HARVEST LABOR PROBLEMS IN WHEAT BELT. 33 
EFFECT OF EMPLOYMENT OFFICES UPON WAGES. 
Farmers and some county agents on the one hand and the harvest 
laborers on the other frequently criticize the influence of the Govern- 
ment employment offices upon wages. These farmers and their 
friends have an idea that the offices raise the wages, while the men 
think that the offices depress them. While it may be true that an 
occasional employment official believes that wages are too low and 
rather encourages the men to " stick out " for a higher rate or con- 
siders the rates the men want too high and encourages the farmers 
in holding them down, the majority of the men in the Federal and 
State, employment offices have tried to maintain an entirely neutral 
attitude on the question of wages and to act as impartial agents to 
bring the farmers and the men into contact with one another. A 
public employment office can follow only one policy successfully, and 
that is to fill all orders at the " going wage." 6 It can not force 
wages above that rate or depress them below it without destroying its 
business. 
Wage rates in the harvest field are of two kinds, natural or un- 
standardized wages and standardized wages. In 1920 an effort was 
made to fix a standard wage in Kansas, where wages were for the 
most part unstandardized, to be paid regardless of the size of the 
labor supply. 7 The State employment offices naturally endeavored 
to adhere to this wage. If individual farmers refused to pay the 
rate fixed the office would accept their orders at lower rates, but 
inform them that it could hardly be expected to get men for them 
at 60 cents when most of the farmers were paying 70 cents. On the 
other hand, if a particular farmer placed an order at 80 cents, the 
office was justified in refusing to advertise the order at that price 
because if it offered the harvest hands one 80-cent job they would 
become dissatisfied with TO cents. To post the 80-cent offer would 
" spoil the market." The only policy under which the employment 
offices could operate successfully in Kansas in 1920 was to adhere as 
closely as possible to the " going rate," TO cents. 
The ease with which the market can be " spoiled " was illustrated 
at Hays. Kans. A few days before the harvest opened a number of 
laborers sought employment there at the State rate. TO cents an hour. 
After having waited a few days these men were called to the county 
agent's office in the city hall and an agreement made that they should 
be placed on farms at TO cents an hour. Later that day, during the 
8 The expression " going rate " of wages is used here to signify that rate which the 
majority of farmers are willing to pay and at which labor can be secured for them. If 
a majority of the farmers offer a wage which the laborers refuse to accept, no " going 
rate " has been established. 
T " Kansas Handbook of Harvest Labor,'' loc. cit. 
