34 
BULLETIN 1285, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
the workers washed themselves and their clothing and dishes, and 
near which waste water was thrown. Sanitary facilities such as 
privies were sometimes conspicuous by their absence, and when found 
were usually primitive and inconveniently located with reference to 
the buildings the workers occupied. 
Some employees were beginning to resent the necessity of using 
such limited accomodations, and some farmers recognized that better 
quarters were desirable and provided them (fig. 12) for foreign- 
born casual labor as well as for noncasual Americans. 
For the families of married men living on the farms where they 
were employed, farmers not infrequently reported providing frame 
houses or cottages. These varied in type from old to comparatively 
new. Some were in poor repair. Conveniences furnished varied 
greatly. Some of the houses had been turned over to the farm hands 
by their employers who had built new and better houses for theni- 
Fig. 11. — Shack occupied by several families of migratory Italian farm hands. Several 
families were living in this small 1-room shack on the edge of an orchard. Cooking 
was done outdoors, on a piece of sheet iron over a crude arch of stones which shows 
in the center and heyond the brush pile. (The man in the center was one of the 
party making- the study) 
selves. In a few cases farmers had built dwellings as a means of 
securing and holding a good type of noncasual labor. (See fig. 9.) 
Most farmers who provided their workers with houses gave them 
also garden space or such of farm products as were needed. The 
privilege of keeping small livestock, or a cow or a horse, or garage 
space; was occasionally granted. 
RECREATION AND SOCIAL STANDING 
The opportunity to get away from the farm to neighbors, town, 
church, or school, to find change of surroundings or to trade, is a 
matter of consideration for the contentment of farm employees as 
well as for the farm operator. Farm hands often let such con- 
sideration determine whether or not they will take a job, especially 
if their families arc to accompany them. The average distance of the 
farms in this study from town or usual trading center was 1.9 miles; 
