proletarian, like all other labor, should be organized in a national
union. That is bound to come. But the agricultural laborer should, I
think, no more than labor in the cities, make the raising of wages his
main or only object. He should rather strive to make himself
economically independent; or, in the alternative, seek for status by
integration into the co-operative communities of farmers by becoming a
member, and by pressing for permanent employment by the community rather
than casual employment by the individual. Agricultural labor
undoubtedly will have to struggle for better remuneration. Yet it has
to be remembered that agriculture is a protean industry. It is not like
mining, where the colliery produces coal and nothing but coal, and where
the miners have a practical monopoly of supply. If miners are
dissatisfied with wages and are well organized they can enforce their
terms, and the colliery owners may almost be indifferent, because they
can charge the increased cost of working to the public. But agriculture,
as I said, is protean and changes its forms perpetually. If tillage
does not pay this year, next year the farmer may have his land in grass.
He reverts to the cheapest methods of farming when prices are low, or
labor asks a wage which the farmer believes it would be unprofitable to
pay. In this way pressure on the farmer for extra wages might result in
two men being employed to herd cows where a dozen men were previously
employed at tillage. The farmer cannot easily--as the mine-owner--
unload his burden on the general public by the increase of prices. There
are many difficulties, which seem almost insoluble, if we propose to
ourselves to integrate the rural laborer into the general economic life
of the country by making him a partner in the industry he works on. But
what I hope for most is first that the natural evolution of the rural
community, and the concentration of individual manufacture, purchase and
sale, into communal enterprises, will lead to a very large co-operative
ownership of expensive machinery, which will necessitate the communal