FARM LABOR 67 



throw up their jobs when a busy time comes around and 

 some one offers them a little higher price. This is due 

 to a numbing of the moral nature. Not only should 

 a farm laborer be taught skill and enthusiasm, but he 

 should be taught honor and duty. 



During the present season, after I began to fill my 

 silo, one of the workers whom I had hired by the month 

 quit in the midst of the work. The alleged reason was 

 that the foreman had failed to pay him for a day's 

 work in June, when he claimed to have been present and 

 the records of the farm showed that he was absent. It 

 was evident that this was only an alleged reason. If he 

 had been dissatisfied with not having received his day's 

 wages for June, he would have protested long before. 

 The fact was, however, that just at that time the farmers 

 were offering from $1.50 to $2 a day for men to help 

 them with their corn harvest, and this was too much 

 of an attraction for the laborer who had hired to me 

 for the rest of the season by the month and had agreed 

 to stay up to the beginning of winter. 



You can hardly blame the laboring man who looks 

 at it from his own peculiar point of view. In working 

 by the month he receives a little less than $1 a day ; by 

 throwing up his job and going to another he would get 

 nearly $2 a day. He forgets, however, that the extra 

 job lasts at the most two or three weeks, and then prob- 

 ably he is out of a job altogether. His reason did not 

 go as far as this, but only looked at the pay by day. 



DUTY OF EMPLOYER. 



It is the duty of the employers to provide forms of 

 amusement and forgetfulness for the farm laborers. 

 There should be a place where he could spend an hour 

 by night, if he wants to, in billiards or other innocent 



