and made them fruitful, the world hears nothing whatever. Neither does the world hear aught of the women and girls employed in those homes, whose labor and fidelity make possible the lavish hospitality for which those homes are famous. Their very identity is lost in the term "servant." These workers are known to the world only as things, as the employees of some rich person. These are an "unknown factor," though the most important one.

In that section of the country, conditions are such that farm hands merely exist - simply stay on the farms where they are employed. They have places to eat and sleep, something like the horses they drive. But those places lack all the true elements of home, as civilized people understand that term. They do not have such places as other workingmen expect to find in lodging-houses and boarding-places. Living in such a manner, they are unable to come in social contact with any other portion of the community; they really exist outside the pale of society. Practically they are not a recognized part of the community in which they are employed.

Herein lies a grave danger. Such injustice must eventually react against society. When men have no place that seems to them a home, and no social ties, they lack the attachments necessary to make them love some spot of earth and some community of people. Men thus situated cannot feel the love and respect for their country that American citizens should feel. And when it is observed that throughout this entire country important laws and measures that involve all of our interests and opportunities in life are adopted and carried into effect in utter contempt of our rights and wishes, it would not be strange if we should gradually grow to feel that we have no real interest in our government and the laws that support it. Such classes are liable to become a menace to society and to the government. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that farm hands are the American proletariat.

But the condition of the farmer's "hired girls" is even worse than that of the hired men. I know of no class of respectable people who are so completely helpless as these hired girls employed in farmers' kitchens. They are almost

entirely at the mercy of employers and employers' families. They have no "evenings off;" they know no conditions save the arbitrary will of the employer. And the public seems to think those girls are entitled to no encouragement or protection whatever. I do not exaggerate when I say that society and public opinion do not accord them any real rights at all. It is a well-known fact that girls will accept almost any kind of employment in city or town rather than work as hired girl on a farm.

It is a most unfortunate fact that the "Farmers' Movement," which has attracted so much attention during the past few years, has done almost nothing toward improving the conditions that are so intolerable to the wage-earning people of the farms. In fact, from the standpoint of the farm hand and of the workingman, that movement was objectionable from the very beginning. Its promoters claimed that it was a social as well as an industrial movement, and was designed for the benefit and the uplifting of the lower classes of society and of the agricultural people. Yet the lowest and the humblest class of the farming people themselves were entirely ignored. Not even a voice was raised in their behalf.

We were told that it was a labor movement as well as a farmers' movement, and that its aim was to help the laboring classes and coöperate with the established labor movement. Yet the most helpless and neglected of all the wage-earning classes the farm hands-the one class most intimately connected with the farmers' interests, and the one class that should receive benefit from a farmers' movement, was wholly neglected. Again the farm hand is an unknown quantity.

But the real difficulty arises from the fact that all such farmers' movements as the Grange and the Farmers' Alliance have been economically wrong. They were based on erroneous ideas and false theories. The one essential sentiment, the motive force, of the movement was the very common belief, that landowning farmers, simply by virtue of the fact that they are landholders, are entitled to some sort of special considerations and to certain special rights and privileges. Even in this country landownership still carries with it enough of the old ideas and traditions to cause landholders to claim cer

tain rights that only might makes. There is a disposition to claim concessions from society, or from the rest of the people, because they hold exclusive right to the land.

These things cause landholders as a class to lose sight of the rights and the welfare of their own employees and tenants. And if those ideas and the sentiments fostered by those farmers' movements continue to exert a controlling influence over the legislation of the several States and over our judiciary, it will not be many years until we find ourselves subject to an array of oppressive land laws and to a vicious system of landlordism, with its inevitable train of evils its "rack rents" and its "evictions." If the present trend continues it will not be long before we are in the midst of an agitation of the land question that will try the stability of our institutions as it has never yet been tried. We have found that our republic has the power to withstand the rudest shock that may occur from a sectional rebellion. But the land question directly affects the rights and interests of every person living under our government.

The time has certainly come when all the economic questions of the day, including the land question, ought to be studied and presented from the standpoint of the wage-earners of the farming industry and of the entire non-landowning class of rural society. As a class, we, the farm hands, are just as much interested in everything pertaining to the labor question as any other workingmen. And all agricultural problems concern our welfare just as they concern that of the farmers themselves. And a study from our standpoint is very important because there are some phases of those questions that are scarcely discernible from any other. And it would seem that among the lower (?) classes of the rural people is the proper place to begin a thorough study of social problems.

Most people seem to think there can be no real land question in this extensive country of ours. But there are already laws upon the statute books of many of our Western States, that, under conditions now almost upon us, will become sorely oppressive, and give landlords, great and small, undue power over renting and wage-earning farmers. And we have sud

denly come to a point at which the whole problem changes. The public domain is now practically exhausted. Somebody owns all the desirable land. The farm hand and the landless farmer can no longer become landholders by simply accepting farms from the government. Somebody now dictates the terms upon which the landless may become landholders. They must now pay tribute to some person or corporation if they would own farms. Heretofore the unoccupied territory of the West has given the landless class a ready means of escape from undesirable conditions. But now that their means of escape has ceased to exist, the farm hands and tenant farmers will be forced to strive to make conditions tolerable within the domain of established society.

Here we must notice a strong tendency to extensive landlordism that promises ill to this country. Heretofore we have hugged the delusion that farms become divided and subdivided as the country grows older. But now we see everywhere a tendency to increase the size of farms. Successful farmers buy all the adjoining farms they can; often they "squeeze out" their less fortunate neighbors in the most heartless manner. In the Eastern States, especially, rich persons are purchasing vast estates, closing public highways, and making other changes with an utter disregard for the present and future rights of the people. In other places large areas of land are purchased and held as investments. And in the West numbers of men own estates many miles in extent, some of them almost as large as our smaller sovereign States, others larger than some of the little principalities of Europe. And the owners of those estates rule over the people who reside on them with an arbitrary power that might be envied by the rulers of the European principalities.

In view of these things a few of our most thoughtful people are becoming seriously apprehensive. They do not fear a scarcity of land, but they believe that the existence of such vast estates is an evil, because they give the owners a degree of power that is incompatible with a condition of liberty and equality. It is easy to conceive the possibility of an entire State being owned by a very few men. In that case those men would practically dictate and control the affairs of the

State by virtue of actual ownership. Even now it is by no means an unheard-of thing for one man to own an entire county. And in some localities there are instances of two, or three, or a half-dozen men controlling the municipal affairs of a town by right (?) of ownership. They control because they happen to own enough of the visible property — that is, enough of the houses and lots which constitute the town to give them such control.

Believing the theory which generally obtains among the landholding people, that the right of the landowner is absolute and subject to no "lord paramount," to no conditions, nor to the will of any existing power, such men naturally claim the right to entire control over land in all its relations. And whenever they have the power they dictate all measures affecting their property interests, without regard for the rights and wishes of the public. It is quite possible that entire States may at some time be controlled in the same manner.

But the majority of the class of people for which I now speak are not socialists or disciples of Henry George and his school of "Single-Taxers." Though we know that our system of land tenure is not founded upon any essential principle of equity or right, we have no desire to dispossess people of their farms, or to revolutionize the land system of this country. Its only foundation is our consent the consent of the people. We know there is no such a thing as a real, absolute right of private, exclusive ownership to a piece of land. But as the people are agreed that, for the present, private ownership is the most satisfactory solution of the problem, we farm hands are not ready to rebel against that system.

But we do believe that all laws pertaining to land, and to the privileges and duties of the owners should take full cognizance of all the natural or personal rights of the people, individually and collectively. We demand that such laws shall be so adjusted that they will give the landless classes an absolute and unquestionable right to an abode upon the soil of our own country. At present we live here upon our native soil only by someone's consent, tacitly or expressly given. Under our laws, if they were carried to their logical conclusion, the landowners could compel us to move on and