[MUSIC] Another modern poem, Robert Frost's The Death of the Hired Man also struggles with how much sympathy to extend to those in need. Before we get to that poem though you need to know something about farming in the early 20th century. It sounds dull but it is anything but. For many people farming means independence. In his 1858 essay Farming for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson extols the independence provided by farming. Whether independence from the ravages of poverty or from political corruption. Like Thomas Jefferson before him, Emerson praises farming because it is largely self reliant work. Who are the farmer's servants? Emerson asks, not the Irish, nor the coolies, but Geology and Chemistry. The quarry of the air, the water of the brook, the lighting of the cloud, the castings of the warm, the plough of the forest. The earthworks for him Emerson adds, the earth is a machine which yields gratuitous service to every application of intellect. Unlike how Emerson imagined it though, farmers, especially those whole grew large crops for a market could not rely on geology and chemistry to do all of their work. Occasionally as Emerson put it, the Irish, or Coolies, or other workers had to be employed. In fact even as Emerson was writing, and even more so in the decades that followed, farmers typically hired outside labor, either for the whole year or more commonly, during the harvest season when crops needed to be gathered in a fairly short window of time. On the surface, these hired workers post a crisis for the supposed independence of farming. On the one hand, farmers depended on their labor. And on the other, hired laborers worked at the whim and for the wages of those farmers. In both cases, self reliance took a beating. Originally, however, these mutual dependencies did not entail any lasting sacrifice of independence, rather, seasonal workers and hired laborers were supposed to be merely pausing on what was called the agricultural ladder. Just starting out, many young men could not afford to buy a farm, or did not have a father who could give them land. And therefore had to hire themselves out for a couple of seasons or years until they had earned enough money to buy their own. As no less a figure than Abraham Lincoln put it, many independent men everywhere in these states, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself. Then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. In other words when they hired outside labor, farmers were not exploiting desperate workers. They were giving others a hand up. And hired laborers were not the wage slaves of the tyrannical land owners but climbing the ladder to economic independence or so the story went. So long as farm land was relatively affordable and could support a family, the agricultural ladder Lincoln celebrated health study. Yet the industrialization of agriculture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries would change everything. First it shifted production from small scale diversified farming in the east to large scale specialized farming in the west. Second, because of the increase in scale and specialization, there followed an increased demand for hired farm labor across the country. Third, the industrialization of agriculture created a permanent class of hired men---the agricultural proletariat, whose presence threatened to turn the farm from a site of independence and apprenticeship independence into a site of dependence, wage labor and exploitation. The industrialization of agriculture however, had specific effects for farming in the northeast where Frost's poem takes place. Because of increased competition out west, many New England farmers either had to scale up or, more commonly, give up farming. As the Connecticut Board of Agriculture put it in 1890, The New England farmer has found his products selling at lower prices because of the new, fierce, and rapidly increasing competition. One by one, he has had to abandon the growing of this or that crop because the West crowded him beyond the paying point. Soon enough, farmers in the east had not only abandoned this or that crop, but farming altogether. One of the most pernicious effects of farmers abandoning their farms was that it decreased the supply of seasonal labor needed by those who remained on their land. Since other farmers and the sons of other farmers frequently supplied that seasonal labor force, fewer farmers meant fewer potential laborers. The scarcity, the disappearance, the non-appearance, and to be sure, the sudden reappearance of farm labor is the context for one of Robert Frost's most frequently reprinted poems, The Death of the Hired Man. Usually readers approach the poem as a contest between masculine and feminine ethics, between justice and mercy. With various critics applauding or regretting its opposed sentimentalism. It certainly is all those things. Yet the poem also demonstrates how much the origins of modern American poetry lie in its borrowings from contemporary labor problems. In this case, the industrialization of agriculture and agricultural proliferate it gave birth to. As such, one must pay as much attention to the background incident of the poem, the broken contract between Warren and Silas. As to the debate between Warren and Mary, about the definition of home and what, as a result, they owe their hired labor. According to this way of reading the poem, the dialogue between Warren and Mary is not only one between two types of people, or two models of human character, rather, it is a dialogue about the changing economic conditions of rural life and how to respond to them. As the poem opens, Mary sits musing on the lamp flame at the table, waiting for Warren. And when Warren arrives, Mary meets him in the doorway with the news that Silas, their aged and now quite ill hired hand, is back. Silas, we learn, has recently left Warren during the harvest season, when Warren needs him most. Now Silas has returned, expecting his old position back. In the exchange between Warren and Mary that follows, Mary bids Warren to be kind, and then takes the market things from Warren's arms. Implicitly setting one set of ethics, kindness, against another, the market and its things. Warren's response, when was I ever anything but kind to him? Depends on a certain definition of kindness, namely, one of contract and fair dealing. From Warren's perspective, however, Cylus has violated that agreement and thus forfeited his right to kindness. Warren offers two reasons why he will not have the fellow back. The first is that Cylus is no longer of use, can no longer perform sufficient labor to merit his pay or his room and board. What good is he, Warren asks. Who else will harbor him at his age for the little he can do? Yet Silas is not totally useless, otherwise he would not have left Warren during the harvest season. Obviously, someone found Silas useful enough to want to employ him. The second, related reason for Warren's refusal to take Silas back then is because Silas has broken a contract. After agreeing to work for Warren during the harvest season, Silas has run off to work elsewhere for better pay. What emerges in the poem then is a conflict between two modes of hired labor employment. Moreover, the conflict the poem represents was not especially new. Discussions of it date to the 1840s. But it was, as Frost was writing in the early 19 teens, because of the changes in farming I just described, it was approaching a crisis. Like Warren, many small farmers who could not pay regular monthly wages to their hired labor, instead offered them room and board for the entire year. And at the end of the harvest season, after farmers themselves had turned their harvest into cash, would pay laborers their back wages. Other, more large-scale farmers however, employed laborers for only two or three months during the harvest season. But paid them mediately, monthly. Each situation had advantages and disadvantages for hired laborers. If employed year-round, laborers generally made less in wages than they would by working seasonally. And as Silas objects, in the interval, had no or little money. Warren says, he thinks he ought to earn a little pay, Warren explains. Enough at least to buy tobacco with, so he won't have to beg and be beholden. In contrast if men hired themselves out strictly for a few months during harvest season, they would make decent money and have, as Warren calls it, fixed wages. But come winter, they would be left without employment, room or board. Some farmers, like Warren, took advantage of the situation. By employing a man for several months, or the entire year, the agricultural historian David E. Schob notes, the farmer in effect guaranteed himself a permanent harvest hand during July and August. Because he has employed him throughout the year, Warren expects Silas to remain throughout the harvest season. But changes in agricultural production undermine this already unstable situation. New England farmers who tried to survive by shifting towards large-scale concentrated production, had to rely even more on just in time seasonal labor to harvest their crops. Thus driving up demand in an already strained hired labor market where as Warren puts it, any help is scarce. And that is precisely the opportunity that leads Silas to abandon Warren. Even though Silas is good for little during harvest season, his labor is nevertheless in demand. You can be certain, Warren says. When he begins like that there is someone at him, trying to coax him off with pocket money. In fact, hired laborers frequently left year round employment for temporary, though better paid harvest work. Betraying the farmers who had thought that they had guaranteed themselves harvest labor. Unlike Silas however, few of those who jumped these formal or informal contracts had the audacity to return to the farmers they had abandoned. As Warren puts it, rightly angered. What help he is, there's no depending on. Off he goes, always when I need him most. And in wintertime he comes back to us, I'm done. Thus, when Silas returns to Warren and Mary's farm after leaving them during a harvest season, he has violated two principles of the farmer-hired labor contract. He jumped his contract leaving Warren without much needed harvest help. And yet, he still expects room and board over the winter. Moreover, and although, he is still under the impression that he will earn his room and board, Silas has become a responsibility and a burden to a family who, by rights, is no longer obliged to accept that responsibility. Silas solved this impasse for Warren and Mary by dying, but not all hired hands would be so accommodating. Over the next few decades, as farming became even more industrialized, the problem of hired labor grew even worse. In addition to its glimpse into a specific labor problem of the day, Frost's poem shows us that the labor problem more generally did not remain confined to the city. Rather, it made its way into the country too. The earth works for him, Emerson wrote of farmers. But by the first decades of the 20th century, a farmer required more than just earthly labor. He required human laborers too, men and women alike, and more than ever before. Moreover, the presence of these hired laborers created new problems, both for the laborers, and as the death of the hired man suggests, their employers. They also created, as Frost's book of poems suggests, opportunities for new kinds of poetry to be written. [MUSIC]
