30 BULLETIN 1020, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



HARVEST WAGES.* 



The workingruan can not see why a given kind of work should 

 draw higher pay at one time or place during the harvest than at 

 another. When Kansas could give 70 cents an hour during the 1920 

 harvest, a 60-cent wage in Oklahoma or a 50 or 55 cent wage in the 

 Dakotas looked like exploitation to the men. They could under- 

 stand that a farmer with a poor crop can not afford to pay as high 

 wages as one with a good crop, but the offers vary with the areas 

 rather than with individual farmers. Why should wages be differ- 

 ent in every State? Why should they vary in different counties in 

 the same State? 



The question is just as vexing from the farmer's point of view. 

 " Why," says the Kansas farmer, " should I pay 70 cents for harvest 

 labor, and the North Dakota wheat farmer pay only 50 or 60 cents?" 

 "Why," says the North Dakota farmer, " do the Kansas farmers spoil 

 the wage market by offering such exorbitant wages? We could get 

 plenty of men for 50 cents if they had not paid 70 cents, but now we 

 must pay 60 cents. They have encouraged the men to ask for ex- 

 cessive wages." 



Similar variations in wages occur within a State and even within 

 a county or township. Farmers in the same section offer different 

 rates of wages, frequently stealing labor from one another by offer- 

 ing more than their neighbors. Harvesters in one locality accept a 

 wage that others 10 miles away reject. In every section in North 

 Dakota and Minnesota where wage data were collected the wages 

 paid on different farms in the same neighborhood varied. In most 

 cases the wages were fixed by individual bargains between the farmer 

 and the men he hired. No generally accepted standard wage con- 

 trolled this matter. Where the men were organized and had agreed 

 upon a standard wage, the farmer was helpless in dealing with them ; 

 when men were plentiful and the farmers agreed among themselves, 

 the men were forced to accept the wages offered. 



In placing their orders with employment offices, and even when 

 hiring men on the streets, many farmers in North and South Dakota 

 offered " going wages " without specifying what they meant b} r the 

 term. Sometimes the farmer's motive seemed to be a fear that if his 

 neighbors found out what he was paying they might offer his men 

 more. More frequently he was actuated by fear that he would offer 

 more than others were paying, by a consciousness that he did not 

 know what he ought to pay. This uncertainty, although not so com- 

 mon in Kansas, because of the 70-cent wage fixed by the Hutchinson 

 meeting, prevailed more or less everywhere in the wheat belt. 



4 U. S. Dept. Agr. Bull. 943, " Cost of Producing Wheat," by M. R. Cooper and R. S. 

 Washburn, gives a careful analysis of the labor cost in wheat growing. 



