No. 4.] FARM HELP PROBLEM. 151 



driver who understood it, and the other could follow him 

 around. 



But as for doing any ordinary farm work, the same as you 

 tell a hired man, " Here, John, you go out and do that job 

 to-morrow, while I am away," and expect to come home and 

 see it just as you wanted it, — well, if you know how to tell 

 an Italian how to do that, he will do it, but if you don't, you 

 will find your parsnips banked up, instead of the celery. 

 They will do the work, but will do the wrong thing, perhaps ; 

 and generally when you think they understand you they don't, 

 but they always say, " Yes, yes," and will go to work and do 

 something, and ten to one it is just the opposite of what you 

 told them. If you tell them to pile something up here, 

 they will go and pile it up just the other side, where 

 you don't want it ; and a good deal of it is because of the 

 difference in the languages. In our language we put the 

 horse in front of the cart, but in their language it is the other 

 way, — the cart is in front of the horse ; and until we get 

 some little idea of their language and customs and manner, 

 there are apt to be misunderstandings. If you want to send 

 a man out to cut down a tree, you don't want to send an 

 Italian, because the only safe place for an Italian with an 

 axe is on a muck meadow. But for drainage or digging 

 stone or trucking stone, or laying stone, any rough farm work 

 of that kind, that you can't stop to do yourself or have your 

 more intelligent help do, you can pick up a gang of them, 

 you can put them in a house on your place, if you have one, 

 or a shanty, or if you haven't, they will build one them- 

 selves with a few boards and a little old tin, and a cook stove, 

 and they will do any kind of work ; and it is the only way I 

 know of, with the present condition of labor. If I wanted 

 one of them to run a mowing machine for me, or wanted 

 him to run a horse-power on the farm, he couldn't do that. 

 You can't expect anything of them any more than you would 

 expect of a team ; but they will do what they do know nicely 

 and faithfully, and when you find one that won't, you can 

 do as you would with any other man, let him go, — unless he 

 has a brother who is very good, and you have to keep the two 

 to keep the good one. I have often had that worked on me : 



