THE EFFICIENT MANAGEMENT OF LABOR ON THE 



FARM. 



FRED C. SEARS, BAY ROAD FRUIT FARM, AMHERST, MASS. 



I suppose I should apologize "to the farm management experts 

 for presuming to talk on the subject assigned to me, and I do 

 so apologize at once. But as a matter of fact, I shall not at- 

 tempt to give a scientific discussion of the subject as they would 

 do. I shall merely offer a few practical and more or less de- 

 tached suggestions that have grown out of my experience in 

 helping to manage the Bay Road Fruit Farm at Amherst, and 

 out of my earlier experiences on my father's farm in Kansas. 



Very few classes of people have had as many jokes per- 

 petrated at their expense as the hired man. He is usually 

 represented as inefficient, frequently as lazy, sometimes as dis- 

 honest, and occasionally as all three. And he is blamed for a 

 large part of the failures in operating farms. "The thing 

 would have gone all right if we could only have had efficient 

 help." 



Does he deserve this characterization? In nine cases out of 

 ten he does not, if we consider the real, typical, rural hired 

 man, and not the I. W. W. hobo who sometimes drifts out on 

 to the farm merely with the expectation of passing some of his 

 time there, and not with an honest intention of doing any 

 work. 



The hired man is pretty largely what his employer makes 

 him. If he is well and efficiently managed he accomplishes a 

 deal of work in the course of the year; if his employer has not 

 any executive ability, does not know how to manage himself 

 efficiently, let alone his hired man, then not much of anything 

 is accomplished by the two combined. No one can study, even 



