44 BULLETIN" 995, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



group of workers will be permitted to handle and the price that 

 they will receive per acre for their labor. These contracts are 

 usually made with so-called labor families, although individuals 

 and groups of individuals sometimes enter into the contracts. The 

 labor families are usually in the cities during the winter, employed 

 in mills or factories, and in the summer they go out and work in 

 the beet fields. For their own protection they must have a con- 

 tract before they can afford to leave their employment to take up a 

 new line of work. Many of these families 'return from year to 

 year to work for the same beet growers. 



The contract labor usually covers all of the handwork used in 

 growing the beet crop : namely, the blocking, thinning, hoeing, pull- 

 ing, and topping. The landowner and tenant do all the teamwork, 

 from the plowing of the land to the hauling of the beets to the 

 sugar mill or loading station. 



The hand laborers usually work for a specified rate per acre, a 

 part of which amount is furnished them after each operation. Occa- 

 sionally the}^ receive a specified bonus for each ton above a yield 

 agreed upon. The object of this bonus is to encourage the laborers 

 to maintain the best possible stands and to produce the highest pos- 

 sible yield per acre. 



THE SUCCESSFUL GROWER. 



The successful production of sugar beets on any farm depends to 

 a great extent upon the temperament of the farmer and upon his atti- 

 tude toward the production of this crop. As in other lines of busi- 

 ness, the man's ability to conduct his business successfully is largely 

 a matter of individual temperament, judgment, and ability to do 

 the right thing in the right way and at the right time. There are 

 many farmers, as there are many men in other lines of business, who 

 are not adapted to the kind of work upon which they are engaged. 

 It is not to be expected that these men would have any more success 

 in the growing of sugar beets than in other lines of agriculture. 

 Again, there are farmers well adapted by temperament to the par- 

 ticular line of farming which they are following, but who would not 

 be successful in some other line of agriculture: for example, a man 

 might grow grain on a large scale and do it very successfully ; he 

 might not at all be adapted to dairying or to the feeding of live 

 stock. Some people can not handle live stock successfully even 

 though they have right ideas in regard to the handling of crops; 

 likewise, the grain farmer may not be adapted to the growing of 

 sugar beets. Frequently grain production is extensive rather than 

 intensive, while sugar beets should be handled intensively rather than 

 extensively. At any rate intensive methods should be employed in 

 growing this crop. Some growers of the extensively grown crops, 



