ny bootleggers rich, and in paying his e to the conductor jokingly said, e sure you turn that in, old timer. e conductor assured Cook H that he ald turn it in, considering the incident re as a passing joke than anything . On the back platform was a nonnmissioned officer of military police ose knowledge of the English language very deficient. He assumed that ok H and the conductor were quarreland rushed in, pistol half drawn, to e charge of the situation. Cook H, bre amused than offended, began to id" the military police. As a result Tok H was 66 jugged" and charges awn against him. I later tried the case my capacity as summary court. Cook H was acquitted and the summary court recommended that men deficient in knowledge of our language be not detailed .on military police duty. Cook C "tanked up" on flavoring extract, Jamaica ginger, Worcestershire sauce, or anything else which had either a real or imaginary kick in it. He was a regular customer" in my court, and spent most of his time in the guardhouse. I knew, as he well did, that the only place to keep him out of trouble was the guard-house. He did not have will power enough to change his habits, so in justice to the service and mercy to him I changed his habitation. It is my honest belief that any officer who serves as a summary court or as a member of a special or general court martial should, as a matter of duty, temper his judgment with mercy, wisely administered, after placing himself as nearly as possible in the shoes of the offender. He must take into account extraneous and related circumstance as affecting the mental or physical condition of the accused man at the time. Rigid adherence to the letter of our law is bad. The court should remember that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." The best study of mankind is man. A student of man will not follow the letter and ignore the spirit. He will be fair to the prisoner, to himself, and to the service, and merciful justice rather than vengeance will result. WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH THE EASTERN PART I-OUR AGRICULTURAL PLIGHT The man who actually tills the soil is the man who is the foundation of our whole social structure, and if the life of. the community is such as to eliminate him, all the rest of the community will pay in the end for his elimination. -Theodore Roosevelt. SET out on a two months' journey of some 3,500 miles through New England, New York, and Pennsylvania in effort to find out to what extent contions are tending to eliminate the man bo tills the soil.I talked to hundreds farmers, farm help, and farm leaders. What these men and women have told e may be enlightening and educative, it certainly is not entertaining.. I have been informed by unquestioned thority that New England now imrts from the South, West, and form countries over eighty per cent of its od products, amounting to over $500,0,000 annually, and that the ten Eastern ates combined hand over to the South, BY J. MADISON GATHANY At The Outlook's request Mr. Gathany during the summer made a personal study of farm conditions on the North Atlantic seaboard, traveling many miles by train, motor car, and on foot to obtain the facts presented in these articles. He interviewed farmers,. farmers' wives, hired workers, and heads of farm bureaus and ex-. changes, and talked to merchants, bankers, and manufacturers in the States of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and he interviewed numerous farm authorities from Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. -THE EDITORS. the West, and foreign countries each year more than $1,250,000,000 for foodstuffs. The most lamentable thing about this astonishing statement is that these ten States, if properly cultivated, could raise more food than the people of those States consume. And all the time the great army of agricultural non-producersmiddlemen, merchants, bankers, professionals, transportation workers, and the like is rapidly increasing. A companion statement fully as astonishing is that more than 5,000,000 acres of land that once were under cultivation in New England are now idle. Transportation charges must be paid upon that $1,250,000,000 worth of foodstuffs brought into the ten Eastern States. This means increased cost of living for the consumers. The recent rise in freight rates will add still more to the burden. ON THE ROCKS "Farming only gets attention," said a Massachusetts farmer, "when things go May D. Hepper, New York City BOY-POWER OFTEN HAS TO TAKE THE PLACE OF MAN-POWER so bad on the farms that their condition becomes a matter of news. That is one of the troubles with farming. It is not on speaking acquaintance with the rest of the world. A lot of people seem to think the food production problem came upon us overnight. But it's no such thing. Agriculture has been steadily declining since the Civil War," said the farmer, pausing in his hoeing. "In 1915 the Associated Industries of Massachusetts reported that from 1860 to 1910 farm land under cultivation in New England decreased 42 per cent, and that the population of 828 rural towns decreased 82 per cent, while the population of New England as a whole increased 110 per cent. The investigators also found that between 1840 and 1910 sheep decreased in New England from 4,000,000 head to.. 430,672, a loss of 89 per cent. Milch cows in Massachusetts decreased over 24 per cent from 1890 to 1913, while the population increased 59 per cent. In 1915 another investigation showed that staple foodstuffs in New England cost 47 per cent more than the same articles cost in five States of the Middle West, due to the absence of a food supply near at hand. Yes, New England farming right now is on the rocks. Farm wages in the United States now are more than 200 per cent above what they were in 1910, and still this increase has not been sufficient to meet the increased wages in other industries. Fifty of the necessary articles which the farmer must purchase in order to farm it at all cost fully 221 per cent more now than in 1914, without a corresponding increase in the price of the farmer's products. With such conditions facing him, the farmer did not dare to pay his hired men more, and of course they left him." I asked a farmer in Connecticut: "Is not the fundamental trouble with agriculture in New England an inherent natural difficulty, a question of the lack of good soil ?" "No, sir," was his quick and positive response. "There is no better soil anywhere in the world. Of course there are plenty of ledges and boulders, . and acres that are worn out because they no inherent natural difficulty. The trouble is entirely man-made difficulties, and not God-made, in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. It's a pity that most of the best brains of the country are devoted to industry at the expense of agriculture." I reported this conversation to an unusually well-informed farmer in a small town on Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. He is sixty-two years of age, and is considered by the Federal Government as one of the most valuable men engaged in agriculture in America. "How did agriculture in the East come to such a plight?" I asked. 66 A young man bought this very farm in 1812 for $10,000," he replied. "He paid $5,000 down, giving his note for the balance. Four years later he completed the last payment. In the meantime his table was always supplied with the best of fresh food. All this, sir, was accomplished on a New England farm in four years, the entire bill being paid by producing beef, pork, corn, and hay. His products were loaded into sloops down . there by the wharves that you see in the distance, and were taken by the farmer themselves to the West Indies and t Cuba, where they were swapped for mo lasses and sugar, which in turn were sold here, in Fall River, and Providence, at good prices. The farmers worked to gether, handled their goods together. It was that spirit which made New England farming famous and profitable. Labor did not exceed 60 cents per day with board, or $1 per day without board. In 1839 one of the farms in Rhode Island produced 20,000 bushels of potatoes. About 1840 manufacturing in New Eng land got on its feet and called the men tally active young men from the farms into the industries. From then on manufacturers gave better and better wages) than could be had on the farms. It was manufacturing and commerce, and not the lure of the West, that started the ruination of New England agriculture In 1865, as now, the returned soldiers did not care to go on the farms. There was easier and a more attractive life opened to them in the industrial centers." an WORKED ONE DAY; TOO HARD The lack of adequate farm labor is shocking. What help the farmer can get is usually dishearteningly unintelligent and shockingly inefficient. A Massachusetts farmer took me out into his fields. I saw grass and weeds higher than the potatoes, beans, and corn. 21 "I am thoroughly.ashamed of the con dition of this place," said he. "It usually is as clean as a hound's tooth. My boy and I have had to run this business alone, as it is almost impossible to get farm labor. A big corporation in this town has robbed the farmers of all able-bodied men by paying them unheard-of high-wages and giving them short days. Where are the war gardens of yesterday? City peo ple have found out that raising produce is not so easy. They want jobs in which they are protected from the scorching sun, the soaking dew, and the biting cold. They want easy work at high wages. offered a grammar school boy $18 a week at eight hours a day. He worked one day, and said he did not like to bend his back. He would see if he could not get a job in the city. I haven't seen him since. The highest I ever got as a farm help was $11 per week; now I pay $30 and over and the men are not satisfied." I DRIVEN OUT BY FOREIGNERS miles In a secluded Connecticut town, from electric or steam service, I one day stopped in front of a farmhouse sign "This farm for sale." The buildings and the lands were in such good condition that I wondered at the sign. My knock at the door was answered by a bright, I asked intelligent-looking young woman. for the man of the house. "John went to town this morning at 2:30 to sell his produce, but will not be back until about 6 P.M.," she said. Why are you going to leave this farm?" I inquired. She began to unravel a story of shat ted ideals and lost courage such as any other farmers' wives have told me. "My husband is a college man and I a normal graduate," she told me. Our ideal has been to own a farm of our We were born in the biggest city te the world, where green grass is very arce. Our occasional trips to the couny always aggravated our desire to live xt to mother earth, and to try our hand what we thought the easy, congenial, Phad profitable life of a farmer. We indested our little capital in this place three ears ago. At that time the three houses ou see in the distance were owned by American families; now two of them are baccupied by Italians. In rural districts ne depends largely on neighbors for acial life; and it was a big blow to us hen our neighbors sold out to foreigners. We are worried about the utter lack of odern school facilities for our year-old aughter. Could we think of sending her hree miles away from home each day ith foreigners as her only companions? "It is not pleasant to stay here with nly my little daughter for company while John is gone away to town practiana ally sixteen hours each day during the arvest season. Nor for him to work sixeen hours and more a day while other nen are working much shorter hours. We both have always been used to wide 30cial activities, but since we bought this farm we have been practically cut off from all forms of amusement. We have always kept a goodly supply of current magazines on our living-room table. Had it not been for these we could not have stayed here as long as we have, especially during winter. 3 : "I want you to understand that we would not have minded the many hours of hard work we have both put in had we felt sufficiently compensated socially and intellectually. We feel that to be of service is the main reason why human beings are in the world, but it has been the heartrending lonesomeness, the encroachment of foreigners, and the inadequate school facilities which finally turned our faces citywards," concluded John's wife. "MY BOYS HELPA ME CHEAP I turned to one of the near-by Italian houses. As I walked into the littered dooryard of what had formerly been a well-kept farmhouse, I was greeted by a hearty"Hulloa" from the lips of a Swarthy Italian woman who sat on the to string out in the yard to dry. front doorsteps getting macaroni ready eto! ent, I My husband and five boys are working over in the potato field," she said. "Well," said I a little later to Tony, the father of five húsky boys who were industriously hoeing potatoes with their father, "how are you getting along?" "If I have no boys to helpa me cheap, money this year, said he. "Too mucha rain. Seeds too mucha No getta big price for vegetables. I guess high. Fertilizer very scarce this spring. I maka some mon' thisa year because I no pay biga mon' to my boys. Boys help pretty fair. But," said he, leaning towards no maka much Brown Bros. HOUSEWORK ISN'T THE ONLY WORK OF THE MODERN FARMER'S WIFE me confidentially, "you know, mister, my Evidently Tony is facing a serious help I next called on a successful farmer who, aided by his son, runs a 200-acre farm. The farm had been in the hands of his family continuously since 1639fully eleven generations. AN AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION "Did. you know that Germany made potatoes were used as ballast for her "Until the world war we were again down to the point where the farmer can do the work, or else farming must be put upon a purely commercial basis, so that it can compete with commerce and industry as to hours of labor and wages, and that calls for a complete reorganization of agriculture, an agricultural revolution. Here was a highly respected American family engaged continuously in farming for over two hundred and eighty years, and now scarcely able to earn a decent living! Yet there are thousands of manufacturers, and millions of consumers, all with an attack of sour stomach because they fear that the Government will become kindly disposed to the farmer and enable him to make a cent or two or work less than sixteen hours a day! A team of horses and a mowingmachine were out in a big hay lot, driven by a Yale graduate, a direct descendant of one of the first Governors of Connecticut. "The farm was granted to our family by King George in colonial days, and it has never been deeded away," he told me. "Our old house has witnessed the tremendous changes in agriculture. To-day every farmer is largely at the mercy of the tool-makers, railways, and manufacturers of clothing, hats, and fertilizer. But complaining Americans seem to think that farmers are lying down on the job. Every farmer in this region has been working like a slave every day since March 1. Personally I have averaged from fifteen to sixteen hours every day, including Sundays, since before the frost left the ground this spring. I had sixty. bushels of potatoes in the barn to be planted. Just above here, at the time my potatoes ought to have been planted, three thousand mill-hands were on strike. I was here on this farm of three hundred and fifty acres without a soul to help me, except a few Italian women. I advertised in the local paper for help, offering factory prices, and offering to sell potatoes and other farm products at wholesale prices to the families of those who would help me. Not one man of the three thousand showed up. A few days later three men came along and asked if I wanted some help. I told them my terms and even agreed to carry them to and from the trolley and pay their car-fares both ways. Those men worked just three days, and have not showed up since. LOSES $2,300 IN CORN per "Last year I planted twenty-two acres of corn. Labor, fertilizer, seed, and freight cost me at the rate of $200 acre. That made an outgo of $4,400 before one red cent came in. That did not include interest on my investment, nor my own labor. What do you suppose I got for those twenty-two acres of corn? Just $2,100. Do you see any corn around here this year? Who has reimbursed me for that loss? How am I going to get it back? What would a business man do in such a ? One or two things. He case would either charge the loss up to the public as overhead expense, or he would shut down his business until it did pay him to run it. The farmers have never treated the public that way. The public does not expect to make good to the farmer his losses. Now that is one of the fundamental troubles with farming. . "Farmers are not going to produce what this country needs until farming is profitable. The farmer has made up his mind that he is not going to be the goat any longer. Last fall, at crop-gathering time, farmers suffered terrible losses on account of bad weather. This spring the weather came on just as bad if not worse. Come out and look at my fields. There are acres and acres of last year's corn stubbles still sticking out of the ground. That field of potatoes out there wouldn't keep a goat alive until next spring. Religiously they are hard-shelled Baptists. They have been immersed four times. The crops you do see are from a month to six weeks behind. I am connected with the State Agricultural Department, and I feel safe in saying that New England has planted from 25 to 35 per cent less this year than last. My opinion is that farming must be thoroughly organized and put on a strictly modern basis before the country will get enough to eat." I learned that this Yale man's brother went into the hardware business and has made money hand over fist. AMERICAN COWS GO ABROAD "How old are you?" I called out to three boys who were pitching hay. They did not answer. I called out again. "If you shouted all day those youngsters couldn't hear you," said the owner of the farm. "They're from a deaf and dumb institution." "A deaf and dumb institution !" I said. "Yes; agriculture has come to such a pass that farmers are compelled to hire such help or go without." The name of the man who was talking to me has been for forty-two years on the books of one of the largest seed houses in Keystone View Co. the United States. This year his name In 1918 he raised over $13,000 worth of onion seeds; this year he is not raisof onion seeds; this year he is not raising an ounce. Last year he planted acres and acres of corn; this year the crows did not have a chance at any corn on his place. Instead of seeing acres of corn in the silk I saw acres of corn stubbles projecting their ugly and worthless stumps through ground thickly matted with grass and weeds. "I have made some money raising seed crops in past years, but I can't afford to lose all I have made," said the farmer. "I saw last year that farming was not profitable, and you will note that I am almost out of it. Farmers are planting less this year than last year, and they will plant less next year than they have this. If farming were as profitable now as in years gone by, would you see all this land idle? Artificial financing will not do. Farming has got to be made to pay before it will come back." About two miles away was another farmer employing a large number of deaf and dumb men and boys. Acres upon acres of corn stubbles! Deaf and dumb. help! What a picture! Farmers in New York and Pennsylvania are alarmed. Many farms which used to be sources of abundance of food . 15 Septem stuffs are now seeded down to grass are abandoned to weeds; others lie h cultivated. I am informed that there as much as one-third shortage of fan labor in Delaware and New Jersey, w corresponding reduction of crops. I ha been told that farmer after farmer selling off his cows as soon as they becom dry. The dairy business is being thor oughly organized, but the results of the old system are still felt. In the past the milk dealers, or middlemen, have had everything their own way. In many localities they still do. They have been in a position to force the farmer to take a price for his milk that did not pay him for the cost of producing it, and to fore the consumer to pay far in excess of the price they paid the producer for it Grain, hay, and labor are exceedingly high. What is the result? During 1920 thus far there have been exported from the United States four times as many milch cows as were ex ported during the whole of 1918, and about three and one-half times as many as were exported during 1917. Most those cows have gone to foreign countrie where the value of milk as a food is appreciated. CHILD LABOR AND SOIL-ROBBING A Pennsylvania farmer said: "A. manufacturer determines the selling price ing, and regulates the volume of produc of an article by a system of cost account tion. A business man adds the cost of doing business plus a percentage for profit to his cost price. The farmer in the past has just produced; he had no system of cash accounting, no inventory, no balancing of accounts. Without thinking he sold away from the farm the fertility in the soil, and threw in the labor of his wife and children. The small cash surplus, if any remained, did not represent profit in farming, but the sweat of child labor and soil-robbing. A New York farmer, speaking of the profits of packing concerns, said: "I am in a position to know that they have. so organized their business that they turn their invested capital over at least twentysix times each fiscal year. If, taking them. at their own word, they make one per cent on each dollar they turn over, then they make not less than 26 cent per year on each dollar invested. And these men are engaged in business wholly de pendent upon the farmer. Now if all the sheep, and fowl, where would the great farmers cut out raising cattle, hogs, packers get off? per "The 'restaurant men are absolutely dependent upon the farmer for food prod ucts. In this locality they pay us once a week for produce. Inside of an hour these men begin to realize a profit on the things bought of the farmer; in a day's time they have made almost a complete turn over of their money invested, and in a week they have made at least six turnovers, each bringing in a handsome profit. ny profit on their investments. If they et out whole on the labor they put in, ot counting that of their children and ives, they are lucky. It may be several ears before a farmer has anything at all oming in from his labor. His expense iles up every day in the year with no eturn until harvest. His men do not work without regular pay. It takes three ears to raise a milk cow, and an average af eight years before an orchard man can ee a cent of return for his labor. During dll these years he has been cultivating, praying, and pruning. A thunder-storm loes not stop a manufacturer, but it does the farmer. "The markets are crowded with crops at one season and almost empty of them at all others. This means that when he is harvesting his year's return, his products bring him in the least. They are bought up by speculators when they are cheap and when the farmer must sell in order to get money to pay his bills, and then the dealers manipulate the amount they will let loose on the market until harvest time comes again, and at prices to meet their own speculative and immoral wishes. "What percentage is the farmer entitled to for his one turnover? Farming is one big gamble with the Lord and the land. Our manufacturers and bankers would be as poor as the farmers if they had to do business under the same conditions. THE BANKER'S GOOD REASONS DON'T HELP THE FARMER "Many Eastern bankers appear to have confidence neither in the farmers nor in the land. Bankers stumble over each other in their efforts to induce meatpacking concerns, warehouse men, commission merchants, wholesalers of farm products, and manufacturers to do business with them. Let a farmer walk into most of these same banks and ask for a loan, and the bankers will turn up their noses. They tell the farmer that his assets are not liquid and therefore they can't loan to him. A year or two ago our Farmers' Exchange succeeded after considerable persuasion in borrowing $10,000 from a local bank. We have paid our interest always on time. This loan is backed up by not less than $150,000 worth of valuable market garden farms managed by the best farmers in this section of the East. When we asked last week for a renewal of this loan for another year, the bank was pronouncedly indifferent; it hesitated, then told us it would rather loan the money to other business men. Now this same bank loans an abundance of money to dealers in pork, beef, wheat, corn, and other farm products, to vegetable wholesalers and commission merchants-all dealing in the products of the very farms to which the bank acted so indifferently. And these same men kick because the farmers don't do more. Now, I may be wrong, but I think the Eastern 3. There are no more new profitable farming regions left in the United States to be opened up. We have reached the end of cheap food production. 4. No new inventions or methods appear to be available with which to reduce the cost of farm production. 5. Farming has not as ready access to credit facilities as other industries. 6. Lawmakers are not, generally speaking, as much interested in remedial legislation in the cause of agriculture as in that of industry and commerce. We are sacrificing agriculture for the sake of industry, as England did, for which England is now sitting in sackcloth and ashes. The curse of child labor, which has been driven out of our factories, still persists on our farms. 7. Although a steadily increasing population causes a steadily growing need of farm products, there is evidence that American families can no longer pursue farming happily and profitably, and that only immigrant families can. J. MADISON GATHANY. bankers have had something to do with bringing on the food shortage. Railways have also been a discouraging factor. A Maine farmer says: "Many cars last year were lost on their way and some made only two or three trips all season. Millions of bushels of 1919 wheat are still on the farm. In the Corn Belt the cribs are filled with last year's crops. Transportation facilities have got to be made adequate to the needs of the country and the railways compelled to deliver perishable goods in proper time or make good all losses to the farmers, if we are to continue to farm." The average family in the city enjoys an abundance of running water, a bathroom, electricity, gas, telephone, street cars, vacuum cleaners, electric washing machines, and flatirons. Fully eighty per cent of the families on our American farms have no such conveniences. Com munity centers and good schools are among the things the modern farm family believes indispensable. But these cost money, and the farmers haven't got it. "I would never advise a young woman to marry a farmer," said a woman of sixty who had spent all her life on a farm. Increasing intelligence is condemning the injustice of agricultural existence. Farmers and farm help are leaving the farms, not because there is not enough for them to do but because there is too much; they are not being driven from the farm by the introduction of new machinery; they are deserting voluntarily. RESENTMENT IS BITTER The editor of the oldest agricultural journal in the world recently said: "The farmers of America are discouraged; they are filled with bitter resentment against conditions. Their list of griev ances is a long one and each of them is real. They cannot be passed over lightly. They have tried the impossible task of feeding $2 corn to 14-cent hogs at a profit; they have lost millions in feeding high-priced feed to cattle, and have stood helplessly by and watched the city consumers pay as high prices for their pork chops and beefsteaks as they did when cattle and hogs were bringing a living return to their producers. They have had to stand idly by while agents of city industries painted beautiful pictures of high wages and better living conditions in the cities. Everything the farm has to sell is comparatively low in price or there is no market; and yet city consumers never paid such high prices. The farmers have had to bear their share of the high prices of clothes, but now when they have a crop of wool to dispose of there is absolutely no market. Nobody will bid on the farmer's wool. He has notes to meet, bills to pay, mortgages to liquidate, and still he has to pay gouging prices for the clothes he wears. The fruit men have paid high wages, bought expensive chemicals for spraying, and have spent months getting ready for the harvest, only to find that the high price of sugar has seriously curtailed their market. "The farmers were vastly more patriotic than they were given credit for. They raised a billion bushels of wheat, and the Government forced prices away below the market levels, fixing it at a scale that barely paid the cost of production. The farmers were the only class of citizens compelled to do this. Other industries obtained cost plus and the privilege to make the cost as high as they chose. The farmers grit their teeth when they read about 200 per cent, 300 per cent, and 400 per cent dividends paid by manufacturers of shoes and textiles and sugar and other necessities. The farmers are now told that there is not money enough to finance the harvest." Such is the picture. It is dark. But there is a ray of hope. In Later Issues Mr. Gathany will continue the narrative of his observations |