DEMAND FOR HARVEST LABOR IN THE WHEAT BELT. 23 
expense of lodging and meals and the monotony of waiting for the 
cutting to be resumed cause them to migrate to areas where, as they 
learn from the newspapers, cutting is proceeding. When the rains 
are over, much of the labor which was in the locality has disappeared, 
and a severe shortage of labor is often experienced. Not infre- 
quently the locality then feels that it has a grievance, that some- 
body should have found and had ready a new supply of labor to 
meet its needs when cutting is resumed. Meeting such emergencies 
Bs of the duties of those in charge of the distribution of harvest 
ands. 
USEFULNESS AND MODIFICATION OF THE KANSAS FORMULA FOR 
ESTIMATING HARVEST LABOR NEEDED. 
Tables 1 to 3 and Table III of the appendix furnish figures which 
indicate that the Kansas formula tends to an overestimate of the 
demand for labor. On a total of 389 farms in the heart of the 
Kansas header wheat belt, 618 members of the farmers’ families or 
1.6 persons per farm were found working in the harvest. This 
correlates closely with the formula estimate of 1.5 persons per farm. 
But Table 1 indicates that the family labor plus month hands resident 
on the farms when the harvest begins constituted 1.8 men per farm 
instead of 1.5 and the formula should substitute 1.8 for 1.5. 
The figures in Table III of the appendix, when stated in terms of 
the amount of wheat cut per man, do not coincide with the 50 acres 
per man figure given in the formula. Instead they indicate that in 
the header counties of Kansas and Nebraska the cut exceeded 50 
acres per man in all cases and in all but four counties exceeded 60 
acres per man. In the header counties of Kansas the cut of wheat 
per man was nearly 69 acres; one-third of all the header counties 
exceeded a cut of 70 acres per man. The figures suggest that a 
figure of ‘‘70”’ substituted for the “‘50”’ in the formula would give 
a more accurate measurement of the demand in the header counties 
of Kansas. 
With some modifications the formula can be adapted to use in the 
binder areas as well. Table 1 and Table III of'the Appendix show 
that the assumption that there are, on the average, 1.5 persons per 
farm family who work in the harvest can be used for all of the wheat 
States; but in the binder areas more month hands are employed. 
In South Dakota for each 1.5 family workers in the fields there was 
0.8 man in the form of month hands. The labor resident on the 
farm when the harvest began was therefore 2.3 instead of 1.8, the 
Kansas figure for family labor plus month hands. In Minnesota 
it was 2.4 persons. If figures for eastern Kansas were available, 
the labor per farm would probably approximate more closely the 
figures for Sader counties in other States than the figures for western 
ansas. Therefore the first amendment to be made in the formula 
when applying it to binder country is to increase the figure for labor 
resident on the farm to approximately 2.3. | 
The average duration of the harvest in the binder counties is 
usually a little longer than in the header counties, but the difference 
does not appear to be large enough to require an alteration in the 
above formula. The figures in Table 3, which show the average 
duration of the harvest on farms of various sizes, will enable persons 
