156 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



may disregard it entirely, and quit when he likes, and still 

 recover for all the time he did work. For this reason, if 

 the bargain is to work for more than one year, or even for 

 just a year, but to commence at some future day, as a week 

 after making the bargain, and the contract is not written 

 down and signed (which nobody ever thinks of doing), it is 

 not binding on the laborer, and he can break it from a mere 

 whim, and still make the farmer pay (5 Gray, 41). In like 

 manner, if the laborer is under twenty-one, he is not bound 

 by his bargain, but may desert when he pleases (2 Pick. 

 332 ; 19 Pick. 572), and recover " back-pay." And this is 

 so, although the young man appears to be of age, or is mar- 

 ried and has a family (37 Vt. 647 ; 41 N. H. 346), or even 

 thougli he falsely stated he was over age, and able and 

 willing to make as good a bargain as if half a century old 

 (11 Gush. 40; ION. H. 184). 



But even if you have a nominal remedy against a laborer 

 who has left you unjustifiably in the midst of his contract, 

 this so often proves practically worthless, that the law also 

 gives you a right of redress against the person who has en- 

 ticed him away with the offer of better wages, or otherwise. 

 The law does not allow one man thus to interfere with 

 another man's business without being liable to pay for all the 

 inconvenience and loss he may thereby cause to the person 

 whose men are thus induced to break their contract with 

 their former employer (107 Mass. 555 ; 56 N. H. 456). 



It is for this reason that combinations among workmen for 

 a strike, and to induce fellow-workmen, by intimidation or 

 otlierwise, to forsake their employers, are clearly illegal, and 

 render the parties involved liable both civilly and criminally. 

 Such associations are more common among operatives than 

 farm-laborers ; but I suppose the same rules apply to both. 



EIGHTS IX TELE EOAD. 



If a farm deed is bounded by, on, or upon a road, it usually 

 extends to the middle of the roadway. There are a few 

 exceptional cases ; but ordinarily the farmer owns the soil of 

 half the road, and may use the grass, trees, stones, gravel, 

 sand, or any thing of value to him, either on the land, or 

 beneath the surface, subject only to the superior rights of 

 the public to travel over the road, and that of the highwa} 



