20 BULLETIN 1220, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
eludes room and laundry. Men boarding with the employer's family 
fenerally have the use of the family's periodicals. As many foreign- 
orn can not read English, they are cut off from that source of Ameri- 
canization and recreation. 
A few general and dairy farmers are practically the only ones hiring 
and boarding married couples in their homes. Doubtless more would 
do it if more capable ones could be secured — the man to do farm labor, 
the wife to do housework. Usually there is some shortcoming or 
characteristic about one of the couple making it difficult to keep them 
both. 
Three-fifths of the farmers reporting made no provision for housing 
married employees. Some owners of more or less isolated cranberry 
bogs have cottages for foremen near the bogs. Many other farmers 
recognize the value of good help and that a man with home and family 
is more dependable than one free to move quickly, so they consider it 
worth while to build. Accordingly some have houses for year-round 
use varying from the old unimproved, more or less dilapidated to well- 
equipped and comfortable buildings. Thus it happens that many of 
the 1 arm-hand dwellings in the onion and tobacco region of the Con- 
necticut Valley seem to have been built within a few years. In gen- 
eral farming and dairying regions existing older houses are the rule, 
because often farm owners used them, and have later built anew for 
themselves and turned over their former dwellings to employees. 
Most farmers providing houses for farm labor allow the tenants 
garden space desired, and sometimes chances to keep small livestock, 
such as poultry or hogs, or even to keep a cow, horse or automobile, 
or the use of the employer's horses and equipment with which to do 
some work. Good farm hands are often granted favors which cost 
the employer little, but which mean considerable to the employees 
and go far toward keeping them satisfied. 
NONAGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT AVAILABLE. 
The seasonal nature of agricultural work forces many who engage 
in it at all to make part of their living otherwise. The workers inter- 
viewed were asked if they had any regular variation of employment 
at different times of the year with special reference to their work when 
not engaged in agriculture. Most of Massachusetts offers such a 
variety of industrial employment there usually need be little travel 
to secure work. There is little uniformity in the kind of work secured 
at the different times of the year beyond that the swing is from agri- 
cultural labor to industrial work, which includes all sorts of mill, 
manufacturing, and, in the Connecticut Valley, tobacco-shop work. 
The Connecticut Valley offers the most uniform cycle of work noted 
in the study and probably in the State. The summer farming opera- 
tions on tobacco and onions fit in well with the winter operations of 
tobacco-sorting shops, so that all-year employment is provided for 
nearly all wishing it. Of 107 reporting upon their usual variation in 
employment, 46 stated their nonagricultural work to be industrial; 
of these, 24 engaged in tobacco-shop work. 
There seems to be little migratory agricultural labor in Massa- 
chusetts, except in the cranberry district. Most of the pickers are 
Bravas who have their homes in towns and cities not over 30 miles 
distant. Few of them were interviewed, as at the time of the canvass 
