No. 4.] FARM HELP PROBLEM. 157 



cottages on their farms for men with families would go a 

 long way towards solving this problem. There are thousands 

 of young men in cities working in stores who are discouraged 

 because they are not any more than getting a living, and they 

 and their families would be much better off out on a farm. 



The Italian laborer has been talked about. I know some- 

 thing about him, and my experience has been something like 

 Mr. Worth's. I have found some of them almost indispen- 

 sable. They will do the rough, hard work, and more of it, 

 and are glad to do it. Of course you need a foreman to watch 

 out and see that they do their work right. I want to ask the 

 lecturer if he doesn't think it an advantage for the farming 

 community to put up rude sheds, and ask the Italians to 

 come and occupy them ? They will come, for they like to 

 get in together ; where a number of them can get into one of 

 these little rude buildings, they will stay with you, and they 

 will do a whole lot of hard work, providing you have a good 

 foreman to lead off, or lead them yourself. Don't you think 

 it is a wise thing to get the Italian labor out into the country ? 

 The fertility of our soil is not exhausted ; it needs work ; it 

 needs plowing; it needs harrowing; it needs fertilizing. 



Mr. Potter. I like to see things around the farm look 

 artistic and beautiful, and shouldn't like to see a lot of old 

 shanties put up that would mar the looks of the place. But 

 if you can find some place to locate them, I think it might 

 be a good thing. 



Prof. Wm. P. Brooks (of Amherst). I happen to know 

 one successful market gardener whose practice, I think, illus- 

 trates exactly what is necessary to solve the farm help prob- 

 lem. It is, of course, fundamentally necessary that the 

 business be profitable, so that the farmer may afford to pay 

 good wages. This man employs perhaps thirty or forty men 

 in the summer, and perhaps from twelve to sixteen in the 

 winter, and keeps usually about twelve working horses. He 

 provides cottages for the men he keeps the year round, and 

 when one of them has been with him a good while, and ex- 

 presses a desire to get married, wanting a family life, he 

 allows him to put up a house himself and pay for it him- 

 self on the farm. He pays good wages ; he doesn't give them 



