Rural Problems of TodayGroves, Ernest R. (Ernest Rutherford)
Science
Rural Problems of Today
Groves, Ernest R. (Ernest Rutherford)
Rural conditions; Social problems
Contact with men who occupy high places in city commerce will often
convince any one of a neutral and discriminating mind that these men of
social power have suffered loss at some points in their developing
personality as a result of the struggle that has made possible their
success. The present serious discord between capital and labor is
fundamentally born of the belief of some that wealth is as socially
right in all important matters as it is socially powerful and the faith
of others that the social problems that vex men and women would pass
with the destruction of wealth's artificial social advantages. Each
group confines itself to the territory of experience where everything
has to do with matters of human relationship, and each group insists
that only one point in that territory can have value as a position for
the observing and estimating of what happens there.
The extreme representatives of each group disclose that they have been
forced to a narrow view of human motives and interests by their
environmental experiences. They agree in their elevation of the power of
money to the supreme place socially--one defending the power as
belonging of right to wealth, the other regarding the social situation
as due to the unjust privileges of the few who prey upon the many.
The typical farmer is both a capitalist and a laborer and has a saner
attitude toward the difficulty than one can have who belongs exclusively
to either group. He is likely to accumulate his capital by slow savings,
which represent in some degree real sacrifice, and he cannot have
sympathy with those who refuse to credit capital with legitimate social
function. He also earns his bread by the sweat of his brow and has
therefore a first-hand knowledge of the burden of human toil. This
gives him an understanding of the discontent of exploited labor, but
also a deep contempt for those who have no interest in the work they do.
His thinking in regard to the differences between capital and labor is
born of experiences that are elemental in the human struggle for life
and comfort and therefore cannot be safely turned aside. His sympathies
swing toward one or the other of the conflicting groups according to his
most recent economic experiences. If he has been robbed by some
commission merchant, he joins the protest against the unjust power of
capital; if he has had a hired man who has worked indifferently and with
no respect for his vocation, he understands what is meant by the
unreasonable and impossible demands of labor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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