174 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



The man who faces the farm labor problem and who must 

 solve it for his own farm finds that custom and sentiment must 

 be used for all they will bring if he is to succeed. Custom does 

 much to determine a wage rate which had as well be adhered 

 to. Sentiment determines how difficult or how easy it is to 

 secure and keep laborers at the customary wage. 



One of the real problems is finding the right man for the given 

 farm. Just as custom and sentiment have much to do in 

 determining the wages the farmer must pay if he decides to 

 keep help and leaves him entirely free to hire or not as he 

 pleases, so also do these same factors tend to retard the move- 

 ment of surplus labor from one place to another. But a still 

 more important hindrance to the movement of laborers is the 

 lack of knowledge of the opportunities available for the workers 

 who are in the region of relative oversupply and who could 

 do much better for themselves and serve a more important 

 purpose in another region. Lack of knowledge of the exist- 

 ence of these men on the part of would-be employers, and when 

 they are heard of, lack of knowledge of the ability and char- 

 acter of these employees, make the calls few for movements of 

 labor excepting in outstanding cases like the annual movement 

 of transients to the wheat fields in harvest time. Another retard- 

 ing force is the cost of the trip, though in many instances the dis- 

 tance is not great if there were a means of knowing where to go. 



There is real need of a network of farm labor bureaus which 

 will provide for the information as to the character and loca- 

 tion of positions open and the qualities and locations of men 

 available to fill the positions. A system of this kind would 

 go far toward stimulating better farming for the reason that 

 many a farmer now continues to tolerate inefficiency on the 

 part of hired men who, if they were in danger of being dropped, 

 would do very much better work. If a bureau were at hand 

 there would probably be more shifting of laborers for a time 

 at least, but the result would be a better fitting of men to jobs, 

 a greater productivity, better wages, and larger profits. 



There are various methods of paying labor. The wage 

 agreed upon may be for a year, a season, a month, a week, a 



