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



many sources. We were very careful, at all times, in giving articles to the 

 press, to give only the exact conditions. 



To be reliable, advertising must be centralized and coordinated. 

 To give out accurate forecasts of the need for harvest labor, all 

 agencies need information upon the acreage to be harvested, the con- 

 dition of the crops in each locality, the available local labor supplies, 

 weather conditions, the agencies which feed labor into the harvest, 

 the experience of preceding years, the unemployment that prevails 

 in the cities of the central part of the country and the wages current 

 there, and the extent to which the labor employed in the southern 

 wheat area can be used in the northern area. Only a Government 

 office in touch with responsible correspondents throughout the wheat 

 belt and able to combine and analyze their reports is in a position to 

 appraise correctly the harvest labor needs or to forecast harvest 

 wages. 



Prior to 1917 little had been done to provide authoritative in- 

 formation about the harvest for prospective laborers and for the 

 guidance of employment agencies. Meetings of State employment 

 officials had been held at Kansas City in 1915 and 1916, but not much 

 more than the exchange of information and the creation of personal 

 contacts among the officers of the several States was accomplished. 

 As a result of the activities of the Federal Department of Labor, 

 begun in 1917, 49,000 posters announcing the labor needs of the 

 wheat belt were sent to as many post offices in 1918 and 1919, result- 

 ing in inquiries from over 20,000 individuals. Later, 17,000 posters 

 announcing the location of wheat-belt employment offices were put 

 up in the States from which the bulk of the harvest hands were 

 expected. Of the 93,000 men who came to these offices 16,242 were 

 definitely placed. 



During the winter-wheat harvest daily bulletins are issued by the 

 Employment Service, in cooperation with the farm management 

 demonstrator of Kansas, but this bulletin service has not yet been 

 established in the spring-wheat area. These bulletins give specific, 

 up-to-the-minute information on the demand and supply of labor, 

 wages, weather conditions, and the stage of the harvest, to the harvest 

 hands, farmers, employment offices, county agents, and newspapers. 

 They prevent much of the aimless wandering of men in search of 

 work which results in oversupply at one point, while grain is being 

 shattered and lost at other places because of a lack of men. 



DISTRIBUTION OF HARVEST LABOR. 



DISTRIBUTION MACHINERY. 



The information service already described is an important means 

 of harvest-labor distribution. A large proportion of the harvest 



