20 
BULLETIN 1285, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
where the move seems to come in late summer or early autumn. 
School authorities make little or no effort to follow up such fam- 
ilies when out of their home jurisdiction. 
To allow school children to help on home farms an occasional 
rural school in Xew Jersey makes a practice of opening one or two 
weeks later in the fall than do most others, and of changing its 
hours to let out the children early in the afternoon to help in the 
harvesting of truck crops. 
Many children, especially those of migrant families, are forced to 
work while very young because of family poverty. Taking them 
from school seriously checks their training for life and makes it 
practically certain that later they will be seriously handicapped in 
the struggle for a living for themselves and their families. 
Percentages of 683 Farm Employees Who Had Engaged in Each of Certain Occupations 
PER CENT 
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 
COMMON LABOR 
AGRICULTURE 
UNSKILLED 
SKILLED 
INDUSTRY 
UNSKILLED 
SKILLED 
BUSINESS 
CLERICAL 
ADMINISTRATIVE 
OTHER OCCUPATIONS 
INCLUDING MILITARY 
OR NAVAL SERVICE 
T 
V/////////////^////////< / ^/< / U , , ; "////////A 
\ 
5 
H 
QBB Lifetime UZZZ1 Recently (£mmer %f 1922) 
Fig. 7. — Unskilled occupations had predominated in the working lives of farm em- 
ployees. Practically all had engaged in unskilled agriculture. There had been nearly 
as great a. variety of occupational activity in the three and a half years (January, 
1919, to> summer of 1022) as in the working lives, of the group 
OCCUPATIONAL HISTORY 
No minor under 18 years of age claimed to have a trade except 
occasionally one who referred to some type of agriculture. Disre- 
garding these because they had had insufficient opportunity to learn 
a trade, it appears that two-thirds of the farm employees interviewed 
had no trade (Table 7). They were unskilled workers. Some in- 
dividuals claimed as trades 5 occupations which they had followed 
-The widely varied trades e'a'mcd were classified as fallows: 
(a) Agriculture: Any type of farm work, nursery work, animal husbandry. 
(b) Fishing: Deep-sea fishing, oystering. 
jfc) Mining, quarrying (of coal or stone). 
(d) Manufacturing (non metals) : Of food, tobacco and textile products, shoes, includ- 
ing mechanical trades in such factories. 
(e) Mechanical industries and construction : Manufacture of metal products, machine 
shop work, building trades, mechanical trades not essentially connected with another in- 
dustry. 
(f) Transportation : Highway, rail, water. 
(g) Mercantile trade: Store workers, delivei ymen. etc. 
(b) Professional service and engineering. 
(ii Domestic and personal service. Household, hotel and restaurant work, barber, 
bootblack, etc. 
