SUMMARY OF COMPARATIVE DATA FOR OWNERS AND

TENANTS

A series of tables summarizing data as applied to owners and tenants is appended herewith and illustrates some of the many lines on which information has been gathered and tabulated, on the basis of which conclusions have been drawn in this study.

By month less than 4 months

...

36

II

By month less than 1 year and more than 4 months 9
By year

No hired help

Hired Girl

Hostile toward Scientific Methods

Advocate of Scientific Methods

Hostile toward Liquor

Woman's Work

14

23

9

16

23

15

1. Machinery has decreased the amount of labor required by farmers, but a changed type of farming has made for additional work which can not be reduced to machine process.

2. A "painstaking dependable class of labor" is required to carry on successful farming as advocated by agricultural experts.

3. "The right kind of farm labor is getting scarce and increasingly difficult to get."

4. The cause of this scarcity is that foreign labor is no longer coming in to replace the native sons who "get some schooling and then try their luck in the city or go where land is cheaper."

5. The "floating hobo labor" will not tie themselves up for steady farm work the year around. Hence the "hired-help problem is the big farm problem."

6. Less than fifty per cent of the farmers read their farm papers; but there is a growth of opinion that "it is well to keep up with the times, in farming as well as other things."

7. Many farmers regard it unfair where they are charged prices high enough to maintain a city delivery service from which they derive no benefit.

8. Some farmers would like to be shown that the country merchants can furnish an economic service equivalent to what they get from catalogue houses.

9. A large number of farmers say they are especially interested in the daily papers because of what they learn from the marketing page.

10. Many influential farmers feel that they are helpless in matters of marketing unless the advantages of organization are extended beyond the local units.

II. Occasional failures or mistakes among farmers have tended to create a feeling of distrust regarding the efficacy of coöperation. This diffidence has not been sufficient, however, to prevent a steady growth in farmers' organizations.

12. Politically, farmers are less active than they were a generation ago. Generally they feel that politics are outside of their domain and that it is futile for farmers to concern themselves about affairs of state.

13. Farmers generally read their local papers but believe an important service would be added if more attention were given to issues vital to themselves.

14. Each year the farmers of the township could construct one mile of permanent road-bed, well-drained and gravelled, for the amount of money they now distribute over the township, if taxes were used according to plans of the State Highway Engineer.

15. Those farmers who oppose centralized control of road improvement fear that outlying roads will be neglected for the benefit of a few main roads of a special interest to automobilists.

16. The farmers do not feel satisfied with what the country schools have accomplished.

17. The church membership of the township is thirty per cent higher than that of the State, but the younger generations are breaking church. connections. Farmers maintain that "present-day conditions on the farm make it too hard to get to church or anywhere else."

18. The increase of live stock has tended to decrease social activities. in the country.

19. Different standards of living among the farmers have divided neighborhoods, and tended to decrease sociability.

20. There are six homes in the township with complete modern heating and plumbing equipment.

21. The farmers' wives are not as anxious to leave the farm as their husbands. Twenty-nine per cent of the men want to go to town to live as soon as they can afford to do so; only thirteen per cent of the wives had the same desire.

22. With the youth it is different; the girls leave the farm more than the boys. Seventy-eight per cent of the sons over twenty-one years of

age of present heads of families are now farming, while only forty-seven per cent of the daughters are living on a farm.

23. The causes for the outflow of youth are the same as the causes for the "hired-help problem," and "the tenancy problem." They are social

causes.

24. Farmers say that "the only way to improve country life is to make it return bigger profits-big money returns are needed, not only big crops."