| Show AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION C President JORDAN of the LELAND STAFFORD STAF-FORD Jr university discusses Agricultural Agricult-ural Depression and Waste of Time in the current number of the Forum presenting a paper which furnishes much food for thought but which we apprehend will be crenerally regarded as the elaboration of a theorist and therefore of little value He charges the farmers with idleness and to that fault attributes much of the depression depres-sion to which agriculture is subject He cites as an illustration of his theory his experience ex-perience ono day at a little railway station in i Indiana A commercial tiavellor dealing in groceries grocer-ies and tobacco got off a crate of live chickens was put on and the cars stat d again The stopping of a train was no rare sight in that Illage for it happens two or three times every day The pcope had no welcome for the commercIal com-mercial traveller no tears wore shed over the departure of the chickens yet on tho station steps I counted foity men and boys wbo were there nhsn the train came in farm boys who ought to have been at work in the field village boys who might have been doing something s somewher every interest of economics and I a sthetics alike calling them away Irom the vii l age and off to the farms Two men attended t o all t c business of the siatioti The solitary passenger vent his own way The rest were here because they had not the moral strength t o go anywhere else They stood there on the stepS embodied ghost d al to all lfe and hooe with only force enough to stand aroacd and gaPe Just such incidents are happening all the time and may be noted at every station in the country but why should they be cited to sustain the position that agricultural depression de-pression is due to the idleness of farmers Aa well might it be argued that the depression de-pression in the building trades is duo to the fact that lines of men and boys bang about a building in the course of erection Any day of the week we can find a number num-ber of men leaning on the fences surrounding surround-ing collars being dug or walls being laid but what does this teach l If one will in quireas to tho idle men he wili learn that a i large percentage of them are loafers from choice and that a few are not working work-ing for the reason that they can find no paying employment Their idleness tells of depression in their own individual affairs and not in any special industries Professor JORDAN is undoubtedly undoubt-edly correct in the assumption that there is too much idleness this applying to all classes of laborers If the farmers would work harder and put in more hours they would undoubtedly be more prosperous their labor being capital so if masons carpenters car-penters artisans of every kmd and laborers generally were to work fourteen or sixteen hours instead of eight nine or ten they would earn and receive more money they would die earlier it is true but they would L leave more cash if there were no idleness I in this world all men working all the time I they were not eating or sleeping at some wealthproducing industry there would be less of want and suffering in this world President JOHDAN is correct enough in theory as to the effects of idleness but why should he make the application to the hardest hard-est working of our laboring people As a class the farmers are hardworking and industrious in-dustrious giving more hours a day to toll than the day laborer for wages would think of putting in There are comparatively compara-tively few loafers among agriculturists and farmers sons are less given to the habis of idleness than the boys of other people If the professor had arraigned idleness idle-ness in general and sought for the causes of agribulturai depression in bad legislation we believe he would have hit closer to the mark and his paper would certainly havo had a better effect |
