6 



noon, and that they do not come drifting in ten or fifteen or 

 twenty minutes before quitting time. This is a rather difficult 

 matter to handle, particularly on the smaller farms, but is a 

 great deal more important than is generally recognized. If 

 the time lost in beginning late and quitting early were accu- 

 rately kept track of it would be an eye opener to most farm 

 employers, and the aggregate of it in the United States in any 

 one year would be enough to build the Panama Canal several 

 times over. 



4. Do not get too many men on any one job, and no matter 

 how many men there are on the job, see that the work is so 

 arranged that each man can be held responsible for what he 

 does or does not do. If the job is picking apples do not put a 

 half dozen men on a tree. They will get in one another's way, 

 and nobody can be found to shoulder the responsibility for the 

 apples in the barrels that had the stems pulled out, or the 

 fruit spurs that were harvested along with the apples. More- 

 over, there is no way of keeping any reasonable track of the 

 amount of work that each man is doing. If each man is work- 

 ing on a separate tree he gets the credit for the good work he 

 does; he finds it difiicult to dodge the responsibility for any 

 poor work he may do, and the boss knows just how much work 

 each man accomplishes. Here, again, the element of pride in 

 one's accomplishment plays an important part, and very few 

 men will be found who will be content to lag behind on their 

 row of apple trees, or have the boss find more fruit spurs and 

 fewer apple stems in their barrels than he does in the other 

 fellow's. 



5. Study your men and put each one on the job he is best 

 fitted to do. There is a wide difterence in the capabilities of 

 different men for different work; one is a star with a team, 

 another is a star on pruning, a third can do better spraying 

 than anybody else, while a fourth cannot do anything par- 

 ticularly well. In this connection do not take it for granted 

 that because a particular man has become expert on one job, 

 and another on another job, that therefore both have found 

 their proper niche in the scheme of farm work. To give a per- 

 sonal illustration, on the farm in which the writer is interested 

 we had two men, one of whom ran the tractor and the other 



