1884.] QUESTIONS. 115 



work twelve or fifteen hours a day, if they could find any- 

 thing else to do. On the other hand, the farmer says he does 

 not want any ten-hour help about his premises. A farmer on 

 one of the best farms in Worcester county said to me, " It is 

 exceedingly difficult for us to get labor on our farms such as 

 we want." I think I may allude to one point that the lec- 

 turer made. He asks us, " Why does this want of sympathy 

 exist between farmers and farm laborers ? " He told us at 

 the outset (which I think is true), that a large proportion, 

 at least, of farm laborers, is made up of foreigners, unskilled 

 laborers, and some of them speaking so that the farmer him- 

 self can hardly understand a word that they say, "But," 

 said this farmer of Worcester county, "we are obliged to 

 hire such laborers, in the market offering themselves to serve 

 as can find employment nowhere else. When they have 

 tried in all the factories and all the shops everywhere else 

 where the ten-hour system prevails, and they can get nothing 

 to do, as a dernier resort^ they come and hire out to the 

 farmer." Perhaps in a few weeks or months after the farmer 

 has hired him, there is an opening for him to go wliere he 

 desired to go in the first place ; he leaves the farm the first 

 opportunity he has, and hence, this farmer said, "we have to 

 take our help from those who can get nothing else to do, and 

 just as soon as they can, they will leave us." .1 think there 

 is a good deal of truth in that remark. I am of the opinion 

 that the ten-hour system is at the bottom of this whole diffi- 

 culty which we meet on our farms. But you know we cannot 

 introduce the ten-hour system upon the farm. We cannot 

 milk our cows twice inside of ten hours to advantage. We 

 have other work that we cannot do to advantage in that time. 

 How this difiiculty is to be overcome I do not undertake to 

 say, but that it exists, I know. I think every farmer here 

 has realized it ; if he has not, he will. 



Then with regard to the feeling existing between the 

 laborer and the employer. I have had experience similar to 

 that of the lecturer. I was brought up on a farm by a well- 

 to-do farmer, and when the boys got big enough, so that they 



