DEMAND FOR HARVEST LABOR IN THE WHEAT BELT. out 
the wage rate follows a course very similar to that already described 
as obtaining in 1921. Starting at the bottom around Fort Worth, 
Tex., where many farmers paid but $1.50 and $2 a day for harvest 
hands in 1921, the rate rises to its maximum in central and north- 
western Kansas, declines sharply in the Nebraska and South Dakota 
harvest, and then recovers somewhat in North Dakota, but seldom 
equals the Kansas maximum rates. 
Wage data obtained from 1,050 harvest hands coincide closely 
with the figures given by the farmers. Of 123 who worked in Okla- 
homa, 64 received from $3 to $4, 45 received $4.50 or $5, and the 
other 13, who were particularly skilled, received higher rates. _Of 
415 who worked in ee 134 were paid $4 and 201 received $5. 
Fifty-nine were paid more than $5. In Nebraska 77 per cent and 
in South Dakota 80 per cent of the laborers interviewed were paid 
from $3 to $4. In North Dakota and Minnesota approximately 45 
per cent were paid $3 and $3.50, 33 per cent $4, and 12 per cent $4.50 
and $5. The others were mostly role threshing hands, who were 
paid more than the $5 rate. 
The wages paid in threshing average higher than those paid in the 
harvest. A larger portion of the work is skilled, and some of it is 
highly skilled work. Ten dollars a day is a more or less standard 
wage for engineers and separator men throughout the wheat belt, a 
minority receiving less or more than that figure. Field pitchers 
usually receive about the same wage that harvest hands have been 
paid in the same area, though frequently this wage is 50 cents per 
day higher than that of shockers. During recent years the practice 
of paying harvest and threshing hands by the hour rather than by the 
day has become more and more common, and, since the hours are 
commonly longer in threshing than in the harvest, this fact also 
affects the threshing wage. 
Bundle wagon drivers are often paid 50 cents a day more than field 
pitchers, while spike pitchers get 50 cents to $1 more than the wagon 
men. In 1921 $4 was the prevailing wage for field pitchers in the 
Dakotas, $4 to $4.50 for bundle wagon drivers, and $4.50 to $5 for 
spike pitchers. Men cooking for threshing crews had no standard 
wage. The number of men so employed is small, and the wage is 
fixed in each case by individual bargaining. Rates of $5 to $7 per 
day obtained in 13 such cases. 
Data are available upon the sleeping accommodations provided by 
724 farmers for their harvest hands. Approximately two-thirds of 
them kept the men in the houses, 28.9 per cent slept their men in 
barns or granaries, and 6.3 per cent provided bunk houses or tents. 
Only 3 out of 724 farmers had failed to make definite arrangements 
for their men, and the harvest hands interviewed made little com- 
plaint on this score. Since mosquitoes are scarce in the wheat belt, 
and since comfortable accommodations can be provided in barns and » 
granaries, these accommodations are often as desirable as those in 
the house. The principal complaint of the harvester was the lack 
of bathing facilities on the farms. The farmer who cleaned up one 
of the water troughs he used for watering horses or stock and 
peed it full of clean water each morning, allowing the water to 
e warmed by the sun during the day and thus made available a 
miniature swimming pool, was long and gratefully remembered by 
his harvest crew. Many farmers allowed the men to use their bath- 
rooms. On some farms streams were available. 
