12 BULLETIN 1020, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



either to find a new force or get men back from Wichita or Hutchin- 

 son when its grain is ready to be cut. Naturally it is difficult to per- 

 suade men to return from central Kansas to Oklahoma, as that would 

 make it necessary for them to jump through central Kansas to north- 

 ern Kansas or Nebraska at the completion of the western Oklahoma 

 harvest. This difficulty is intensified by the fact that ordinarily 

 higher wages are offered in central Kansas than in Oklahoma, and by 

 the lack of good railroad facilities leading into the Woodward dis- 

 trict. For the past few years this problem has been met by bringing 

 in students from southern colleges. 



EFFECT OF VARIATION IN TIME OF SOWING. 



The volume of the demand for labor fluctuates also within each 

 local community because of the irregularity in the time oi planting 

 the various fields. As the fields in any neighborhood which are 

 sown on different dates do not ripen at the same time, certain lots 

 of grain are ready to be harvested several days or a week before cut- 

 ting becomes general, while others may not be ready until most of 

 the neighboring fields have been finished. This condition causes the 

 local demand for labor to open on a small scale, rapidly expand to 

 its maximum, and then taper off to nothing. 



One of the beneficial effects of this condition is that some of the 

 men who work in the earliest cuttings later find something to do on 

 other farms, after which they may secure thrashing work in the 

 neighborhood, thus gaining steady employment for from one to three 

 months. At the same time, however, it makes the short period of 

 work the lot of the majority of the hands used in the heat of the 

 harvest. Most of the men who come into a community when the cut- 

 ting is at its height are forced to leave at the end of from 1 to 10 

 days. 



CROP DAMAGE. 



The demand for harvest labor within a State also is apt to be 

 " spotty," because of damage by rust, grasshoppers, drought, hail, and 

 other causes (Table 5) which ruin or materially reduce the crop in 

 some counties. As there is little uniformity in the distribution of 

 these losses from year to year and the harvest hands have no accurate 

 information concerning the condition of the crop in the various locali- 

 ties, laborers frequently go to sections where they found plenty of 

 work during the preceding season, only to learn that crop losses have 

 wiped out the need for them. 



This difficulty is augmented by the fact that the crop loss fre- 

 quently occurs shortly before harvest time. Grasshoppers, rust, 

 heavy storms, etc., need but little time to wreak great damage. For 

 instance, in 1920 serious loss from rust occurred in 20 North Dakota 



