EMPLOYMENT OF HARVEST LABOR IN THE WHEAT BELT. 23 
employment offices, frequently have no one to give them accurate 
information concerning the next places that need their services, and 
are forced to depend upon their own judgment or chance information 
or else go back to the relatively small number of cities within the ter- 
ritory where employment offices are located, and be sent out again 
by the employment offices. As this would mean a journey of a couple 
of hundred miles, many harvesters dispense with the services of the 
employment officials after getting their first jobs. 
The citizens of each county are very active as long as they need 
labor, but when their own crop is cared for, naturally settle back 
with a complacent feeling that all is well and the harvest is over. 
They do not realize that they have any further responsibility to the 
men who have worked in their fields. Some one in each county, 
generally the county agent or farm bureau if there is one, should be 
given definite instructions, guidance, and responsibility for forward- 
ing the labor of that county, as soon as set free, to the next area 
where it is needed. If this were done systematically, the harvest 
could be handled with at least a 25 per cent smaller number of laborers 
and with much better earnings per man for the harvest hands. The 
failure to meet this situation is to-day the most serious shortcoming 
of the agencies distributing harvest labor. 
