318 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTUKE. 



for a year and turn him off at the end of a month without cause — he may hold 

 you responsible for his wages for the whole year; but you can offset whatever 

 you can show that he might have earned by other similar employment in the 

 same neighborhood, that is, if he can get employment. He must not unneces- 

 sarily lie idle, but it is for you to show that he might have got employment. 



If your hired man voluntarily leaves you before his time expires, he is liable 

 to you for damages; but if he is prevented from fulfilling his engagement by 

 sickness, or some other unavoidable accident, he is entitled to a reasonable 

 compensation for the services rendered. But you are not obliged to take him 

 back after he recovers. If he is carried to prison for a crime of which he is 

 found guilty, or for a debt unpaid, the contract is considered broken by his 

 own voluntary act, and he is liable accordingly. But if, on the other hand, 

 he is carried to prison on suspicion of being guilty of a crime, of which he is 

 ultimately acquitted, he is not liable to you in damages, because there was no 

 voluntary breach of the contract on his part. 



You cannot compel your hired man to make up lost time after the expira- 

 tion of the period of service. You have a right of action against one who 

 knowingly and willfully entices him away, or injures him, causing you the loss 

 of his services. 



In relation to the torts and negligence of the hired man, the rule is that the 

 farmer is responsible in damages to third persons for such acts, occasioning an 

 injury, whether the act is of omission or commission, in conformity to, or in 

 disobedience of orders, by negligence, fraud, deceit, or even willful misconduct, 

 so long as it was in the course of the employment. To illustrate : Suppose 

 you have a horse afflicted with the glanders, or the "heaves," which you wish 

 to get rid of, and you direct your hired man to take him out on the road and 

 trade him off, or sell him. You give express directions to the man not to 

 warrant or recommend him, or to use any of the deceitful tricks of the horse- 

 jocky. He starts out, and "stumps" the first man he meets for a trade. 

 The man asks him if the horse is sound, and he replies, with all the brazen 

 impudence of an experienced jocky, that the horse is perfectly sound, not a 

 blemish or fault about him, and that he would not be afraid to warrant him, 

 whereby he makes a "slashing" trade, perhaps cheats the man out of a 

 valuable horse. Who is liable for the cheat? You are, because the cheat was 

 in the course of his employment. If the cheated man had known what you 

 had said to your hired man it might have been otherwise. 



A hired man, in driviug a cow out of his employer's cornfield, struck her 

 with a stone, which killed her. Held, that the employer was liable for the 

 value of the cow. 



A farmer put a bag containing barley into his wagon under his shed. In 

 two or three days thereafter his hired man took the bag from the wagon, 

 supposing it to contain oats, and carried it to a place where he was drawing 

 logs for the farmer, to feed the horses with its contents. Finding his mis- 

 take, he fed some of the barley, and then put an iron bolt that he had been 

 using as a clevis pin into tlie bag, and carried the bag home and put it into 

 the wagon where he found it, without informing the employer of what he had 

 done. Soon after the farmer, not knowing what his hired man had done, 

 nor that the bolt was there, filled the bag with ears of corn and 'carried it to 

 mill to be ground, and in grinding the bolt got into the corn-cracker and 

 injured it. Held, that the farmer was liable for the carelessness of the hired 

 man. 



In a case where the hired man used the farmer's horse and carriage in going 



