ing,
shelter, or education. If, however, a man produces four times as much
food as he and his family consume, he may exchange one-fourth for
shelter, one-fourth for clothing and have remaining a fourth for
education, and recreation or savings. This is only another way of
saying that the greater the amount of any useful commodity produced by
a single day's labor the larger will be the laborer's income or wages.

Although the increase in intensive agriculture and the diversification
in farming tend to increase the need of farm laborers, the introduction
of farm machinery has much more than offset this demand. The tendency
of farm laborers to become farm tenants; or, to state it in other
words, the tendency of landowners to rent their land rather than to
continue to operate it themselves, is not without its influence upon
the labor problem.

The invention and introduction of farm machinery has accentuated the
difficulty of keeping the farm laborer continuously employed. The
decrease in the demand for farm labor and the increasing lack of
uniformity in the amount required have caused a gradual depletion of
the smaller villages and hamlets which were a source of labor supply
during harvest and other busy seasons.

The problem of keeping labor continuously employed has always been a
difficult one on the farm, because of the change of seasons and
because of the variations in the weather from day to day. There is a
wide difference between those industries which are carried on within
doors and farming, which is subject to the caprices of the weather.
Natural causes produce tremendous variations in the return for labor.
For example, in 1901 there were produced in the aggregate 3,006
million bushels of wheat, maize and oats, while in 1902 there were
harvested 4,180 million bushels. Here is an increase of over a
thousand million bushels. The same farmers tilled the same soil in the
same way as far as natural causes would allow, and yet there was a
difference in result amounting to 39 per cent. A variation of one
hundred million bushels of wheat from year to year, due to climatic
conditions solely, is not at all unusual.

The manufacturer also has far greater control of his labor. When it
rains, he has a roof over his workmen, and hence the work is not
interrupted. When it grows dark, he turns on the light and the work
continues. If it gets cold, he lights the fire and still the work
continues comfortably. It is not so in agric