William James Ghent
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 54
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV Our Farmers And Wage-earners The increasing dependence of middleman and petty manufacturer has already been considered. The same pressure which bears upon these bears also upon farmer and wage-earner. The editorials and the oratory of election years, it is true, supply us with recurring pasans over the independence, the selfreliance and the prosperity of these classes, and such graphic tropes as "the full dinner pail" and "the overflowing barn," become the party shibboleths of political campaigns. Plain facts, however, accord but ill with this exultant strain. I In most ages the working farmer has been the dupe and prey of the rest of mankind. Now by force and now by cajolery, as social customs and political institutions change, he has been made to produce the food by which the race lives, and the share of his product which he has been permitted to keep for himself has always been pitifully small. Whether Roman slave, Frankish serf, or English villein; whether the so-called "independent" farmer of a free democracy or the ryot of a Hindu prince, the general rule holds good. Occasionally, by one means or another, he gains some transitory betterment of condition; the Plague of 1349 and the Peasants' Rebellion of 1381 won for his class advantages which were retained during three generations. But in the long run he is the race's martyr. Under a military autocracy his exploitation was inevitable. There is no reason for it now, for the lives and well-being of the rest of mankind are in his hands: were the working farmers organized as the manufacturers and the skilled artisans are organized, and could they lay by for themselves a year's necessities, they could starve the race into submission to their demands. But the thing is not to...