HARVEST LABOR PROBLEMS IN WHEAT BELT. 27 



hands do not attempt to secure information at the employment 

 offices, but go out into the small towns, where they are picked up on 

 the streets by farmers. If they do not find work in one town they 

 go on to another. Daily bulletins which tell where men are needed 

 and what communities already have enough labor enable them to go 

 where there is some chance for work rather than where there are 

 too many men. Of course, as long as men wander from town to 

 town, guided only by general information, contemporaneous short- 

 ages and surpluses of labor will exist. 



Sometimes the scattering of the labor force through the small 

 towns in advance of specific orders from farmers benefits both the 

 men and the employers. During the early part of June, 1920, when 

 rainy weather delayed cutting, thousands of men left such distribu- 

 tion centers as Kansas City and Wichita and went out into the small 

 towns in the heart of the wheat belt. When the rainy weather was 

 succeeded by a sudden hot wave the men were ready to step into the 

 fields in many parts of the wheat area. Under ordinary circum- 

 stances, however, the most efficient distribution of the labor is at- 

 tained when the farmers place their orders with local representa- 

 tives of the Employment Service and the men go directly from the 

 employment offices to the localities where they are needed. 



The organized machinery of labor distribution in the wheat belt 

 consists of State and Federal employment services working in coop- 

 eration. The United States Employment. Service, having its central 

 office at Kansas City, has endeavored, with marked success, to coordi- 

 nate, centralize, and make effective all public employment agencies in 

 the grain belt, and to establish complete cooperation with the represen- 

 tatives of the United States Department of Agriculture and State and 

 local agricultural officials. The United States Department of Agri- 

 culture has furnished the employment services with crop information, 

 and the county agricultural agents and farm bureaus have assisted in 

 placing harvest hands on farms. 



Several of the States in the grain belt have State employment 

 offices. Oklahoma has two, one at Enid and one at Oklahoma City; 

 Kansas, six, at Topeka, Kansas City, Parsons, Wichita, Salina, and 

 Hutchinson, with the Kansas City, Mo., office for all practical pur- 

 poses a part of its system; and Nebraska three, one at Omaha, one 

 at Lincoln, and one at Fairbury. Sioux City, Iowa, is the basic dis- 

 tribution point for harvest labor for Nebraska and South Dakota, 

 while South Dakota has offices at Sioux Falls and Mitchell, and North 

 Dakota one at Fargo. 



As the permanent offices are too few to meet the needs of the har- 

 vest situation, temporary offices have been established in each of the 

 last three years for the harvest period. Some of these have been 

 financed from Federal funds, others from State funds, and many 



