factory life. Indeed, there is a detectable tendency to absorb her into the factory, a tendency hastened by the sweating investigations, workshop acts, the trades unions slowly being formed among sewing women, and one might add by the conscience more slowly still being evolved amongst the consumers in regard to clothing manufactured in tenement houses. These causes all operate toward the establishment of factories.[1]
Farming is another unorganized industry depending upon isolated workers, which is not in the least holding its own in our industrial development. There are doubtless many causes to explain the increase of cities, and the steady depopulation of the country. In a careful estimate, however, it should not be ignored that the farmer relies more and more upon the labor of the few people living upon his farm. The gathering together of all the neighbors for hay-making and house-raising, the apple-paring parties, and the corn-husking bees are all experiences of the past. These mixed the pleasures of social intercourse with the labor of production, and implied the vicinage in their very conception.
Much discussion has of late been expended on the discontent of the farmer. It has been discovered that while one-half of the entire population of the United States is agricultural, in the last two decades this one-half of the population have amassed but one-tenth of the wealth of the country. This failure to amass their share of wealth, in spite of their almost incessant exertions, doubtless arises chiefly from the lack of association and cooperation among farmers, from the diffusion rather than the concentration of their energies. To quote from a recent writer, in the Forum, "Not only does a lack of organized effort among farmers result in much misdirected energy and consequent economic loss, but it works an even more serious injury by placing the farmer population at a disadvantage in the great industrial contest in which other and coordinated industries—by virtue of their ability for thorough concentration and organization—have a superior advantage. The American farmer has not yet mastered the
- ↑ The industrial and ethical situation of the sewing woman has been so fully discussed in "Hull-House Maps and Papers" that it is needless to repeat it here. (See pp. 27–45, 184–187.)
