HARVESTING 77 



merely drifts with his environment; and the coarse, hard- 

 featured criminal and ex-convict. It has been estimated that 15 

 men for every 1,000 acres of wheat migrate annually to the 

 wheat districts. The number recruited from other sections for 

 the harvest of Kansas alone in 1903 is claimed to have been 

 28,000, a force half as large as the standing army of the United 

 States. Employment agencies in adjacent states sent men into 

 Kansas in companies of 100 and 200. Some farmers used all 

 the guile and promises at their command to induce men to stop 

 with them instead of journeying farther. Some men were ac- 

 tually kidnapped, it is claimed, from the platforms of the 

 trains, and held by force till their train had gone. "In Saline 

 and Cloud counties, when the harvest started and there was a 

 shortage of hands, the farmers' daughters went into the fields 

 while the thermometer was close to the one hundred mark and 

 did the work of men." Many of these harvesters remain over 

 for the threshing, which often lasts until the snow flies in De- 

 cember. Doubtless a majority of the men go as they came, on 

 special railway excursions, for which fares are frequently one 

 cent a mile. The itinerant harvesters disappear so gradually 

 that no one knows where they have gone. Some of them find 

 their way to the mines of the Rocky Mountains. Many of them 

 go to the logging camps of Minnesota and Wisconsin. 



In Argentine there is a succession of harvest-times similar 

 to that in the United States. It begins in the northern prov- 

 inces in November and continues to move southward until Feb- 

 ruary. The succession of wheat-harvesting seasons in different 

 countries of the world is given below: 1 



January. Australia, New Zealand, Chile. 



February and March. Upper Egypt, India. 



April. Lower Egypt, India, Syria, Cyprus, Persia, Asia Minor, 

 Mexico, Cuba. 



May. Texas, Algeria, Central Asia, China, Japan, Morocco. 



June. California, Oregon, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North 

 Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Kansas, 

 Arkansas, Utah, Colorado, Missouri, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, 

 Portugal, South of France. 



July. New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, 

 Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Southern Minnesota, Nebraska, 

 Upper Canada, Roumania, Bulgaria, Austria, Hungary, Southern 

 Russia, Germany, Switzerland, South of England. 



August. Central and Northern Minnesota, Dakotas, Manitoba, 

 Lower Canada, Columbia, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, Denmark. 

 Poland, Central Russia. 



September and October Scotland, Norway, Northern Russia. 



November. Peru, South Africa, Northern Argentina. 



December. Argentina, Burmah, New South Wales. 



* Crop Reporter, June, 1899. 



