30 BULLETIN 1230, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
pitchers and used only 6 bundle-wagon men. Two 20-inch machines 
each used 12 men having 1 spike pitcher and 8 bundle-wagon men. 
These machines had a capacity of 900 to 1,000 bushels. The labor 
cost of one was $51 a day, of the other $54, without including the 
work of the owner who acted as engineer. 
MOBILIZATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF HARVEST HANDS. 
The task of obtaining and distributing harvest hands for the wheat 
belt is now in the hands of the United States Employment Service, 
cooperating with the State employment services of Oklahoma, 
Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and North Dakota, and with the 
farm bureaus and county agents.1® Under the leadership of the 
United States Employment Service, a comprehensive organization 
for meeting the wheat farmer’s harvest labor needs has been in course 
of development since 1919. Year by year this service has been 
attaining oo degree of efficiency. It has become one of the most 
important factors in the harvest labor situation. The suggestion 
made in a previous bulletin of this department on the harvest labor 
problems that ‘one of the most serious needs of the labor distribution 
organization in the wheat belt is the establishment of a large well- 
equipped office at Kansas City, Mo.,’’ ?° has now been carried out and 
the service is now in better shape to meet the wheat farmers’ needs 
than ever before. 
Nevertheless, the majority of farmers still depend upon picking up 
men on the streets of neighboring towns rather than upon placing 
orders with their county agents or other local representatives of the 
employment service. Realizing this fact, and also realizing that 
many harvest hands will rely upon “picking up a job”’ by meeting 
farmers on the streets of country towns, the employment service 
disseminates information which advises harvesters of the progress of 
the harvest in the counties being cut at the particular date. Dail 
bulletins are posted in public places and furnished to the press als 
direct harvest hands to the areas where their services are needed. 
Tens of thousands of harvest hands whose names are never recorded 
in the employment offices are nevertheless directed to the farmer by 
the employment service in cooperation with the agricultural officials 
of the wheat States and counties. 
In Table 6 the methods used by 1,091 farmers to obtain harvest 
hands are shown, and in Table7 the number of men who were definitely 
directed to harvest jobs by the employment offices in 1921. Table 6 
shows, as previously suggested, that the farmer has not yet come to 
rely to a large extent upon the employment agencies or the assistance 
of county agents or local business men to secure harvest hands for 
him. Probably a large percentage of the farmers never will. Never- 
theless the service of these agencies is an important factor in the situ- 
ation, for, to a considerable extent, they fill the needs of farmers who 
have been or will be unable to secure enough labor by picking it 
up on the streets. Areas like extreme southwestern and extreme 
northwestern Kansas, southwestern Nebraska, the sections of South 
Dakota east and west of Aberdeen, and of North Dakota west of a 
line north from Jamestown to Devils Lake, and north of a line running 
19 See Harvest Labor Problems in the Wheat Belt, U. S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin 1020, 
pp. 22-34. A detailed descri Meg of the employment service organization and its procedure will be found 
in ‘‘Kansas Hand Book of Harvest Labor,’’ op. cit. 
20 Harvest Labor Problems in the Wheat Belt, op. cit. p. 28. 
