Perhaps the one great reason we have recovered from the war so slowly is because so many have been unwilling to work. The workers who refuse to work for a peace time wage will argue that they are willing to work, but – not for less money than they got when war inflated wages and the cost of living.
There was a time when farmers had to pay big wages to get the necessary help in the absence of their sons at the front. In fact, help was not to be had at any price. The farmers learned to get along somehow. Now help is plentiful, that is, plenty of men are out of work, but they refuse the wages offered by the farmers. And again the farmers are doing their own work. Rather than put from two to three dollars a day clear money in their pockets, men in the cities and towns are in idleness, with nobody willing to pay their price.
Rather than accept lower wages in the factories and on the transportation lines, men have gone out in idleness and used up their savings, only to find that no other work was to be had until they were willing to work for less than war wages.
The farmers have gone right on with their farming, but it has meant long hours for all the family because they have been short of help. Not that help was scarce but the wage was not right. Many a business concern has gone on at a loss in order to keep the plant running, mostly to give needy men employment, while waiting for labor to be willing to work for a wage that employers can afford to pay at this time.
City employers have no difficulty getting men. They know a drop must come or the cost of living and prices in general can not get to a peace-time basis. They are standing pat just as the farmers are, and getting along as best they can until labor is willing to go to work. The farmers who thinks he is the only one who is having business troubles can learn a lot by talking to business men in the cities, many of whom have been sweating blood the last few months, if they have survived at all.
From Successful Farming magazine, as reprinted on the front page of the Roanoke-Chowan Times, Rich Square, N.C., Sept. 22, 1921
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