UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1285 
Washington, D. C. 
AprO, 1925 
TRUCK-FARM LABOR IN NEW JERSEY, 1922 
By Josiah C. Folsom, Assistant Agricultural Economist, Bureau of Agricultural 
Economics 
CONTENTS 
Page 
Object and methods of the study__. 1 
Agricultural seasons and employ- 
ment 2 
Nonagricultural employment available 7 
Bringing together farm job and em- 
ployee 8 
Sources of farm labor 8 
Usual means of finding employ- 
ees and jobs 10 
Employment agencies 11 
Some characteristics of farm em- 
ployees 13 
Nationality 14 
Marital status and dependents. 16 
Page 
Some characteristics of farm em- 
ployees^ — Continued. 
Training and education 16 
Occupational history 20 
Earnings and savings 25 
Plans for the future 27 
Farm working conditions 28 
Wages 28 
Perquisites 31 
Living conditions 32 
Recreation and social standing. 34 
Suggestions for improvement of the 
farm labor situation 36 
OBJECT AND METHODS OF THE STUDY 
The average farmer is meeting increasing difficulty in securing 
efficient and sufficient hired labor, often in securing any at all. He 
is paying higher wages to obtain and keep help, and the recent decline 
in prices received for many farm products makes it harder or 
impossible to hire labor at a profit. Furthermore, the attitude of 
many ambitious, intelligent workingmen toward farm employment 
has been such as to give the impression that all such preferred other 
work. The problem is not local but increasingly national in extent. 
Consequently farmers are interested in ways and means to obtain 
capable, reliable hands and to keep them while needed. The farm 
hands themselves are interested in the kind of work offered, the 
working conditions, compensation, length of jobs, chances for sav- 
ing, and advancement. Their attitude toward agriculture as an occu- 
pation has an important influence upon the supply of farm labor. To 
study such problems one previous investigation has been made x in a 
diversified farming section. 
The object of the present study was to investigate in a region in 
which truck farming predominated, the conditions of agricultural 
1 Farm Labor in Massachusetts, 1921, by Josiah C. Folsom, United States Department 
Of Agriculture Bulletin 1220. 
106633°— 25- 
