaware and Maryland there is much complaint of the unreliability of the younger negro laborers, while the older people who remain on the farms are generally satisfactory. In western Maryland the laborers are mostly white; they are believed to be more efficient than formerly. In the tobacco and cotton districts of Virginia a low degree of efficiency is reported, and it is only a little better in the grain-growing districts, but labor is fairly efficient in the southwest and in the grazing and fruit-growing counties. There appears to be little change, for better or worse, in the Carolinas, Georgia, or in Alabama, and there is much room for improvement in all this region. Conditions are much more satisfactory in Florida, to employer and laborer, with far less repining and dissatisfaction, simply because production is more diverse and labor less restricted and monotonous. The State Commissioner of Agriculture says: "The average laborer and his employer are working harmoniously, and both are prospering.' In Tennessee there is much diversity of condition, and of opinion respecting it, from difference in point of view. The floating class near cities is not satisfactory. In many districts of the country, labor is said to be steadily, if slowly, growing in efficiency. The weight of testimony in Mississippi is that labor is less valuable and harder to manage than formerly. There is more diversity of employment in Louisiana, higher wages, and in some districts a scarcity of desirable labor,

while the colored laborer maintains in large degree his unprogressive characteristics. There is increasing demand in Texas for labor of superior intelligence; a demand greater than the supply. In these classes there is a tendency to increased efficiency, but little indication of improvement or progress among the colored people. There is manifest improvement in quality of labor in the central West; greater permanency in the expert service of the farm, in the higher grades of farm work, including all except the more common and transient labor, of which the grain harvest supply is a type. The permanent laborers of the Northwest are mostly native, though largely of foreign parentage, and are increasing in skill and effectiveness, and are gradually merging into the land-owning class. There is manifest increase of skill in Iowa and Nebraska among those employed in dairying, cattle breeding and feeding, and other lines of advanced agriculture. The mountain section pays high wages and demands the services of reliable men. A high degree of efficiency is generally reported in this region. Laborers are mostly Americans, except in Arizona and New Mexico, where many Mexicans are employed, who are regarded as fairly good men at routine work, and especially well trained in irrigating work. Improvement is manifest and positive on the Pacific coast in skill and intelligence. American laborers, trained in specific industries, and expert in technical operations, are more abundant and permanent. There are still some Chinese for common labor, and Japanese are coming in rapidly, while the beet-sugar factories have brought in Italians acquainted with beet culture; yet a positive improvement in the average quality of labor is evident.

GENERAL POSITION AND CHARACTER OF FARM LABORERS.

Does the compensation of the farm laborer equal that in other occupations? In actual money, no; in its superior purchasing power, in perquisites and advantages, yes. This question has been misunderstood and therefore misrepresented. The poor laborer has been pitied because he handles less money than the city laborer. So does the farmer who may handle a few hundred dollars a year but lives in a house that would rent in town for $1,000, keeps a half dozen working and driving horses, and supports his family. This investigation-the details of which will be found in another chapter-makes it clear that the farm laborer's condition, financial and social, is superior to that of the city laborer of the same grade of intelligence and skill. The evidence is overwhelming and conclusive. This refers to the regular laborers by the season or year, and not to the transient or nondescript class who are only a part of the time farm laborers.

The difference in prices in city and country, the items that constitute the cost of living, which in the city are increased by transportation charges, commissions, and duplicated profits, until sometimes the cost is doubled, is not the only advantage of the farm laborer. If married and working for wages without board a house is usually furnished free of rent, or else the rent is merely nominal; he has a garden patch, firewood, often pasturage for a cow, and sometimes the cow is furnished, and, in many instances reported, a horse or the use of one. In some instances a quart of milk daily is included, and in nearly all cases fruit of various kinds is available. Life experiences are cited where men have gone to the city and returned to the country after years of trial, in some cases spending in city living a handsome surplus saved as farm laborers and coming back to a possibility of recouping their lost sayings. In multitudes of instances the laborer, married or unmarried, has made initial payments on land from his savings, and become a prosperous farmer. Eminent authorities of large observation and experience agree that the larger city wage is more apparent than real; that the economically inclined can live better and save more in the country; that the farm laborer has larger opportunities, a better social position, and chances to become a broader man and a better citizen. This upper class of rural laborers is now in greater demand than ever before and receives higher pay and appreciation now than at any former time. It gives tone and character to rural service and furnishes an example that must have some incitement to ambition of other classes. It is made up of the native element of the population, or of foreign born of the self-respecting class, mostly from the north of Europe. There is a class less efficient and desirable, with inferior training in rural occupations, whose rate of compensation is less, and whose condition, from lack of economy and judgment more than deficiencies of compensation, is not so good, and whose lives and aims are not on so high a plane. There are many of this class on farms of the Atlantic slope, north of the fortieth parallel, some of the native element but more of the foreign. This region makes large demand for labor in industrial, commercial, and many other lines, leaving the commoner and ruder forms of rural labor to a class inferior in intelligence and training. They receive good pay but less than the more

skilled and reliable in higher agricultural and industrial positions, and many of them are saving money and improving their condition. A high authority in Connecticut reports that he employs this class of labor, not exactly what he would like, yet they give fairly satisfactory service and save on an average $100 per year each. There is a large representation of this class in the Ohio Valley and throughout the central West. The harvest hands of the Northwest, working by the day at $1.50 to $2 and $3 per day, according to ability, are a branch of this class, and yet more various in ability and character. They are a peculiar product of the great wheatraising districts, moving in crowds from south to north as the grain ripens, and returning to the cities for such casual employment as may be had in winter, or to hibernate, or beg, or go as vagrants to workhouses. They are a very miscellaneous lot, from the reputable to the vicious. There seems to be a fascination for this migratory life which causes the gipsy instinct to crop out in fairly respectable individuals. In hop picking and commercial berry picking the same classes and characteristics appear. It is an unfortunate system, injurious and debasing in many of its influences, but perhaps inseparable from the existence of dominating specialties in certain districts.

Another class of laborers, a large one in a dozen States, is that of the freedmen. Its condition leaves very much to be desired in lines of improvement. It tries the patience and tests the wisdom of the wisest in its management. Its improvement, in the view of many of intelligence and experience, is almost hopeless; yet some of our correspondents, who have had a lifetime of experience with them and know their limitations, hold quite a different view, believe in their possible growth in efficiency and reliability, in economy of management, in ambition to acquire homes, and the general betterment of their condition.

To live from hand-to-mouth, and literally take no thought for the morrow, has become a heriditary instinct. The statements of agricultural authorities in the cotton States mostly aver either that the colored laborer is unimproved or retrograding; a few indicate some tendency to improvement, some increase of thrift and ambition to acquire homes, and think that when encouraged and aided by white men a large proportion would own homes. On the other hand, some report a disposition to go in debt to such an extent as to imperil their equity in land purchased.

A marked characteristic of these people, which is a bar to their efficiency as farm laborers, is a general and strong tendency to drift to the cities, where they crowd and compete with each other for employment, and seem to prefer short jobs, casual employment, with time for socialities and idleness. Many of them eke out a precarious existence in cities, and prefer that mode of life to more comfortable living in the country.

While this gregarious mode of living is the natural result of constitutional tendencies, it is intensified, according to the testimony presented, by the kind of education received in most of their schools-the same as in white schools, which have also erred in educating the masses out of their proper spheres of natural usefulness. They all want to be teachers or preachers, lawyers or doctors; to live in towns, henceforth avoiding country life and labors. In this respect education is a distinct detriment to them. The only remedy suggested is a radical departure in these educational methods and aims. Prof. Booker T. Washington strikes the keynote when he suggests that the best way to promote the education and welfare "of the black man in this generation is to throw aside all nonsenee, all nonessentials, and work up through agriculture, the trades, domestic science, and household economy. In this way," he says, "we lay the foundation for our children and grandchildren to get the greatest benefit out of abstract education."

This will be a slow process. Some will doubt its efficiency, but the examples from the training of Tuskegee, Hampton, and other schools that train head and hand together are quite too numerous to serve as exceptions that prove the rule of intractable worthlessness, and afford evidence that this is a practicable and sure method of developing the efficiency of negro labor. This investigation attests, in the testimony of wise and experienced agricultural authorities, the influence of practical agriculural education in the North on farm labor. Its beneficient influence is even more needed in the South.

While returns on the tendency to acquire homes are not generally indicative of thrift, they admit the fact that a few succeed in purchasing small farms. Dr. Knapp, of Louisiana, attests a general desire for homes, which he has tested by actual experiment, and finds a considerable proportion would buy small farms if they had a chance.

TERM OF SERVICE.

Inquiry has been made as to the length of the term of service. A small proportion, generally the most skillful and reliable, are employed during the year. The number is increasing, especially in the West and on the Pacific coast, and the system is desirable and advantageous to employer and laborer, but is limited by the relative continuity of work required in different rural industries. A necessity is felt for such a diversity of crops and variety of stock as to require labor throughout the year. A larger proportion of laborers is employed for the season-7, 8, or 10 months, and averaging not more than 8 or 9, at monthly rates. The casual employment by the day is for special service in farm improvement, spring plowing or extra work in planting, and especially in harvest operations, cutting and thrashing of grain, gathering orchard fruits, picking of berries, hop picking, and many other specialties. sugar districts of Louisiana it is reported that payments are made by the day, but laborers have comparatively steady employment and local residence.

HOURS OF LABOR.

In the

Returns relative to the hours of daily service show the influence of general labor agitation for shorter hours in shortening the day of rural service. The reduction is very general, and greater where industrial and mechanical enterprise is dominant. In many portions of New England the average can not be more than 10 hours, but somewhat irregular in different work, sometimes longer in the haying season and in the long days of summer in dairy work, but with such casual relief and relaxation and more or less remission of duty in rainy weather. With similar differences in the Middle States, the average of all agricultural laborers may be roughly estimated at 10 hours. In some sections of the West the day is a little longer. The average in Missouri, as made officially from hundreds of local estimates of correspondents of the State board of agriculture, is 11 hours. It is not far from 10 hours in the Pacific coast States, and is a shorter day than formerly. Such returns as have come from the South are mostly 10 to 11 hours. Exact averages can not be given, in fractions of an hour, but it is quite evident, from almost universal agreement, that the day has been much shortened. The difference in time, however, by no means expresses the extent of the amelioration, as labor-saving agricultural implements and machines have practically obliterated the drudgery of farm work. In many farming districts the farmers themselves do not work half as hard as 40 years ago, and their hired laborers find almost as much relief from the hardships of their service.

WAGES OF FARM LABOR.

The rate of farm wages in this country greatly surpasses that of all others except the British colonies of Australasia and Canada, where it approximates that of the United States. It is quite as high now as at any former time, except in the inflation period following the civil war, and almost twice as high as 50 or 60 years ago. As the result of the present investigation, approximate averages, believed to be worthy of credence, are presented: For the United States, exclusive of the cotton districts, representing white labor almost exclusively, viz, $23.67 per month, or $284 per annum; for the United States, including colored labor, $225 per annum. These rates compare with about $150 for Great Britain, $125 for France, $100 for Holland, $90 for Germany, $60 for Russia, $50 for Italy, and $30 for India, as nearly as can be ascertained from current statistics.

Everywhere the rates are variable, as is the degree of efficiency and kind of service. Where board is furnished, a mode of contract which predominates in most of the States, for reliable service $18 per month in New England is a medium rate, and up to $22 is paid for higher quality, with lower rates for inferior service. In Massachusetts $25 is not unusual for the best men. Inferior quality ranges downward from $18 to $12. In Rhode Island wages are high, up to $30 and $35 without board, and colored men get $18 to $20 and board for the season.

Wages in New York are nearly as high as in New England, but in the Middle States the average is about 10 per cent lower. The more skilled and reliable in New Jersey command $16 to $20 with board, and $25 to $30 if they board themselves. The rates are about the same in Pennsylvania, but lower in Delaware and Maryland, mostly from $10 to $14 with board. In Virginia $6 to $12, according to location and quality, with rations, is the present range of colored labor; $8 to $10 in North Carolina; $6 to $8 mostly in Georgia. Going westward, rates are a little higher, especially in Louisiana and Texas, ranging from $12 to $15 per month, though in the rice and sugar districts some grades of service command higher pay; in the latter, compensation by the day is in vogue at the rate of 60 cents to $1.