xii BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



price sufficient to cover the cost to the State; payments for this 

 land should be extended over a series of years, with an added 

 charge to cover interest, and the title should not pass from 

 the State until all payments had been made. 



Farm Labor. 



At the request of the Governor, this Board tried the experi- 

 ment in the spring of placing some of Boston's unemployed men 

 on farms. A number of these men came to the office and 

 registered on May 21, and a list of their names, ages and 

 qualifications was sent on May 26 to 650 of the larger dairy 

 farms of the State. Up to July 6, thirteen inquiries were re- 

 ceived by letter and six by telephone. Thirteen men were 

 secured positions, and it is known that nine of the men kept 

 them for less than three weeks. 



This experiment was, of course, tried on too small a scale to 

 draw final conclusions, but it does suggest one or two facts 

 about the labor question. One is that the demand for help on 

 farms is largely overestimated. Every year during the harvest 

 season the newspapers publish stories telling of the thousands 

 of men who will be needed to gather the crops, but when only 

 twenty inquiries are received from 650 of the larger farmers of 

 the State, it cannot be said that they are in a very desperate 

 way for help. Not only uninformed persons but men right on 

 the ground seem to overestimate the demand for farm labor. 

 A good instance of this is the correspondence which this office 

 had with the county agent for Orange County, Vermont. The 

 agent said in his first letter that he could place 25 men in his 

 section at S25 a month. When he came actually to get orders 

 from the farmers, he was able to place just two. In a later 

 letter he said, "I regret I cannot place some of the rest. I ran 

 an advertisement in a local paper but no one has come forward 

 with a request." 



It also apj)ears evident that no matter how small or how 

 great the demand for help on the farm, it cannot be satis- 

 factorily filled with the floating labor from the city, which has 

 neither the training nor the inclination to do farm work. 

 What farmers want are men who can milk and drive teams, and 

 who in addition are temperate and want steady positions. It 



