tion of the laborer, who forms the majority of "the people," lies through his employment "by the people," "for the people's" benefit. In conversations on the subject of public operation of railroads, etc., I have often been met with the objection that, while it might be all right in other countries, it would never do in this; there would be too much stealing. Can it be that the American people have become so dishonest that they dare not trust themselves to do their own business? I do not think it is as bad as that; if it is, it is time for a general housecleaning.

Capital would doubtless oppose all efforts to bring about such changes, but it would do well to remember that the drift of the time is to reduce the number of rich men. The small capitalist is getting into the condition of the mechanic who finds it necessary to "go to some other business." If the present fight between the big fish and the little ones continues, there will soon be but a few big sharks, unless we except a few pilot fish.

Of one thing I feel sure, and that is, that the price of labor is very near bed-rock. And I have an idea that the rock is not solid;-that there is a pocket containing gas which, if the capitalistic pick should happen to strike fire, might explode.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

CLEVELAND, OHIO.

III. THE FARM HAND: AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY.

BY WILLIAM EMORY KEARNS.

(One of Them.)

The American farm hand is a pariah among the laboring classes of his own country, He is an unknown factor in all political and social problems. If there is any class that can be called the proletariat of our social system, that class is composed of the farm hands-the wage-workers of the farms.

As an element of the farming population farm hands are certainly entitled to some consideration, for they are almost as numerous as farmers themselves. And as producers, or

as an industrial factor, their worth to the farming industry and to society is absolutely beyond computation. More than half of the entire agricultural production of this country is produced by the labor of farm hands- hired men. Yet the wage-earners of the farm have never been recognized in any way whatever. People observe and study the social condition of the farmers and their immediate families. But the hired men of the field and the hired girls of the kitchen, having no opportunity of speaking in their own behalf, have escaped observation entirely. As a rule people know no more about them or their actual condition than they know about the people of a foreign country.

Farm hands are more widely distributed over the country than any other class of workingmen. They are found in every State and neighborhood. In bleak New England, with her long, cold winters, hundreds of farm hands toil daily. Farm hands must brave the snows and blizzards of the Northwest. And in order that our semitropical crops may be cultivated and harvested, thousands of farm hands must work in the enervating heat of the Southern summers. Wherever men strive to make "two blades of grass grow where only one grew before," they require the labor of farm hands. Farm hands compose an important part of the constituency of nearly every man elected to public office. In many States and counties they could hold the balance of power at the ballot-box. Yet candidates and politicians always refuse to recognize this class as a voting element. Of a truth they are an unknown factor.

Of the twelve or fifteen millions of wage-earners in this country, at least five millions are farm hands. But the labor movement fails to even take cognizance of their existence. They seem to be considered entirely beneath the notice of other workingmen, and are not reckoned as a part of the great body of American workingmen. In fact, the very name, farm hand, has become a term of reproach and a byword among other workers.

We have labor leaders, philanthropists, and reformers, but all of them neglect this class. In nearly all countries the most lowly and neglected classes have some friends and

champions. There always arises some noble and devoted soul to tell of the wrongs of the downtrodden and oppressed, in song or story. The "Song of the Shirt" has stirred millions of hearts to profoundest sympathy for the hard-worked, ill-paid sewing-women. Even the despised negro slave had his sturdy friends. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" dragged to light a nation's crime, and gave impetus to a powerful agitation that abated not until Emancipation was an accomplished fact. To-day hundreds of able men and women are pleading the cause of the debt-ridden farmers of the West and of the oppressed workers of the city. But as yet no immortal Hood has ever sung, no Harriet Beecher Stowe has ever written, of farm hands and their condition. No silver-tongued orator has ever told of the disadvantages, the injustice, and the wrongs that enthrall and bind down the wage-workers of the farming industry.

It is evident that we must help ourselves, that we must fight our own battles. I am a farm hand myself; and I have determined to speak in our own behalf to plead the cause of my fellow farm hands and of myself. In doing this I know that I confront the prejudices and traditions of centuries. I know that custom and public opinion deny me the right to do this. We are only "hired" hands, dependent upon our employers for an opportunity to live, consequently, say the people, it would be entirely improper for us to make public demands of any kind.

Somehow the public expect us to occupy a different relation and a different position from any other class of wageearners or employees. Because we are only farm hands, it is supposed that we are under some sort of obligation to submit without protest to the conditions that may be imposed upon us. The consequence is, neither the law nor public opinion offers us the protection they give to other workingmen. Even workingmen labor-leaders frequently argue that farm hands have no right to expect the same protection from special laws that other working people claim, and that it would be wrong to make employing farmers amenable to such laws. American people have placed the farmer on such a lofty pedestal, and have invested him with such extraor

dinary attributes, that they seem to think it would be a sort of sacrilege, an unwarrantable reflection upon the farming community, to even talk about the farm hand's side or interests.

And so strong are the traditions, ideas, and sentiments that have been handed down from the days of feudalism, when farm hands were serfs or vassals, that they are still regarded as a sort of subordinate element of rural society. This is why employing and landowning farmers are supposed to represent the wage-earners and the non-landholding farmers, and why everything is seen through their eyes.

So much for the attitude of society toward farm hands. It is no exaggeration to say that our actual condition, our social status, is a reproach upon the American people. I am not prompted by feelings of animosity toward our employers. I simply protest against conditions that are detrimental to both employer and employed. I am proud of my government, and proud of being a free-born American. But I am conscious of great inequalities that are a menace to society and even to the government itself.

In most localities farm hands work harder, get less pay, and have fewer of the blessings of civilization than other workingmen. They are more completely at the mercy of employers than others, there being no fixed number of hours for a working day, no stated time to begin or to stop work. These and nearly all other conditions are arbitrarily fixed for them at the option and will of the individual employer. For he is supposed to own their time- yea, own their very selves, soul and body. There is never an hour they can truly call their own, or when they can be free and independent men.

Here in the extensive grain-growing region of the central West, where diversified farming is the rule, the condition of farm hands is very hard. I have, myself, worked, day after day, sixteen long hours each day, and for pay so small I am ashamed to write it down. Very long hours is the rule; and wages will average less than $15 per month for time actually employed. And the work is very exhausting. When night comes we are so worn and weary that we must immediately seek our beds in order that we may get sufficient sleep to enable us to perform the next day's labor.

No time for recre

ation, no time or opportunity for reading or for any of those enjoyments that elevate the man above the brute. Such a life is mere animal existence. Would it, then, be strange if we should sometimes feel that we are unable to fully exercise the inalienable rights and privileges guaranteed by our Constitution?

In the South, a strictly agricultural section of our country, the condition of farm hands is still worse. For years the people of those States have boasted of their "cheap labor." And the system practised in many localities is really a species of peonage. And generally speaking the industrial and social system of the South is such that to the farm hands political liberty is a mockery and a farce. We hear a great deal about the troubles that grow out of the race question. But the fact is, existing race prejudice is cleverly used to cover up and disguise the real and the deeper wrongs and evils that grow out of their social system, which is a remnant of a former age, when kings ruled, supported by an aristocratic class. The farm hands are regarded as a servile and menial class. It is customary in that country to speak of working people, of both sexes, and white as well as black, as a distinctively laboring class, and as an inferior and subordinate part of society.

And in the great West- the far West that land of romance and intense reality, the condition of farm hands is far from desirable. In some localities they already are a sort of wage-working peasantry, the land being owned by wealthy landlords or great corporations. The public hears much about the owners of those vast farms. We hear all about their home life, the accomplishments of their wives and daughters, and of their social relations. We get minute descriptions of their estates and of their costly homes. We are told of the number of servants they employ, and of the number of horses in their stables. Our knowledge of the people of that country is confined to the very few rich landholders and their families.

Of the laboring masses of that country whose labor has transformed wilderness and prairie into wealthy States, of the men whose brain and brawn have improved those farms