642 LEGAL DEPARTMENT. 



EMPLOYER AND LABORER. 



There is a difference in some respects between a person employed to 

 work upon a farm, or as a domestic servant, and a person employed to 

 work in a factory. The laws of the country have regulated the number of 

 hours per day for many kinds of labor, but between the former laborer 

 and the farmer the hours of labor rest wholly upon contract, express or 

 implied. The laborer is bound to render the services and the farmer to 

 pay the price agreed upon, or the value thereof, if no arrangement is 

 made as to the price. It is essential that the parties have the legal 

 capacity to make a contract, otherwise the contract could not be enforced, 

 thus : If a boy under age hires for a specified time at a, fixed price, he is 

 not bound by his contract, but may abandon it at any time, although he 

 cannot recover on his contract, yet he can recover what his services are 

 actually worth, and that without any deduction for damages for his breach 

 of contract. If there is no fixed period of employment agreed upon, the 

 period of notice or warning is to be governed by the wages or custom of 

 the trade, profession, or business. If there is no special agreement as to 

 price, the employer must pay a reasonable value for the services, depend- 

 ing on the current rate of wages for similar service at the same time and 

 place. 



Contracts for More than a Year. Contracts for services which could 

 not be performed within a year, must, by the statute of frauds, be in 

 writing in order to be legally binding. In Britton \'. Rossiter, 1 1 Q. B. D. , 

 it was held that a contract to serve for one year, tlie service to commence 

 on the second day after that on which the contract was made, was a con- 

 tract not to be performed within a year, and was within the fourth sec- 

 tion of the statute of frauds. 



The agreement need not be in one writing ; it may be contained in 

 several documents which refer to each other, and which do not require 

 verbal evidence to show that they in fact refer to each other. (Cawthorne 

 V. Cordrey, 13 C. B. N. S. 406.) 



If an oral contract is made to employ a laborer for a year, and the 

 contract may not be completed within the year, it is binding. But if the 

 performance of such contract is to commence at some future day it can- 

 not be enforced, yet it seems that an oral contract in which a laborer was 

 hired for a year, to begin the next day, is valid. 



Enticing a Laborer Away from His Employer. When a person is 



