ce of modern industry itself, on whose account homes
are turned into workshops, children into slaves, and mothers into
slave-drivers, is undermined and degraded by this illegitimate
competition, the most powerful of all factors in lowering wages, and
preventing organization among regular factory hands. The matter lies
in a nutshell. Industry which originated in the home could be safely
carried on there only as long as it remained simple and the operations
thereof such as one individual could complete. As soon as through the
invention of power-driven machinery industry reached the stage of high
specialization and division of labor, at once it became a danger to
the home, and the home a degradation to it. It was at the call of
specialized industry that the factory came into existence, and only in
the factory can it be safely housed.

A similar and, if it were possible, a worse form of family and group
slavery prevails outside of the cities in the poorer farming regions
and in the cotton states. It is harder to reach and to handle, and
there is cause to fear that it is increasing. Especially in the busy
season when the corn has to be harvested or the cotton picked the
mother is considered as a toiler first, and she is to have her babies
and look after her poor little home and her children as a mere
afterthought. The children are contributors to the family support from
the time they can toddle and schooling comes a bad second in making
the family arrangements. One reason for this growing evil is the
threatening degradation and disappearance of the independent farmer
class, who made up what would have been called in England formerly the
yeomanry of this country, and their replacement by a poor peasantry
degraded by the wretched terms upon which they are driven to snatch a
bare existence from a patch of land to which they are tied by lease,
by mortgage or by wages, and which they have neither the money nor the
knowledge to cultivate to advantage.

The Federal Commission on Industrial Relations has brought to light
some startling facts in this phase of our social life, as in many
others. I can refer to the evidence of but one witness. She speaks for
many thousands. This is as it is quoted in the daily press.

Picture for the moment the drama staged at Dallas.
Mrs. I. Borden Harriman of New York is presiding over
the commission. Mrs. Levi Stewart, the wife of a tenant
farmer, is on the witness stand. Mrs. Stewart is