Crops Over Crews
In July 1858, The Genesee Farmer published an essay titled “Would it Be Prudent for Farmers to Adopt the Ten Hour System?” It was written by a Pennsylvania farmer named Wm. Reno in response to the paper’s essay contest on more than thirty different topics of interest to readers (“Subjects”). Reno acknowledged that “Ten hours labor is enough for one day,” but most of his writing focused upon the impracticality of mandated labor laws. Fixed hours would consign day laborers and horse teams to the hottest time of the day; during hay and grains harvests they “often need to labor the whole day and part of the night, or lose a part of your crop.” Reno recounted the story of a farmer who had initiated regular working hours, but his crew deserted him “when the whistle sounded.” Editors at the Genesee Farmer noted that “A great many essays have been received on this subject—Every one of the writers answer the question in the negative.” The topic may have been a 19th-century form of clickbait.
In America, demands for a Ten-Hour System had originated in Lowell, MA during the 1840s, where the first factories were regulating the lives and even minute-to-minute schedules of their employees. The primarily women-led labor organizations, publishing in newsletters like The Voice of Industry, criticized not just the typical twelve-hour workday but also additional, time-consuming "duties the operatives owe to themselves in taking care of their clothes, doing their own sewing, knitting, and repairing.” The time not available for “the opportunity of cultivation” through reading, they argued, was a threat to democratic societies because those nations required educated citizens (Bagley). A committee from the state's House of Representative wasn’t receptive: “Here labour is on an equality with capital, and indeed control it, and so it ever will be while free education and free institutions exist….Labour is intelligent enough to make its own bargains, and look out for its own interests without any interference from us.” But were factory workers in Lowell--or for that matter, farmworkers in the Genesee--really on par with capital?
Americans recognized, from a very early date, how large commodity farms implied different arrangements of labor than small farms. Besides the example of slave plantations, Western New York growers learned that, “in wheat production, more than in any other farming activity, lay the best possibility of profit” (McNall 426). How did this affect labor? Since it was the region’s “staple commodity,” a Chili farmer explained, he was “constantly studying to bring the greatest possible number of acres into the production of wheat.” That meant fewer acres planted in other crops like hay, and to keep cattle and horses “from misery and starvation, he [was] compelled to purchase bran and shorts of the miller” (P.). An editor at The Genesee Farmer added that wheat production implied “a pretty large force to get the plowing done in good season, and consequently on a large farm we need more horses than can be employed in winter” (“Walks and Talks” 10). He was going to employ the horses in his stable hauling wood to earn their keep.
Animal labor was organized according to the priority of commodity crop production, but so was that of human labor. Another prize-winning farmer essay considered the costs of harvesting grains using laborers (Farmer A) or the new machinery that was becoming common (Farmer B). A very detailed analysis follows on the axiom that “time and labor are money”--Farmer B wins easily--with consideration for harvesting more quickly when weather allows. Its author invites farmers not having to see “a wife, daughter, or sister, weary and toiling with unnecessary labor” feeding farmhands. “A great amount of food is saved, for the mower and reaper, and horse rake, do not eat” (Street). The essay parallels industrial mechanization and anticipates modern agribusiness, where laborers .
A century after the Genesee Farmer rebuked a cut in hours for hired laborers to a Ten Hour work day, images from the Geneseo Migrant Center recall that policy change does not have substantial meaning for the protection of workers if it is not enforced--especially on behalf of the most vulnerable populations. In need of money, farmworkers in turn are beholden to the hours and conditions set by their employers. There is no one holding farmers and agricultural employers accountable, yet.
Works Consulted
-- Bagley, Sarah G. “The Ten Hour System.” The Voice of Industry, 1845. Excerpt at Teaching American History
-- Massachusetts, House of Representatives. Ten Hour System: Report on the Factory System of Massachusetts. 1845. Link to document
-- McNall, Neil Adams. “King Wheat in the Genesee Valley.” New York History 27.4 (Oct. 1946): 426-443. Link to essay
-- P. “The Root Culture.” The Genesee Farmer 1.4 (April 1840): 59. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Reno, Wm. “Would it Be Prudent for Farmers to Adopt the Ten Hour System?” The Genesee Farmer 19.7 (July 1858): 217. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Street, David. “Advantages of Cutting Grass or Grain by Machinery.” The Genesee Farmer 19.1 (Jan. 1858): 27. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- “Subjects for Prize Essays.” The Genesee Farmer 19.4 (April 1858): 131. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- “Walks and Talks on the Farm--No. 13.” The Genesee Farmer 26.1 (Jan. 1865): 9-12. Courtesy of Internet Archive