The Farm Home

by Mrs. A.J. Wilder

“No article or commodity shall be shipped or delivered in international trade in the production of which children less than 16 years old have been employed or permitted to work.”

How would farmers like to have that kind of a law? Why! They couldn’t even drive up the cows, and what would become of the pig and poultry clubs?

When the American Federation of Labor formulated its platform of principles, and made this Article X the writers surely did not intend to prohibit child labor on the farm, for they must know that it would increase greatly the cost of produce if high priced help must be hired to do the children’s chores and the high cost of living is already one of the chief grievances. The explanation seems to be that, as a class, farmers make so little impression that they were overlooked.

Perhaps Article X might be a good law for city children, tho I doubt is. It does seem it would be much better for children to be employed under careful regulation than to be idle on the streets when they are not in school. We know it is better for farm children to help with the work they are able to do, giving them a greater interest in the farm, teaching them to be responsible, independent and energetic. If such a law became a fact it would be an injury to farm children to obey, and we should not wish to teach them to become law breakers by disregarding it.

But the fact remains that the American Federation of Labor, which is a great power in politics and national affairs, in what it considers one of its most important principles and which it is attempting to make a law, was either so ignorant of farm affairs that its writer knew no better or absolutely ignored the farmers of the country.

It only goes to show how seldom farmers are now planning to reconstruct the United States.

Things are considerably stirred up these days as we all know, and when they settle it may be along new lines. No political party nor any industrial group is going to look after the interests and welfare of farmers.

While we are slow to consider affairs from the standpoint of farmers as a class other classes have drawn closely together, into their own groups.

Far back in history, in the days when Italy was a group of small principalities and of cities ruled as independent governments; when Great Britain had not been formed, and England was just England struggling to maintain its existence as an independent country, in those old days there were labor unions. They were called guilds, then. There was the weavers’ guild, the dyers’ guild, the builders’ guild, and many others. Then there were the traders and merchants who worked for their trade interests, and the soldiers with which the overlord controlled his little principality, collecting taxes from the guilds and the merchants and peasants.

Then, as now, the peasants or farmers stood alone. While the different guilds quarreled and even fought one another they all united to oppose unjust taxation or oppression. The merchants and traders had organization and worked together for their own ends but the peasantry stood or fell as individuals without any organized power which they could bring to bear on rulers or guilds or traders.

There were peasant revolts sometimes but it was simply mob action. Their was no organized constructive effort to win their objects.

It remains to be proved how far farmers, as a class, have advanced since the time of those peasants. We are so busy and so careless that politicians working for self interest and industrial groups who have high salaried officers who spend their time working for the interests of their people can take advantage of our ignorance.

There is occasion for all of us to be thoughtful; and we ought to do our thinking before it is too late.

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "The Farm Home." Missouri Ruralist (May 20, 1919): 21.  CLICK HERE to see this article as it originally appeared in the Missouri Ruralist.

CLICK HERE to return to the list of articles from the Missouri Ruralist.