" To the question, "Is the
supply of farm labor in your neighborhood satisfactory?" the answer is:
"No; because the people have gone out of the baby business"; and when
asked as to the remedy, he answers, "Give a pension to every mother who
gives birth to seven living boys on American soil." To the question,
"Are the conditions surrounding hired labor on the farm in your
neighborhood satisfactory to the hired men?" he answers: "Yes, unless he
is a drunken cuss," adding that he would like to blow up the stillhouses
and root out whiskey and beer. To the question, "Are the sanitary
conditions on the farms in your neighborhood satisfactory?" he answers:
"No; too careless about chicken yards, and the like, and poorly covered
wells. In one well on neighbor's farm I counted seven snakes in the wall
of the well, and they used the water daily: his wife dead now and he is
looking for another." He ends by stating that the most important single
thing to be done for the betterment of country life is "good roads"; but
in his answers he shows very clearly that most important of all is the
individual equation of the man or woman.
Like the rest of the Commissions described in this chapter, the Country
Life Commission cost the Government not one cent, but laid before the
President and the country a mass of information so accurate and so
vitally important as to disturb the serenity of the advocates of things
as they are; and therefore it incurred the bitter opposition of the
reactionaries.
Pages:
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693