toward further economic impairment. The least intelligent will abandon their farms and migrate to the towns where they will find employment as laborers. The migration of farm laborers that has already been going on, which has increased the difficulties of the farm operators, is a natural development of the same order. These movements will tend to increase the supply of town labor, lower wages, lower costs of production, and in the end make it easier for those who remain on the farms. However, this will be a slow process, a process of many years. It will be a process of capital extinction or loss, or a measure of that which has already been eaten, just as became the farms in New England which were abandoned after their fertility had been exhausted.
There are things that the farmer can do if he will that would be equally sound and much quicker in their effects. He might curtail his operation of automobiles, thus releasing some of the labor that is at present engaged in making them and supplying them. He might also take a firm position in favor of the removal of economic restrictions that impair production and lead to the employment of more men for certain purposes than is needful. He might, moreover, take a firm position in favor of letting the people of Europe work for us, specifically by reducing our tariff barriers so that we may take advantage of more cheaply manufactured goods. He might, finally, urge and compel the removal of other economic restrictions, such as are outlined in a subsequent chapter of this book. He could compel those things, inasmuch as his own class combined with other classes, whose difficulties and needs are similar to his own, constitute the majority
