EMPLOYMENT OF HARVEST LABOR IN THE WHEAT BELT. 13 
situation. Young men riding the freights are compelled to associate 
with criminals, tramps, and hoboes, and are subjected to the temptation 
to become migratory workers themselves. Many of the hoboes have 
“smooth tongues,” and the “romancing” in which they indulge con- 
cerning their travels and experiences fires the imagination of many a 
young man to “see the world.” One can hardly be in the company 
of a group of genuine hoboes for an hour without hearing many 
Fig. 8.—Hiring harvest hands. ‘Two farmers interviewing hands in city park of awheat townin Kansas. 
sophisticated allusions to various distant places, and the eager inter- 
est of the young and untraveled stimulates them to exhibit their 
wares, true and false, to the utmost. The life histories obtained by 
the field group from hundreds of hoboes show that it was just such 
Fre. 9.—Harvesters waiting for farmers to ‘‘ pick them up.” 
experiences in their youth that turned many of them from ordinary 
ways of living to their irregular, irresponsible life habits. 
Freight trains are also a very unsatisfactory means of distributing 
harvest labor to the farmers. Men traveling by freight, especially 
when going considerable distances, take so much longer to reach their 
destinations that they do not relieve labor shortages quickly. On 
the other hand, while they are en route, the farmers keep calling for 
