he agricultural proletarian, like all other
labor, should be organized in a national union. That is bound to come.
But the agricultural laborer should, I think, no more than labor in the
cities, make the raising of wages his main or only object. He should
rather strive to make himself economically independent; or, in the
alternative, seek for status by integration into the co-operative
communities of farmers by becoming a member, and by pressing for
permanent employment by the community rather than casual employment by
the individual. Agricultural labor undoubtedly will have to struggle for
better remuneration. Yet it has to be remembered that agriculture is
a protean industry. It is not like mining, where the colliery produces
coal and nothing but coal, and where the miners have a practical
monopoly of supply. If miners are dissatisfied with wages and are well
organized they can enforce their terms, and the colliery owners may
almost be indifferent, because they can charge the increased cost
of working to the public. But agriculture, as I said, is protean and
changes its forms perpetually. If tillage does not pay this year, next
year the farmer may have his land in grass. He reverts to the cheapest
methods of farming when prices are low, or labor asks a wage which the
farmer believes it would be unprofitable to pay. In this way pressure
on the farmer for extra wages might result in two men being employed
to herd cows where a dozen men were previously employed at tillage.
The farmer cannot easily--as the mine-owner--unload his burden on the
general public by the increase of prices. There are many difficulties,
which seem almost insoluble, if we propose to ourselves to integrate the
rural laborer into the general economic life of the country by making
him a partner in the industry he works on. But what I hope for most
is first that the natural evolution of the rural community, and the
concentration of individual manufacture, purchase and sale, into
communal enterprises, will lead to a very large co-operative ownership
of expensive machinery, which will necessitate the communal employment
of labor. If this takes place, as I hope it will, the rural laborer,
instead of being a manual worker using primitive implements, will have
the status of a skilled mechanic employed permanently by a cooperative
community. He should be a member of the society which employs him, and
in the division of profits receive in proportion to his wag