230 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

conclusions. The reason the cotton grower in the South can earn, as has been
proven, but 20 to 25 cents a day for his labor in producing his cotton crop is that
he can not multiply his efficiency by the use of labor-saving devices, nor, conversely,
 can he utilize his own time to the full because he can not afford to plant
and care for more cotton than he himself, with his family, can harvest. In other
words, his peak-labor demand limits his activities for the rest of the year.
Congressmen Box and Rutherford, the former from Texas, the latter from
Georgia, in the hearings, consistently maintained that itinerancy was unsound,
and that it should not be encouraged; that every person had a right to have a home
of his own and be able to live there.
To quote from the record:
“Mr. Box. I wonder if you and the people you represent realize that the
Nation can not have hundreds and thousands of men—can not safely have
them——drifting into conditions these men are in and are drifting into, moving
about from ome part of the country to another year after year. Do you not
realize that such is an unsound condition and dangerous to our society?
“I will illustrate my own case: I have farming interests in the State of Texas.
I employ colored labor and when I get one of those families on my place I have to
make arrangements to give the man and his family work in order that he may live
during the winter and spring before he starts his corn and cotton crop. I have to
do that if I want to keep that family. The family can not, obviously, live on air.
If I should turn him loose, he and his family would drift about and would not be
any use when he got back to me after a few months’ roaming about. I am
wondering whether your people are devoting themselves to working out that
situation, so that we may have American citizens on our places, people we may
honor a respect and who will become a desirable part of our regular order of
society?”
An appliation of the facts just cited from Mr. Carr leads, I believe, to the
inevitable conclusion that there are three ways our for the American farmer.

CHOICE OF TARMING SYSTEMS

One is to follow the suggestions of Congressman Box and others, to do away
with itinerant laborers and have our people settle down in a locality and operate
our farms on a ‘‘one-man-one-farm’ basis, thus bringing them to practical
peasantry, as these men admit is the case now in the South.
Another is to encourage our American farmers to make the most of what they
have and of what is in them by enabling them profitably to employ their own
labor throughout the entire year, or practically so, and then, through the use of
itinerant labor, moving fom one crop peak to another, as they do in the South
west, make it possible to increase the efficiency of the individual farmer and
automatically multiply his earning power by his increased ability to produce.
Another alternative, which we might discuss here very briefly, is the development
 of an entirely new system of handling both industry and agriculture in this
country, by so decentralizing industry that the employees of industry may live on
and operate their ‘‘one-man’ farms and may utilize their spare hours, which wil}
be many, in industrial employment.
Such a plan will tend to equalize the economie status of the industrial worker
and the farmer by combining the two into one. In doing so it will reduce the earning
 capacity of the industrial plan during the peak of crop labor demands, but will
on the other hand bring up the returns to the farmer because of his more efficient
and continuous use of his spare time. This will undoubtedly do away with the
problem of itinerancy, but no one will seriously believe that such a plan would be
accepted by the industrial worker in this country. Are you willing that the
American farmer demand such a step as the only other alternative to peasantry,
which he will not and should not accept?

THE PRACTICAL SOLUTION

The one answer that we can see, therefore, is an attempt on the part of our
people to maintain in a reasonably prosperous and satisfied condition a group of
people who will supply the demands for peak labor loads, and when these are past
in any one place move on to the peak load in another locality, thereby utilizing
their own efforts over as large a portion of the year as possible and increasing the
return to all classes using this type of labor. .
We realize fully that we are proposing a number of alternatives, none of which
are ideal, but we are up against hard facts. and until some one finds a proposal