1921. 21 
near Wareham the cranberry-picking season had not opened. Large 
numbers of these negroes come every September to the cranberry 
bogs from nearby towns and from cities such as Fall River, New 
Bedford, and Providence. Most of these people return at the close 
of the harvest to their homes to engage in city work and industrial 
employment. Some are said to go as far south as Virginia to work 
north the next season with the truck-crop harvests, returning to the 
Massachusetts bogs by fall. Some, mostly women, pick strawberries 
near Falmouth in June and July, then blueberries in the woods of 
Plymouth County until September. 
Around Falmouth the strawberry pickers are largely Brava 
women and young people coming from nearby points. Following 
strawberry picking, many of them pick blueberries and cranberries. 
Farmers were asked if their help could easily find other work 
when not engaged upon farms, especially in winter. Somewhat over 
half of those replying considered other work usually available. As 
already noted, in the tobacco and onion district of the Connecticut 
Valley there is ample work all year. Tobacco-sorting shops offer 
steady winter work. Some tobacco growers run such shops and they, 
together with some market gardeners and dairy farmers, plan to 
furnish steady work for all their employees who do not leave. In 
sections of specialized seasonal agriculture, such as the cranberry 
and strawberry districts of southeastern Massachusetts, there is 
frequently little work available when the agricultural demand 
slackens. 
Winter idleness, voluntary or involuntary because of lack of 
employment, seems most prevalent in southeastern Massachusetts, 
where the agriculture is largely confined to the berry crops, with their 
seasonal extremes in labor demand. Moreover, this idleness seems 
to be largely among the Bravas, some of whom prefer not to work 
in cold weather but to live upon their summer earnings; others seem 
really unable to get winter work, there is so little offered. 
Most of the nonagricultural work available was reported to be 
mostly local, except in the cranberry and strawberry sections. It- 
is largely industrial in character. Considerable winter work is 
offered in the woods of many parts of the State, but this source of 
employment is in some sections falling off. 
RECREATION AND SOCIAL STANDING OF FARM EMPLOYEES. 
The problem of recreation and conveyance between the farm and 
town, church, and school is frequently raised by farm workers, and 
many refuse farm employment because farms are not within easy 
traveling distance of towns. The average distance of the farms 
of this stud\' from town centers was If miles; nearly a third lay 
over 2 miles out. 
Distance to church was somewhat less than to town, because there 
are occasionally small churches serving as outlying social centers 
much nearer than trading centers. But as the rural church in New 
England is largely Protestant and in many districts the farm laborers 
are largely Catholic, the laborers are often compelled to go much 
farther to worship than the employers. 
Most of these farms lay within a mile of at least an elementary 
school serving a rural district. Schools of upper grammar grades, 
and especially high schools, were usually more distantly located in 
