ordinary laborer are ten hours, and to more favored classes eight or seven, or even six, are to the farmer as a rule at least fourteen in twenty-four. His work is never done, any more than woman’s.
As a natural consequence he always is tired out. Custom and the demand of the markets restrict him generally to a single crop. Whether this be wheat, or corn, or oats, the seeding time is comparatively short. So is harvest time. The farm is larger than any one man or family can possibly manage, but American demand being at present only for raw materials, he has no choice. He must plant the staples from which foreign countries are willing to purchase the surplus for cash. Otherwise his condition would be worse than that of a slave. It is very hard for any one man to “break up” more than one acre of ground per day with a good team of horses. What, therefore, can the single-handed American farmer, who owns a hundred and sixty acres of ground, the customary “quarter section,” expect to do with his immense estate? To properly care for his family he should plant all of it; but, except in the case of wheat, if he were to plant it all, one-half to three-fourths of the crop would be wasted through lack of necessary cultivation. His horse is like himself, an overworked animal. In any section of the country the farmer is regarded safe who owns a pair of good horses. But animals working twenty-six days per month from sunrise to sunset in the long days of summer cannot be kept up to their work by any amount of feeding or care. Sooner or later one or the other of a span of horses may break down, and then the farmer is helpless unless he has money in hand with which to purchase a substitute. Not ten farmers thus fortunate can be found in any contiguous hundred.
For the farmer is always poor. If it were otherwise he would not be a farmer. A very little experience on the farm and less observation of men about him show him that there is more money in mechanical or mercantile business, to say nothing of other callings, than his own. But he is handicapped from the start, no matter if he begins young, and while he still is a bachelor. When he has a family on his hands he is simply helpless so far as the possibility of change goes. The average farmer lives in hopes that in time his children, of whom he generally has many, will be of some assistance to him. Frequently his hopes are apparently fulfilled for a short time. But children are not as steady as grown people. They roam about in any time which they have to themselves. They reach the villages. They learn of a life which contains less toil and more comforts than that to which they are accustomed, and one by one they begin to intimate a desire for a change. It is utterly out of nature for the farmer to disregard this desire. No matter how much he may love their company he knows in his inmost heart that a change from farm life to some sphere of activity which is less exacting would be a benefit to them physically and mentally, possibly morally also. His sons endeavor to become salesmen in stores, or to be clerks in lawyers’ offices, or solicitors for one business enterprise or another--anything to avoid the persistent and wearing drudgery of the farm. His daughters, in spite of the boasted independence of the farmer, and of his family, are very easily persuaded to go into any factory that there may be in the vicinity. It is not that they love home less, but they love companionship more, and, being like human beings everywhere else, they are keenly sensitive to the cheering influence of money--real cash received once a week instead of a possible balance to the family’s credit at the village store at the end of the year.
