No. 4.] FAKM HELP PROBLEM. 101 



haven't over fifty men at the present time ; still, about fifteen 

 live in my houses. The men who live in those houses, many 

 of them, have at the present time houses of their own. They 

 have bought land and I have loaned them money to build a 

 house, they have built the house and brought up a family, 

 paid for the house and own it themselves, and live in it with 

 their family, and work for me. I have had some twenty or 

 thirty men who have been with me from fifteen to thirty- 

 five years, and those men never ask me what they are going 

 to get, or what I am going to pay them, at all. I hired forty- 

 five men last Saturday night, and only five of them asked 

 me what I was going to give them for this winter ; didn't 

 say a word about it to me ; and they haven't for years. So, 

 of course, you have got to get the confidence of your men. 

 Not long ago I valued the estate of one man who worked 

 for me thirty-nine years, and he left ten thousand dollars 

 clear, three good houses, two tenements each. He had saved 

 that amount of money, and brought up five children, — an 

 economical kind of man, couldn't read or write ; he could 

 count his money all right, when he got it, but couldn't tell 

 anything about the figures at all. 



I pay my men once a month. Now, I don't believe in pay- 

 ing them once a week, at all. The class of men I hire are 

 mostly Irishmen, and they do like their beer and drink ; and 

 the oftener you pay them, the oftener they will drink, and 

 if a man won't work for me and take his pay once a month, 

 he can't work for me. And those who work for me say it is 

 a good deal better. " I pay my rent, and if I have a little 

 bill, I go and pay it, and if I have got anything left, I have 

 got it." Getting paid Saturday night is apt to interfere with 

 Monday's work, and Monday is my biggest day the year 

 round, and for that reason I want my help all there. Of 

 course last Monday I didn't have quite all of them ; being 

 the end of the month, you know, some of them felt a little 

 good on Sunday, and they weren't all around on Monday; 

 perhaps two or three were missing, but of course out of forty 

 or fifty you wouldn't mind that much. I have some in New 

 Hampshire. I started a little farming up there, six farms 

 together, three hundred and fifty acres, a few years ago, and 



