N

ORMALCY and me came to some hard blows during the late onslaught. It was mostly a running fight. The strategy used in various attempts to sling a double roll onto a sizeable meal ticket should have won an honorable mention. This line of tactics, however, is still listed under the head of "Unremunerative Pursuits" by the income tax collectors.

After a mosquito season up in the New Porcupine galena prospect holes of the Hudson Bay country I followed the geese down and drew up in Cleveland, Ohio, just at the time that President Harding took his nineteenth vacation in a new golfing suit.

Cleveland is not exactly a logging center nor a place for prospectors to hang out in. But, thinks I, "Tightline Johnson, as a genuine American of Scotch-Irish-Norwegian extraction, should see America first," so I ambled up Euclid Avenue from the well known Cuyahoga River with both eyes peeled. At Ninth street I stood watching ten policemen guarantee the safe passage of a limousine straight ahead with no turns, when who should walk up on one end of a two-bit cigar but my old Tilicum on a British Columbia construction job.

"Tightline Johnson! You Damned Old Bum, You! How in hell did you come to blow in this burg? How are the wobs? When did you leave the North Pole?"

These and similar sentiments enlivened the air and amused the populace.

It was Ed Rumbo, the Polish kid that I had fished out of a rock fall in a tunnel up on the Grand Trunk Pacific ten years ago. He was a bright lad and had taken in all the language I poured out about social progress and labor organization in them by-gone days. But he had a peculiar slant even then. Maybe it was because he had gone to a technical school and was always doping out some engineering feature or other. Anyway, the rotten conditions and the petty meannesses of the boss never seemed to get his goat in a personal way. He got excited about all this stuff because it was "inefficient." We used to call him "Efficiency Ed."

I remember when I fished him out from under the punky caps and posts that had been responsible for the cave-in. He said, "Christ! Sticking in those rotten timbers is a hell of a poor policy. It don't pay. It ain't efficient!" And him alive only because of a hundred to one chance!

It ain't no exaggeration to say that I was glad to see this lad. Bein' out in that northern brush country all summer and not havin' kept in touch with things in general, I was somewhat concerned

as to prospects for interior decoration during the coming winter.

"Ed," says I, "I'm still poor but honest. Likewise, that is the same condition the wobs is in. Yet it sticks in my mind that through the operation of the union and some displays of solidarity a lot of us are a damn sight richer than we were during them notable days up in B. C. on the Canadian Northern.

"Maybe we haven't exactly become bloated aristocrats like you yourself now, but our habits is changin' right along. For instance, it is becomin' stylish with a lot of us birds to take to T-bone steaks instead of the regulation choice between pig knuckles, liver and onions, or cremated spuds, all vulcanized with grease from the same cook shack

can.

"The old rations of coffee that would float a horseshoe, and doughnuts that would sink a mudscow, is passé these days. We wobs are striving after the higher life.

"We have took a lot of our burdens to the boss these last long years, Sonny, and let him carry 'em. For instance, the well known crumb hatcheries of olden days are not so numerous on the skidroad around Seattle. Maybe some other places have not yet abolished the balloons, but they were on their way when I last heard from civilization."

"Come on along," says Ed, with the same old grin that had decorated his face when I used to get eloquent on the grub subject years before. "I am running a little building job here in Cleveland just at present and have to get back on the works. Come on over to the shanty for awhile and we'll see if we can't dope out something of immediate value to your future."

We hikes up the street and turns into an alley leading up to one of the biggest building jobs I ever seen. In the office shack Ed and me goes into the little private room with a name on the door "Mr. Rumbo." My old friend Ed was the superintendent on the job.

We loaded up the old corncobs and chatters away most of an hour. It was the first time that I ever talked that long to a superintendent without him havin' some murderous designs on my life or liberty. Ed's viewpoint was this:

"The worst trouble with the capitalist system is that it don't give a guy a chance to find proper expression for his instincts, even though he wants to be a good willing slave and knuckle up to a job. When you boil all of your propaganda down to a

INDUSTRIAL PIONEER

nutshell your demands seem to me to be for a greater share in life as it can be lived, of course keeping a weather eye open for the day when the whole works can be reorganized on a more efficient basis.

"Your way," continued Ed, "may be the only right way. It may be that when I take a job like this, and because of my ability to handle the engineering features of this job in a way that no one else can do, that I am retarding your work. But I don't think so. Here is my system: I have discovered by actual experience that the best way to handle men is to co-operate with them instead of try to drive them. Especially on these big building jobs is this true. It don't count much to be able to drive a crew of men here. What counts is to have each section and unit of the job work together with the other units. Job co-ordination will get more speed and efficiency on this job than any other factor.

"A lazy guy like yourself, Tightline, may be more valuable as an employe than two goofs that are scared to death of the boss and hop around brainlessly trying to bull everything through. The guy that takes it easy and schemes out a dozen ways to make the machinery do the work for him is twice as efficient as the lickspittle type of plug who goes off his nut if the boss pokes his head around the corner.

"Because I learned a lot about human nature and class consciousness I can get results with less friction than most of the superintendents on such jobs. But, Tightline, I am of the opinion that over and above the class consciousness of labor there is something else just as big and more stable, and that is the human instincts. Capitalist management don't consider the human instincts, and that is why it is largely inefficient."

This ain't exactly the way he put it up, but it's the way I remember it. I naturally tore into these remarks. I agreed with most of his stuff, but I took it up where he left off.

"One of the instincts of this human animal," says I, "is hunger. When a plug gets hungry he wants to eat, and if he isn't being fed because of the operation of another human instinct, greed, which is one of the main endowments of the capitalist make-up, why, then right there is where two instincts are workin' in opposite directions, and human nature ain't goin' to agree with itself. In other words, the old class struggle may have a basis in our human instincts, but it is based on the economic conditions of the present system.

"Ed," I continued, "the only way to arrange for a normal and sensible expression of the instincts is to fix things in this world so that we can all have a go at expression. Maybe you can fix up a job so that it is better arranged for the men and they have a better chance on it than on others, but you says a minute ago that you were the only one.

"I pat myself on the back at this modest admission of yours. My hairy chest sticks out so far that if I had any vest on it would be buttonless from now

on.

For you must not forget that your early training at my hands had a lot to do with your ideas. "It is tough on the world that for the last ten years you have been out of reach of superior educators like myself. Think what you might have made of such opportunities, my boy, if I had only been at your elbow.

"But I have to agree with you in one thing. Every reform that the boss installs against his will seems to be profitable for him. When they put blankets in the camps on the coast they proceeded to get more service out of the men during the first few days of labor. A man that has carried a load that a jackass would refuse, hoofing it all day up to one of those camps, is in no mood to go out and knock down a forest with his mighty muscles next morning.

"Clean sheets and spring beds revive a tired worker, and the boss gets the benefit. Now suppose that we encouraged the lumber barons to install neat little cottages in these camps, and even went so far with our natural urges as to get married to some misguided young female with long blond hair or bobbed brunette locks, the boss would commence to make a profit from this arrangement right away!

"The boss has the human instinct of greed, plus obedience to habits. Even though it would pay him better to see that every instinct of the workers on the job was given a chance to express itself in a normal and helpful way, he is so damned reactionary that he wouldn't do it.

"For instance, high wages may knock a hole in the pockets of some of your contractors. But the boys that get the high wages and the bigger return can build a home of their own, and so the contractor gets more work in the long run. So it goes all the way through. Every time we take a crack at the boss for more pork chops and other things he sneaks around and gets some benefit out of it. But the way to get these benefits for ourselves is by the route of the class struggle, and not by turning into a cigar puffin' superintendent.

"Furthermore," says I, "I am impatient of having a flock of plugs on hand to keep sneakin' around appropriatin' the benefit from every improvement that I force them to make in my own conditions. Do you think that it is a law of the universe that I have to go out and fight for my own interests with a lowbred class of Babbitts, and worse, every time I want to improve my own conditions? Do you think that this same document provides that every time I give the boss a wallop and make him come across with some things for my benefit, that it should only make him better off in the long run?

"Exploitation is the natural born child of capitalism. To get rid of one, the other has to go."

EARS ago we used to hear a great deal about the American farmer. He was the basis of democracy, the backbone of the country. Unlike the peasant of Europe, he had no overlord, but was free and independent. Owning and operating his own small freehold he was the great individualist and conservative, a strong bulwark against socialism or any other theory of collective ownership of land and industry. He was the upstanding refutation of the latter and its eternal repudiation.

Today we still hear a great deal about John Farmer. But it is no longer eulogistic. In fact, his friends of yore are now "bawling" him out. They talk about sacrificing him and his farming to big industry and big centralized cities. They also say that he is about twenty-five per cent too numerous. And they no longer consider his small occupancy of the land a permanent feature, but an undesirable one that should be ended. As for his sterling individualism and staunch conservatism, with their deadly enmity to socialism-well, that's overlooked. He's doomed; that's all.

It is an interesting, nay, a stupendous revolution that has taken place in the attitude towards farmers and farming. Its profundity will only be realized. in years to come. But some of its deep significance and far-reaching consequences can be glimpsed

even now.

England's Choice

The first peep was given by Henry C. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, in a recent address to the Chicago Credit Men's Association. Discussing whether this country is to be an essentially agricultural or industrial nation, Wallace referred to England and the crisis industrial development forced on it about two hundred years ago. "In that crisis," said Wallace, "England decided to sacrifice agriculture to industry and history has proved the wisdom of the choice."

Here we have the first intimation of a program of agricultural sacrifice. Its practical application has elicited the following comment, as it were, from Julius H. Barnes, president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce:

"If the purpose of the government and bankers is to reduce the farmer to the level of the old world peasants, with a hut to live in and just enough

food to keep him alive, then I'll say we are on the right road."

While this is biting, it is not accurate criticism. The aim is not one of reduction, but of destruction. Not an alteration in, but an extermination of, the farmer's status. It is not a question of increasing tenantry or peonage, but of driving the farmer into the factory, there to compete with the industrial worker of the city. That was England's achievement in the great industrial revolution of two hundred years ago. It looks as if it would be the U. S. achievement in the greater industrial revolution now confronting it and the world. Even now, it is claimed by no less an authority than Barnes himself that the automobile, motion picture, electrical and chemical industries "are maintained by the release of workers from agricultural and other pursuits."

Depopulation of Farms

The trend from the farm to the city has been much discussed before this. But never has it appeared as the result of a deliberate policy. And never has it been combated as such, as is now the

case.

Farm population steadily tends to decrease, despite increases in other directions. During our last twenty-year period the number of farms has increased twelve per cent, acreage of improved land, twenty-one per cent, and yield of staple crops from thirty-six to sixty-seven per cent. Yet during the last ten years, from 1910 to 1920, the number of agricultural workers decreased 1,700,000, or fourteen per cent. This, it is claimed, is due to the increased use of machinery and implements, valued at fifty per cent, for the same period.

According to statistics, the farming population grows even more disproportionate to the rest of the population. That is, the farmers are being dwarfed into a relatively minor position in American life. They are no longer the preponderating element.

From 1890 to 1910 the farm population of the United States dropped from fifty-six to forty-five per cent of the total. In 1920 it had shrunk to forty per cent and is still shrinking. It is further estimated that the income of the farm population is only about seventeen per cent of the total instead of forty per cent as formerly. There are more

INDUSTRIAL PIONEER STRIAL

workers in factories than on farms today, with a relatively larger income.

This steady decline in farm percentages is held by some of the former friends of the farmer to be beneficial. Among these are the Hearst papers. These former valiant organs of middle class interests, that used to "roast" the "plunder bund," in the interests of the farmer, are now actively trying to make it appear that the farm policies of the "bund" are for the benefit of all. George Hinman, Hearst writer on financial and economic topics, decries the campaign against big centralized cities which has grown out of the farm depopulation movement. Curiously enough, he, too, like Wallace, cites England, saying:

"An English economist writes that without her larger cities and industries Great Britain could support only 15,000,000 population instead of 45,000,000 as now. In other words, 30,000,000 would have to move out."

Hinman concludes, "The progress of today is industrial progress. . . . The big cities and their industries have got to grow if the nation grows. Otherwise we stand still."

The Blessings of Imperialistic Capitalism Of course, there's another side to this question. They hold up England, too; but as a terrible warning. There's our eloquent and poetic friend, Covington Hall! He cried out against following the "wisdom" of England! He says it's folly and worse than criminal! Referring to the results of this policy he declares: "Two-thirds of the British people live on or below the line of poverty. . . . It was to hold her monopoly of machines and trade that England strained every nerve to become 'mistress of the sea' and to hold 'dominion over palm and pine.' . . . This is why England has warred with the United States, France and Germany so ruthlessly to save her monopoly of the trade of the world. . . . Hitch our 110,000,000 people to labor-saving machines, turn the flood-tide of their products into the markets of the world, and in less than a twelve-month, the factories of the United States will begin to shut down and the cry of 'overproduction' will be heard from every office in the land."

There we have it-greater industrial slums and hells of poverty, aggressive imperialism, war and "over-production" leading to tremendous panics and unemployed crises, such is the "wisdom" of England that the United States has set out to follow, under the policy of its industrial-financial overlords. In fact, this policy is already well under way. It is more than historic analogy or prophesy; it is a contemporaneous fact.

What are we going to do about it?

Covington Hall would call a halt to this policy. He sees an American imperialism and militarism rampant, as there is an English one, "unless the farmers and workers cease their foolish factional struggles, unite, and resist with all the power at

their command the purpose of the International Usurers and Junkers."

Since that was written the Farmers' National Council was warned March, 1923, against "a scheme to discourage farming in the United States and reduce land produce to home requirements." The council further states that "AN INCREASING NUMBER OF FARMERS, POSSIBLY A MILLION AND A HALF, WILL BE FORCED OFF THE FARMS WITHIN THE NEXT YEAR." This is confirmed by a student of conditions in the South. He contends that the trend there is to compel the big insurance companies to reorganize cotton cultivation on a corporation basis, in order to protect their mortgage investments. This will mean the death of both tenantry and peonage, wherever introduced. Over seven hundred thousand farmers have already left the farms of the Southland. With the new organization of cotton growing under way, this number will greatly increase, possibly double or treble.

Farm production and marketing tend further to become more stabilized under the auspices of cooperatives, which are dominated by wealthy farmers and bankers in agricultural centers. They make farm investments more attractive, and have already had such success as to enlist big capital and to secure the benefits of federal farm credits, to the detriment of the small farmer.

Educate the Farmers

Evidently, the tendency to farm depopulation has only begun. Further, judging from the inherent conditions tending to bring it about, it is irresistible. The farmer will increasingly be forced off the farm into the city. He will increasingly cease to be the bulwark of capitalism against socialism. What we should do is to point out to him his inevitable fate and prepare him for his destiny as a wage slave; lest embittered by his loss of status as a small property-owner, he become embittered against the organized labor movement and turns against it, to the further degradation of all concerned. This has already occurred in Detroit's building industries; for instance, where ex-farmers, fed on capitalist propaganda that "the exactions of labor unions tend to ruin the farmers," have become scabs because of taa anti-labor unionism thus instilled.

This should be our cue: Make the inevitable clear to the farmer, before, and not after the fact, and he will likely be your friend when it occurs. He will respect both your foresight and your interest.

As for the rest of the problem, let capitalism take care of that. Increasing poverty, imperialism, war, over-production, such as Hall predicts, apparently are unavoidable, and will shake the present system to its very foundations and lead to its final overthrow. Amid such conditions, industrial unionism, with its program of social reconstruction and vision of the workers' commonwealth, will be the best way out.