Community Civics and Rural Life Part 22

In quarantining a state, or portion of a state, the Department acts by authority of laws pa.s.sed by Congress under its power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce (Const.i.tution, Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 3). By the same authority, all cattle for export and all imported from foreign countries are inspected and those diseased excluded. Slaughter houses and meat-packing establishments where meat is packed for interstate or foreign commerce are inspected; meat that is unfit for use being condemned, while that which is good has the government stamp placed upon it. Such measures are primarily health measures (see Chapter XX), but they have great economic value.

In a similar manner imported seeds, plants, and plant products are inspected to prevent the importation of plant diseases and plant pests, and also to prevent adulteration of plant products.

Warehouses are inspected and licenses granted to those that are suitable for the proper storage of cotton, grains, tobacco, flaxseed, and wool. The Department enforces the laws that fix the standards for grading cotton and grain, and licenses grain inspectors. It also enforces the Food and Drugs Act (see Chapter XX).

Topics for investigation:

Difficulties experienced by farmers in your locality in marketing produce or livestock.

a.s.sistance received from the United States Department of Agriculture to overcome the difficulties.

Experiments in cooperative marketing in your locality.

Products of your locality that require storage facilities.

Adequacy of storage facilities.

Transportation needs of your locality. Improvements in transportation facilities in recent years.

Consult your county agent, or write to the Office of Farm Management, for publications relating to farm management, farm accounting, etc.

Discuss with farmers of your acquaintance the extent to which they find farm accounts and farm records useful.

Diseases of livestock prevalent in your locality and state.

Experiments in cooperation to eradicate these diseases. a.s.sistance received from the Department of Agriculture.

Crops of foreign origin raised in your locality. Countries from which introduced.

Destructive plant diseases and plant pests of your locality.

Efforts to combat them.

Importance of bird migrations to the farmers of your locality.

Extent of protection afforded birds. How you cooperate in this matter.

Importance of these various farmers' problems to the people in town--the housekeeper, the merchant, the manufacturer, the railroad companies.

Cases of animal quarantine occurring in your locality.

Why warehouses for food products, cotton, etc., should be licensed. What "licensing" means.

How grain, cotton, or other products are "graded." The reason for grading. Why there needs to be a law on the subject.

SERVICE OF OTHER DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT

While the business interests of the farmer, and indeed many of his other interests, such as health, education, and social life, are especially looked after by the Department of Agriculture, he shares with all other citizens the services of all the other departments of government, each of which also has its elaborate organization (see Chapter XXVII). It is the Treasury Department, for example, acting under authority given to it by Congress, that provides the people with their system of money and with a banking system, both of which are great cooperative devices. The Department of Commerce serves the farmer directly by discovering markets for his products in every part of the world, and indirectly by everything it does to promote the country's commerce. The rural mail delivery, the parcel post, and the motor truck service of the Post Office Department are of untold value to the farmer (see Chapter XVIII). The Department of the Interior has supervision over the public lands, the reclamation of arid lands, and the development of mineral resources (Chapters XIV, XV).

THE QUESTION OF LABOR SUPPLY

The question of labor supply is one of the most serious questions which the farmer has to face. It is one that he must help to solve for himself:

As soon as work on the farms is organized, and employment is made steady for all help, just so soon will a better cla.s.s of laborers be attracted to the farm. As the farm-owner wishes life to be free from eternal drudgery for himself and family, yielding the fruits of happiness, leisure, and culture, he would do well to consent and arrange to give the farm hand who shares the shelter of his roof a fair chance at the same benefits. The laborer wants regular hours, a chance for recreation, a good place to live in, and enough wages to maintain a family according to American standards.

[Footnote: W.J. Dougan and M.W. Leiserson in "Rural Social Problems," Fourth Annual Report Wisconsin Country Life Conference, quoted in Nourse, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS pp. 258-260.]

But there are aspects of the labor problem over which the farmer by his own unaided efforts can have little control. One of these is the problem of bringing the laborer and the job together (see Chapter XI, p. 133). The work of the Employment Service in the Department of Labor during the recent war affords a striking ill.u.s.tration of cooperation secured through an agency of government.

THE UNITED STATES EMPLOYMENT SERVICE

The Employment Service had been created in 1914, but was rapidly developed during the war to meet the demand for farm labor to provide a food supply adequate to war needs. The main offices of Employment Service were with the Department of Labor in Washington. But each state had a federal director of employment, and branch offices were established in local communities. The success of the whole scheme depended, first of all, upon cooperation between national, state, and local governments.

Thousands of county agents and local rural community organizations discovered and reported local needs to local employment offices, which in turn distributed the information by means of the district, state, and national organizations. Fifty-five thousand post offices became farm-labor employment agencies, postmasters and rural carriers acting as agents. Railroads cooperated both in reporting needs for the districts through which they run and in distributing labor to the points where needed. Newspaper offices served as employment bureaus. The operators of nearly 8000 rural telephone companies weekly called up the homes of two million farmers to inquire as to needs. State and county councils of defense, chambers of commerce, labor unions, farmers'

organizations, and other volunteer agencies afforded channels through which the farmer and the laborer were brought together.

From January to the end of October 1918, approximately 2,500,000 workers were directed to employment (not all farm workers). In that year the enormous wheat crop of the western states was entirely harvested by labor forces organized and moving northward as the harvest ripened. "Teamwork between the county agricultural agents and farm-help specialists of the Department of Agriculture and the harvest emergency force of the United States Employment Service is considered largely responsible for the excellent results." In a similar manner a.s.sistance was given in harvesting the corn and cotton crops, the fruits of orchards and vineyards, and the vegetable crops of the country.

The Boys' Working Reserve const.i.tuted one division of the Employment Service. In 1918, 210,000 boys between the ages of 16 and 20 were enrolled for work on the farms during the summer. The Reserve was responsible in 1917 and 1918 for saving millions of dollars worth of crops. It is estimated that in 1918 it raised enough food to feed a million soldiers for one year.

EMPLOYMENT SERVICE IN PEACE TIME

With the pa.s.sing of the war emergency, the elaborate machinery of the Employment Service was in large measure allowed to fall to pieces through lack of appropriations for its maintenance. This is true of much of the emergency organization of government developed during the war period. It ill.u.s.trates the tendency in our country to leave business control as fully as possible to individual initiative excepting in times of great emergency. So important is the problem of bringing the worker and the job together that many believe that the Employment Service organization should be revived and continued.

The central office at Washington is still maintained. In most states there are still (1919) state directors. The local machinery has been largely discontinued except in cities where volunteer agencies, such as the Red Cross and other welfare organizations, have taken over the work, chiefly to find employment for discharged soldiers and sailors. A few states have made appropriations to continue the Boys' Working Reserve.

NATIONAL VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

One division of the Employment Service is the Junior Section, for the guidance of boys and girls from 16 to 21 years of age seeking employment. Local junior sections were organized as branches of local employment offices and in schools. A "junior counselor" was placed in charge of each local junior section to study the needs and qualifications of those who applied for employment, and to give them advice. The Junior Section is still maintained with a director in the Washington office. The duties of the junior counselor are stated as follows:

To influence boys and girls to remain in school as long as possible.

To give aid toward the right start for those who have to leave school to go to work.

To arouse the ambitions of the boys and girls to fit themselves for definite careers.

To direct youth who are employed toward some form of trade, technical, or business school for special training.

To promote the opportunities for vocational education.

To follow up all applicants in their training and at their work to see that they have the best available advantages of study and labor.

GOVERNMENT ALWAYS AT OUR SERVICE

The array of facts contained in the foregoing paragraphs is given, not with the expectation that those who read will memorize them, but to suggest the enormous amount of work that the United States government is doing in the interest of agriculture and the farmer, and the extensive machinery necessary to do it. The facts given are only a few of those that might be given. The detailed story of how much of this work is done is fascinating, and often of thrilling interest. All around us may be seen, if our eyes are open, the evidences of the work of our government. Always the governmental machinery is at hand to serve us in a thousand ways, if we are wise enough to use it. The more we study its work, the more we shall be impressed by the fact that its greatest service is in opening the way for cooperation, and in providing the organization and the leadership for such cooperation.

Topics for investigation:

How money serves as a means of cooperation.

How a bank serves as a means of cooperation.

The attractiveness of the conditions of living for farm laborers in your community. How they could be improved.