Vol. LXV. No. 2949. 
NEW YORK, AUGUST 4, 1906. 
WEEKLY. il.OO PEK YEAR. 
OTHER SIDE TO HIRED MAN QUESTION . 
A Farmer's Daughter Has Her Say. 
As a farmer’s daughter, having been born and living 
•all my life on a farm, I wish to say a few things in an¬ 
swer to the article entitled, ‘“A Hired Man on Farm 
Labor,” which appeared in a recent issue of this paper, 
page 534. Possibly conditions in Massachusetts and 
those in New Jersey and Pennsylvania differ very wide¬ 
ly, very likely they do, yet human nature is human na¬ 
ture the world over, and will be just so long as there is 
a world, so I think Pm safe in saying that for A. S., 
the writer of the article just referred to, the lines must 
milk. Around here, when the hired men eat in the 
kitchen, it is because they will not provide themselves 
with decent cloiffves and keep themselves clean enough to 
be tolerable at. a respectable farmer’s table. 
As to wages,'; the farmers around here have to pay 
from $17 to $24 and $25 per month, and then half the 
time the hired men will come home every Saturday and 
Sunday night so drunk they can’t walk straight, and are 
either so ugly one’s life isn’t safe while they are around, 
or so silly they are positively unbearable; and in either 
case no more fit to be around among cattle and horses 
than they are to dine with John D. Rockefeller. Around 
here the hired men do not have to sue for their wages, 
run a separator twice a day, besides raising oats, barley, 
millet and sometimes rye. When I say that my father 
has a herd of cows whose record is an enviable one, bet¬ 
ter than that made by any herd of equal size anywhere 
around here, that for the quantity of the dairy products 
he turns out the quality is Al, perhaps A, S. will agfe6 
with me that life on such a farm is varied enough to 
give one a pretty good idea as to what farm work is. 
Ours is only one of many that I could name. Possibly 
the reason why conditions are so much better around 
here than those A. S. is familiar with is because all the 
farmers around here, some of them independently rich, 
by the way, put their shoulders to the wheel themselves. 
WORTHY SUBSTITUTES FOR THE HIRED MAN. Fig. 244. 
have fallen in extremely hard places, to give him such a 
distorted view of the hired man’s lot. For 22 years my 
father worked out as a “hired man,” his working days 
beginning when he was only 11 years of age, and the fact 
that he worked 10 of those 22 years in one place will 
prove something about the kind of treatment he received, 
as well as what kind of a hired man he was. Hired 
men in Massachusetts do not work on an average of one 
hundred hours per week unless they get very nearly the 
wages they consider a fair equivalent for such long 
hours. No more do they sleep in beds worse than those 
the family watch-dog has, nor do they eat in the kitch; 
en or an out-house, and dine on pork, potatoes and skim- 
and they are not put off with one or two dollars when 
they ask for five. In all the twenty-odd years my father 
has hired men he has never been sued by his help, and 
he doesn’t pay up at the end of each month, either, as his 
income isn’t even enough for that. Every man that he 
hires understands this, however, and as yet he has not 
had any trouble. 
Our farm contains 78 acres of land, cuts all the hay 
needed, and we raise from 300 to GOO and 700 bushels of 
potatoes every year, (which we sell, in preference to 
feeding them to the hired men), fill an 80-ton silo every 
Fall, besides raising all the corn that is needed for feed¬ 
ing purposes, keep from 18 to 30 cows the year round, 
I’m not quite so sure about the “plenty of good men in 
the cities who would work on farms if they were prop¬ 
erly treated.” I’ve seen it tried, and it didn’t work. I 
know of farmers who were able to pay their help every 
night if it was necessary, offering some of these good 
men $1.50 per day and their board, with the privilege of 
coming to the family table, and so being sure of getting 
the same fare as the farmer, fare which consisted of 
vegetables from his garden and meat raised and cured 
under his own eyes, besides homemade bread and pas¬ 
try, any of which are better for anyone’s health than 
the impure stuff which called forth the recent scandal¬ 
ous disclosures of the packing-house investigation, or 
