840 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



milk them. Breakfast is a matter of only fifteen minutes or so, and 

 by seven o'clock every good fanner has to be starting his field work. 

 Most farmers want their dinner regularly at twelve o'clock. The 

 housewife must have the meal ready at that time, though occasionally 

 she will be kept waiting until one o'clock or after before the men feel 

 that they can drop the job on hand and take time to eat. One hour's 

 time is ordinarily allowed for dinner. This noon hour may include 

 ten or fifteen minutes for scanning the daily paper, but there is no 

 time for recreation. First, the horses must be. fed and then the men 

 wash up and sit down for their own meal. At one o'clock, or as soon 

 after as possible, "it's get out the horses and back into the field again." 

 The afternoon's work drags on until six o'clock, which is the approved 

 quitting tune. As we have seen, however, the chores remain to be 

 done after supper is over. By eight, or eight-thirty ordinarily, most 

 farmers are through with the day's work. 



We have not yet considered the routine of tasks for the winter 

 months. Naturally the hours of work are shorter. The keeping of 

 high-grade dairy cattle requires regular hours, however, and the best 

 dairymen milk their cows at the same hour in the morning and eve- 

 ning the year around. This necessitates a five o'clock rising hour for , 

 the winter also. Even though the work is not so toilsome during the 

 winter months as it is in the hot, sultry weather of June or July when 

 the hay has to be mowed away, or the barley threshed, the milk has 

 to be taken to town every morning no matter how cold.it is, and the 

 whole day long a man is kept "puttering around" the yard doing 

 chores. The work is finished earlier in the evening than it is in the 

 summer, but the care of high-priced live stock prevents participation 

 in social gatherings as of yore. " Under big-scale ranch-farming con- 

 ditions, it used to be all right to trust to luck in April and see how 

 many lambs you could count gamboling on the meadows green in 

 May; but a man on a present-day farm, raising pure-bred horses, 

 cattle, and hogs, has to pass many sleepless nights in tending the 

 dams, or his year's business will represent a loss." 



269. A TEN-HOUR DAY 1 

 BY GEORGE T. POWELL 



Thirty years ago, late of an evening, while sitting upon the porch 

 of my home, I heard the sound of welts and blows that were being 

 delivered with a stick upon the backs of the cows of a near neighbor. 



1 Adapted from The World's Work, XXVII, No. 2 (December, 1913), 232-35. 



