THE CALL OF THE FARM.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LV, Issue 14020, 27 September 1909, Page 6

THE CALL OF THE FARM.

AGGREGATION OF POPULATION

In connection with tho remarks niado by Mr. J. J. Hill, the railway magnate, concerning the increasing debertion of tho country tor the town, the following from the American journal*, is interesting: — Many others besides James J. Hill see in the "return to the soil" ot a Urge part of our population the onlj liolM' of rescue from high prices nnd tood scarcity. In an interview in the New York American John \V. Gates is quoted as saying . "This country has not yet been scratched yet in the way ot development, especially in agriculture. There is Texas, with 20 to 23 per cent, more area than France, and Texas has 4,000,000 imputation, while Franco has about 38,000,000, and tho French are a prosperous people. Take Cahiornia, with its 3,000,000 population. It has the area of Germany, while the lastnamed country has 60,000,000, and Germany is one of the most prosperous countries in the world." i In the same paper Secretary James Wilson, ot the United States Department of Agriculture, corroborating Mr. Hill and Mr Gates., argues thus in behalf oi agricultural education a* a means ol turning the tide that during the last fifty years has been draining the rural communities and flooding the towns to congestion : "Most of our colleges to-day are strenuously at work turning out lawyers, doctors, preachers, and typewriters, but tew ol them make an> eifort to graduate a farmer I would have agriculture in some I" 1 11" 1 taught in every seat ot learning and in our public schools. "Starting with the lact that while tho farmer has, to work hard, he has as a reward better henlth. n longer life, and a more independent existence than am other man <n eaith, it ought to be easy to make the life attractive. "Then'l would have the >ou»g men taught the newest and latest methods ot agriculture. Show them how they can produce more trom an acre than their fathers did, prove to them how to make 10s. where tlicir fathers made but ss. and you will have offered the inducement needed to check the abandonment of the farm for the city And now that the papers pictorially and editorially are echoing the call from the grain-fields for labour to aid in Catherine in the crop, the Indianapolis News thus explains the reluctance that the unemployed city labourer manifests toward hastening to tho wheat country: "The annual call has come irom the West tor harvest hands. Fifty thousand of them are said to be needed this , Par to start the wheat and other grain crops on their way toward the consumer. Doubtless there are many more than 50,000 men in the count ry wn would Ik- glad to 'iavo this work; but the distance between the man and the job is long, and to the man in. urgent need of work the railroad fare is practically prohibited. Aside from this many such men have families which they are maintaining, poorly enough it must be confessed, but in some way or other- perhaps by eking out a little money here and there from odd joKs. Thcso families they would necessarily have to leave behind them to get along in some way or other until money wnod in the fields could bo sent to them. "Nor is that the only complication. Work in the harvest field is not a steady job. It may pay comparatively well while it lasts, but it is soon over, and at the conclusion of it the labouroi may find himself far away from his family with scant prospect of other means of maintaining either it or himself, and a serious problem before him when he considers the means of Retting back to the place he calls home. The News hopes for a remedy through "the encouragement of a gradual movement away from urban congestion, and the dispersal of labour over a greater area so that it will be more readily available ( for the neceßsarv work of the time." Meanwhile The Wall Street Journal presents a brighter prospect in this picturesque review of the great march of the world's harvest line : "Harvesting operations at this season of the year extend the greater way around the globe on a line which coincides approximately with the fortyfirst degree of north latitude. On a level with New York and Northern Pennsylvania, with the lower lake districts and westward across the Mississippi plain to the North Pacific States, there is a line of reapers which day by day moves a little farther north, until the entire winter wheat belt is reaped and the shock stands in the field for tho curing which precedes the threshing. Of this kind of grain the United States alone is expected to furnish this year at least 410,000,000 bushels. "But the line of reapers does not end with the VVestern Continent. In tiuropc it is high tide in the harvest calendar. In Northern France, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, east along the Danube and the north shores of the Black Sea into Bessarabia and thr Volga V alley of Southern Russia. Far over into tfie Caucasus harvest comes a little earlier, and down in the Anatolian region of Asia Minor they finished the work of harvesting fully a month "By this time of year probably twothirds of the wheat of the world is cut. Within a month more nearly nil of it will be safely garnered. At this time it is safe to say that 2,000,000,000 bushels, out of 3,250,000,000 bushels, which constitutes the world's crop, are practically out of danger. That is to say, even though our own spring wheat harvest in the Northwest is just reaching the point at which they are calling for labour to help in harvest, easily the major portion of the world's bread supply is now under cover. "The expectation of months of work and waiting is realised and the rowan' of tho toiler will l>e far more liberal than usual iii the comparatively high prices which wheat commands in every commercial centre of the world. Whether it bo in the rich granary of our great interior wheat States, or in the heavily set growth of Central Europe, or in the small yielding acres of North Africa, or in the remote plains of Damascus, where the American reaper and thresher have begun to influence the output, the grower of wheat generally is getting from 25 to 40 per cent, more this year for his product than a year ago. "From now until the snow flies the harvest line will move more rapidly northward. Its extreme limit will this year go somewhat farther north, thanks to tho Saskatchewan wheat-grower, than ever before. For wheat is a pioneering_ crop and lays the foundation for the firmer grasp of man on the problems of developing the resources of nature. Higher values have pushed out tho domains of wheat-growing, and the harvest line this year will be flung out a little farther than m any carhci year of the world's wheat history."