Missouri Farm Facts. 437 



some of our best men to the cities or to the western countries. If this 

 county had raised good crops this year we would not have had help to 

 care for them.- — DeKalb county. 



Labor. Farmers are solving this problem to a great extent by ex- 

 changing work with each other. — Buchanan county. 



The farm help that we now have is very unsatisfactory. Help for 

 the house can hardly be secured at all. I think this is one cause of 

 farmers going to town. — Clay county. 



To keep the young men from the cities and some means to keep them 

 on the farms. — Buchanan county. 



Farm help usually gets all it earns. Their tendency is to get all 

 they can and give as little as they can in return. Most help is unreliable. 

 — Grundy county. 



I have suitable houses for men to live in. Seldom keep a man at 

 the house. I pay $30 to 35 per month, furnish wood, garden patch, a 

 cow, and chicken range free, all equaling about $45 or $50 per month. — 

 Holt county. 



The labor question. I am getting my farm in grass and grazing it. 

 You can't get hands. — Platte county. 



Hired help is one of the things we have to contend with, it being 

 almost impossible to get help either in or out of doors. Most farmers 

 trade work with their neighbors. — Benton county. 



The labor question is the greatest problem — getting help and getting 

 them to stay. Young people are marrying younger and starting for 

 themselves. Only the drifters are left, and they are here today and 

 yonder tomorrow. — Callaway county. 



Farmers owning considerable land find it hard to get good tenants. 

 Some farmers in this locality have simply had to let valuable and fertile 

 land grow up in weeds for want of good tenants. Farming a lot of land 

 with a string of hands and teams, with high wages and scarcity of 

 house servants, means a whole lot of work and worry and an overworked 

 housewife. Just now there is only one solution of this problem, and that 

 is to have boys of your own ; and if they are sent three or four years to 

 a town school these boys do not want to stay on the farm any longer. 

 It is a fact, beyond denial, that our entire school system gives but very 

 little, if any, help or credit to the boys who return home on the common 

 farm and help feed the world. There is too much of a tendency to boost 

 up some country boy who, perchance, wins a little political fame, or 

 some professor, or manager of some millionaire's estate who has money 

 to waste. — Chariton county. 



