KEEPING ACCOUNT WITH BERRY PICKERS. 227 



derstanding that they will be paid one cent per quart each 

 week, and if they remain during the entire picking season they 

 are paid the other half cent at the close, but if they do not re- 

 main they are only paid at the one cent rate. I want to refer 

 to a method that a friend of mine uses. He has at the head of 

 his tickets, 1 cent, H cents, 2 cents, 2^ cents and 3 cents 

 printed. He hands out a ticket to the picker, and, say, on the 

 first day's picking he punches out a two cent mark for every- 

 thing that is picked. The next day the picking may be a little 

 better and he will punch out 1| cents, and when the picking is 

 at its best and a picker can easily earn $2.00 a day, he will 

 punch out the 1 cent mark. At the close the picking is prob- 

 ably very poor and the picker feels rather discouraged and 

 then he punches out the three cents. I have a curiosity to 

 know whether that would work or not. 



The President: He might make a mistake and punch out 

 the wrong number. We use the ticket system. The picker 

 picks six quarts and we give him a ticket for six quarts. 



Mr. Hartwell: That is too much work altogether. It is a 

 tremendous job to count up the tickets for 125 pickers. I 

 couldn't use that method at all. 



The President: The counting is all done afterwards. 



Mr. Hartwell: Yes, but it would take the time of one man 

 an entire day to count up such a large number of tickets. 

 With the ticket described by Mr. Long all you have to do is to 

 just look at your one ticket for each picker and add together 

 the numbers punched out; you have it all in a nutshell. 



The President: In the method we use the pickers keep their 

 tickets, and when they are paid off they bring them in in 

 envelopes, the number of quarts they have picked are 

 counted, and they do their share of the bookkeeping. They 

 find they have picked a certain number of quarts of straw- 

 berries, the collector takes the tickets and runs them over and 

 finds the number of quarts each picker has picked and pays 

 him the money. The picker all the time has got something to 

 show for what he has done when you hand that ticket out to 

 him. 



Mr. A. G. Long: The picker has the ticket I described at- 

 tached to his person, and when he brings in a carrier with 

 berries you can depend on it that he is going to be sure he is 

 given the proper credit for the number of boxes picked, and he 

 will also know to a cent at the close of the week just how much 

 money is due him, and when he opens his envelope, counts the 



