32 BULLETIN 1020, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
eastern sections of the wheat States are able each year to get labor 
more cheaply than the western sections can, while the wages in 
central and western Kansas and in the northwestern counties of North 
Dakota tend to be higher than those in the rest of the wheat belt. 
Since the bulk of the labor supply enters the wheat belt from the 
east, while the heavy wheat acreage, particularly in Kansas, is in the 
central and western counties, it costs less and is easier for harvest 
hands to reach work in the eastern counties, making it necessary for 
the central and western counties to add a little to the wage paid east 
of them. Furthermore, since the eastern counties have a much larger 
local labor supply, transient harvest hands must compete for work 
there, which tends to keep down the wages. Wages are lowest in the 
eastern counties, conform roughly to a "standard" wage in the 
central counties, and tend to rise above the standard in the more 
sparsely settled and less accessible western counties and at the outer 
extremities of spur lines of railroad, from which points movements to 
new territory is difficult. 
Wages also vary from State to State, and this variation provokes 
much discussion among the harvest hands. The 45 cents an hour 
wage fixed by the Casselton, N. Dak., meeting for that portion of 
Cass County, caused many of the harvest hands working in the States 
to the south to refrain from going to North Dakota, because they 
thought 45 cents was a State wage. If a State with a small acreage, 
like Nebraska, however, attempted to pay wages as high as those 
paid in Kansas, it would be overrun with men unable to find work. 
The drop in wages which occurs between the Kansas and Nebraska 
harvests operates as a natural check to prevent thousands of Kansas 
harvesters from spending their money and time in a fruitless search 
for employment in Nebraska. 
The essence of the matter seems to be that uniformity of wages, 
either between States or between the eastern and western sections of 
the same State, is impossible. The early arrivals in the Oklahoma 
and southeastern harvests are willing to accept whatever wages they 
can get during the first two weeks, in the hope of receiving higher 
wages when the harvest is in full swing in Kansas. Natural market 
conditions tend to raise the wages when Kansas and parts of Okla- 
homa are needing men at the same time. The contraction of the de- 
mand for labor as the Kansas harvest tapers off into the Nebraska 
harvest throws men out of employment, producing a fall in wages 
as the men compete for work there. North Dakota naturally en- 
deavors to adhere to the lower rates, but is forced toward the Kansas 
price as its harvest nears its height. Neither interstate nor intra- 
state uniformity of wages seems feasible at present. 
