California has great estates; it has agricultural opportunities; it has more wealth than any Australian state, but thus far its purchases amount to 15,000 acres. If there had been acquired and settled under its act an area like that of any of the Australian states except Tasmania, the question of farm labor and of rural progress I would be far less serious than it is. In the period from 1901 to 1914 the state of Victoria had provided homes for 3887 farm laborers on 8829 acres of land. It had provided homes for city workers on 24,904 acres of land. In the Commonwealth Year Book of 1914 is a review of the progress of closer settlement in the irrigated areas that makes good reading for those who hope to see this policy have large extension in the irrigated areas of California. Speaking of Victoria, it said: The movement for closer settlement in the irrigated districts started about five years ago. The state had expended between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 pounds on irrigation works, which were not being used to their full extent. Under the Goulburn scheme, the largest of the state works, more than half the available water was being wasted. The reason was lack of people to cultivate the land as irrigation requires. Previously, in the various districts the average size of farms varied from 400 to 600 acres, while under irrigation from 20 to 80 acres will now give employment to a good-sized family and furnish them a comfortable living. The large farms of the irrigation districts could not be properly cultivated by their owners, and the only way to make irrigation a success was to subdivide these holdings and bring in farmers to cultivate the smaller areas. To this end the state offered to buy suitable land in any district having a reliable and ample water supply, at a price fixed by impartial expert valuers, and has now purchased about 110,801 acres for this purpose. This land is sold to settlers on 31 years terms with 4 per cent interest on deferred payments. These payments are calculated on the Credit Foncier basis and are equalized through the whole period. As a result, the settlers by paying an additional 1 per cent, or 6 per cent in all, on the cost for 31 years, pay off both principal and interest. To help the settler of small capital, the state will build him a house and give 15 to 20 years to pay for it, will prepare a part of his area for irrigation and allow payments to be extended over ten years. The cash payments required are as follows: On houses costing less than 100 pounds, 10 pounds; from 100 pounds to 150 pounds, 15 pounds; while on houses costing more the cash payment varies from 12 to 30 per cent of the estimated cost. A cash payment of one-fifth the estimated cost of preparing land for irrigation is required. The state also makes loans to settlers equal to 60 per cent of the value of permanent improvements, these loans to be repaid in 20 years. Five per cent interest is charged on all advances whether for houses, preparing land, or money furnished the settler. In the past five years 1016 irrigated blocks, averaging 61 acres, have been taken by settlers, of whom 401 were from oversea, chiefly from Great Britain, and 615 were Australian. At Shepparton, one of the oldest of these settlements, there are now 234 settlers living where there were originally 25. In Koyuga there are now 46 settlers with good houses, many young orchards, fine crops of lucerne and vegetables, where in November, 1910, there was not a house, a family, or an acre of cultivated land. Under four years ago there were 27 houses in the Rochester district, now there are over 491. In Tongala there are now 190 houses where three years ago there were 30. Similar progress has been made in the other settlements. Houses now being erected are of a better type than the original ones. This has been made possible because the settlers now applying have as a rule more capital than the earlier ones and desire better homes. GENTLEMEN: I trust that the following may serve as an answer to your inquiry of the thirty-first ultimo. The statements are personal views and should be taken as such. They are the outcome, however, of investigations for both the state and the United States Department of Agriculture covering a period of about two and onehalf years. To fully comprehend the farm labor situation as it exists today, and has existed for the past three or four years, it is early necessary to recognize the presence of a number of points of view, based on the point of individual contact with the situation, if one is to successfully correlate the wide divergence of opinion. The farmers' feeling in regard to the farm labor situation is the outcome, very largely, of the fact that California agriculture has developed along specialized rather than diversified lines, so that farmers' activities have tended toward the perfecting of a very few main industries. This way of organizing the farming of the state has resulted in a very definite need for help at periods of "peak load" requirements. The development of corporation farming, with its rather different needs from the family manned farm, adds another element. Therefore, one soon finds that he can classify the various arguments for and against any proposition having to do with the changing of the farm labor supply in a way that will place the speaker into one of the five following categories: (1) The large farm operator who hires all his farming done and makes his profit from the men that he employs. His business desire is to obtain plenty of labor and as cheaply as is consistent with the maintenance of prices for farm products. Competition among laborers results in greater ease in procuring men when wanted, less necessity for providing accommodations, and a reduction in the wage scale. (2) The working farmer who does all his labor in person, and whose product, when placed on the market, must come into competition with products of other farmers who, if their labor is worth less than his, tend to sell at prices which will reduce the income of this group. (3) The working farmer who at times is also an employer, and as such has the complex position of desiring to get as much for his own labor as he can, and to hire at a price which will return him as much profit on the work of others as he is able to secure. (4) The farm worker, whose concerns-wages, hours, board, housing and supervision are directly affected by any marked increase or decrease in the total supply of or demand for farm labor. (5) The members of the community, only indirectly in touch with the farm labor situation as it affects the cost of living, but rather directly concerned with the influence of the type, numbers and ideals of a group, the size of the farm labor group in its relation to general public welfare. Perhaps the matter can be put another way, e. g., the viewpoint depends very largely on whether the private pocketbook or the community welfare is nearest to the front in the eye of the individual. Sometimes the two are rather definitely opposed one to the other. It is evident, if one investigates the matter, that selfishness does at times rule. I have thus far tried to abstain from the injection of personal opinion. It is obviously not for any one man to say what shall or what shall not be done, until he has time to gather the statistics and facts from a vast number of sources and to carefully weigh the many influences. I may add, however, that if California is to go on with her agriculture, as now organized, she must continue to constantly recruit a supply of labor able and willing to do the hand work necessary to the harvest of many fruits, the growing and harvesting of many field crops as rice, cotton, sugar beets and beans, the production of truck crops in the delta, and the growing c cantaloupes and lettuce in Imperial Valley. Either the supply must be kept up or else a reorganization in our scheme of production is bound to be necessary. Such a readjustment, as matters now stand, may ultimately be best from the community viewpoint, but it certainly can not be accomplished without heavy financial losses to certain industries which have been built up with reliance on the classes of labor that thus far have been to a considerable extent available. Reliance upon labor as now available without future augmentation, greater use of machinery, or similar recommendations, will result in a change from many specialized crops of high acreage value to general crops of low acreage values, if no other relief is forthcoming. It does not necessarily follow, though, that the total available food supply will be materially reduced; rather with some crops as cantaloupes, strawberries and certain fruits, the opposite is likely to be the case. The change can not, however, be brought about without loss to certain producers. California's farm labor needs may conveniently be grouped into three classes: (1) Experienced, unskilled men able to do such work as thinning and harvesting sugar beets, chopping and picking cotton, cutting asparagus, digging potatoes, thinning onions, and picking cantaloupes, melons, prunes, berries, and similar types of work. (2) Experienced, skilled men for teamsters, irrigators, harvesters, tractors, range riding, sheep herding, pruning, spraying and so on. (3) Unskilled, inexperienced help for hop picking, prune gathering, hoeing weeds, cultivating crops, picking up walnuts and the like. The present pressing need is for men in both classes 1 and 2, but because farmers see no immediate means of getting men for class 2 work, and do think there is a way of helping out the class 1 situation, it is of the latter that most of the discussion is about. This demand, it is evident, must be met from without the country, and in my opinion, Mexico, at present is the logical source. In conclusion may I add there still exists in my mind a question as to what the remedy should be. Are we not better off to reorganize on the basis of what we have and to quit fostering industries whose existence depends on the constant recruiting of such peoples as Mexicans, Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, or will the economic advantages of a continuation of this sort of thing more than offset the rather evident social disadvanages? It is an important question and upon its correct answering depends the future of our agriculture in many of its important phases. Very truly yours, R. L. ADAMS, Professor of Farm Management. |