There is no more important phenomenon of the time than the
shifting of large masses of population from the East to the West,
while the war was in progress. This fact begins to indicate why
there was no shortage in the agricultural output. The North
suffered acutely from inflation of prices and from a speculative
wildness that accompanied the inflation, but it did not suffer
from a lack of those things that are produced by the soil--food,
timber, metals, and coal. In addition to the reason just
mentioned--the search for new occupation by Eastern labor which
had been thrown out of employment--three other causes helped to
maintain the efficiency of work in the mines, in the forests, and
on the farms. These three factors were immigration, the labor of
women, and labor-saving machines.
Immigration, naturally, fell off to a certain degree but it did
not become altogether negligible. It is probable that 110,000
able-bodied men came into the country while war was in
progress--a poor offset to the many hundred thousand who became
soldiers, but nevertheless a contribution that counted for
something.
Vastly more important, in the work of the North, was the part
taken by women. A pathetic detail with which in our own
experience the world has again become familiar was the absence of
young men throughout most of the North, and the presence of women
new to the work in many occupations, especially farming.
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