10 
BULLETIN 1020, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
Table 4. — Irregularity of employment in harvest (time tvorked and time lost 
by lo-'t harvest hands). 
Total time 
in harvest 
area from 
Totaltime 
Totaltime 
Time lost 
Regular occupation of 154 harvest laborers. 
date of 
worked br- 
lost bv 
bv each 
arrival to 
each group. 
each group. 
group. 
date in- 
terviewed. 
Days. 
Days. 
Days. 
Per cent. 
Factory hands 
443 
225 
218 
49.2 
Farm laborers 
607 
671 
684 
351 
436 
418 
256 
235 
266 
42 2 
Farmers 
35.0 
Laborers 
38.9 
Mechanics - 
647 
394 
253 
39.1 
Miscellaneous 
202 
759 
121 
392 
81 
367 
40. 1 
Students .■ ; 
48.4 
Average per man 
26 
15 
11 
42 3 
So far as the demand for labor is concerned, the harvest consists 
of two distinct but connected episodes. Beginning on a small scale 
in Texas in early June, the southern (winter- wheat) demand has 
expanded to a large volume by the last week in June, when Texas, 
Oklahoma, and southeastern Kansas are at work, and reaches its maxi- 
mum in Kansas about the middle of July. It then gradually tapers off 
through the winter-wheat harvest of southeastern Nebraska, shrink- 
ing to almost nothing before the end of July. Beginning during the 
last two weeks of July on the eastern border of Nebraska, the de- 
mand for labor for harvesting the spring wheat gradually expands 
as the harvest goes northward across South Dakota, to reach its 
maximum by the middle of August in North Dakota, after which 
it declines rapidly. The largest numbers of men are employed dur- 
ing the first three weeks of August. 
If all the harvest hands who work in Kansas should desire to fol- 
low the harvest through North Dakota it would be necessary for 
fully half of them to remain idle for from two to four weeks between 
the ending of work in Kansas and the beginning of work in North 
Dakota, and when they reached North Dakota they would be forced 
into competition for employment with many thousands of men who 
had come into' the northern harvest from the East by way of Fargo 
and Grand Forks, or from the West, through Montana. 
As the Kansas harvest nears completion, the transient harvesters 
dispose of themselves in various ways. A large number do not attempt 
to go beyond Kansas, and many experienced workers never have 
worked outside of the winter-wheat region. Some stay in Kansas 
through the thrashing season, thousands go home or take up other 
kinds of work, and others move on to the corn-growing sections of 
Kansas and of Iowa or return to the cotton region. Another con- 
tingent secures employment in Nebraska through employment offices 
or by going from town to town. As many who have not worked in 
