Amerit^an Agriculturist, February 17,1923 
137 
The Hired Man’s Complaint 
Did You Ever Stop To Consider This Particular Angle of the Question ? 
■Y AS 
1 j 
AST summer, while I was going to 
Philadelphia on a train, a working¬ 
man with his dinner pail sat beside 
me. He soon spoke of living out in 
the country, and said went m daily to 
work in the city. I said to him: ‘I should 
suppose you could get work around home 
uow every farmer is busy, and help seems, 
to be scarce.” That started him as follows: 
“These farmers won’t hire a man unless 
they have a big day’s work all ready, so they 
can put him through and _ 
make him do more than any 
man Can fetand, week after 
week. They won’t try to 
make work for one so as to 
give him steady employment 
and allow him to live. No, 
they want him to lie around 
half the time doing nothing, 
but be ready on call to do two 
or three days’ work in one, 
to work long hours, and then 
they complain about the price, 
and often I have to run after 
the money several times be¬ 
fore I get it. I am glad to 
see some of them hard up for 
labor; it will do them good. 
Perhaps they will learn, in 
time, to do more as they 
would be done by. I bought 
a little home in the country 
and was willing to earn my 
money faithfully, but ^ they 
starved me out. Now I go 
to town, have steady work, 
regular hours, am never" over¬ 
worked, my pay comes on 
time, and I am able to take 
much better care of my fam¬ 
ily. No, I have got all I want 
of working for farmers.” 
Now, did you ever think of 
the laboring man’s side of the 
question as he has put it? 
There is much complaint of 
men going to town or shop 
or factory to work, of the 
scarcity of help on the farm. 
The laborer wants to do his 
best, the same as you do, for 
himself and family. Doesn’t 
that sound just natural, about 
getting a man when you had 
a solid day’s work, at pitch¬ 
ing hay, hauling and crating 
peaches, digging potatoes, 
cutting corn, some hard job 
all ready to put him through ? 
I have done it lots of times, 
and I confess to never think¬ 
ing that he could not work like 
that every day of the year, 
any more than I could. And 
we never liked to feel that they were not 
fairly paid. And that matter of making 
work for men—those not employed by the 
season or month: I certainly have done it 
many a time. 
During a breathing spell between haying, 
hauling peaches, cultivating, etc., I nearly 
always had jobs ready for them, cleaning 
ditches, cutting brush, fencing, mowing 
lawns, cleaning stables, or something. May¬ 
be this was partly selfish, to hold the men 
lo’''g hours, slowly but surely the best men 
will go where they can do better.—C. A. 
Umoselle, New Jersey. 
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Apple Crop op 
Hevy York 
125,731.850 
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Total Value of the AppLE'Crop 
OF THE UniTfrO States im 
$ I64,fe0fo,7fefo 
APPLES 
WASHtriSrorf I'IicHiGAN CAtiroRNift ORESOM 
The Importance of New York in American Agriculture—No. 5 
Although this chart indicates that New York stood second in 1921, nevertheless on 
the five-year basis New York I’anks as the chief apple producer of the United States 
haven’t you kept a man at work more hours 
than he would have to put in in the city ? 
We always made it a rule to quit at 
5.30 p. m. But I am afraid I laid out 
a little too much sometimes, so they had 
to put in a few minutes extra to finish up; 
it is so natural when one is trying to get 
ahead. 
But my conscience is clear on one point: 
No man ever had to run after his pay on 
our farm when the work was done. He 
got it in cash or check every Saturday night, 
or when he wanted it. The money was in 
the bank, ready, no matter how short we 
might be ourselves, and our men got their 
pay promptly. That much every employer 
owes to labor, surely. And, as a rule, we 
pay our men more than others do. First, we 
employed only the best, at least those that 
were willing to earn their money, and then 
until the big jobs, where I must have them 
done; but still I don’t believe any of the men 
who worked for us ever talked about us as 
the one quoted above did about the farmers 
who employed him. More than once my wife 
and I talked it over, that come what might 
we did not want to get ahead by not treat¬ 
ing hired men as well as we would want to 
be treated in their places. We tried to re¬ 
member, if there was extra work to do at 
night, that we were getting paid for what 
we did, while, unless we paid the men extra, 
they were working to help us without re¬ 
ward. 
Think of these things, dear readers. Are 
they not right, and also the best business 
policy? Get good men, study to make their 
labor pay well, and then see they have a fair 
share of the reward. If farmers are poor 
pay, and furnish irregular work and demand 
The Credit Problem and Risks 
WAS especially interested in your edi¬ 
torial entitled “More Than Credit 
_ Needed.” My observation for a num¬ 
ber of years is that the person who can use 
credit profitably does not have much trouble 
in getting it under present 
conditions. Banks here, of 
course, do not loan on long¬ 
time loans, but they give their 
patrons the privilege of re¬ 
newal of notes, and in this 
way the interest is kept up 
to date. 
There are many persons— 
farmers and others—that if 
they can get credit easily they 
take risks that do not show 
good business judgment. The 
result is that their ventures 
do not turn out profitably, 
and pay day finds them in a 
worse condition than they 
were when they made the 
debt. A system that would 
make borrowing easy for 
farmers of this class is dan¬ 
gerous to both the borrower 
and the lender. It probably 
would be best for farmers to 
be enabled to hold their crops 
off the market at certain 
times, but if all would adopt 
this plan, would not the glut 
of the market finally come, or 
would not its life be just pro¬ 
longed over a longer period 
of time? The higher the price 
of a commodity, the less of it 
is used. High prices make us 
economize in its use. 
Take wheat as an example. 
If we should have a very large 
wheat crop, and the price of 
wheat was below cost of pro¬ 
duction, suppose that farmers 
should borrow money and 
hold the wheat, or a large 
part of it, over until the next 
year, and there was another 
good wheat crop, the holder 
of necessity had*to pay inter¬ 
est on the value of his old 
wheat crop, which is held 
only to come in competition 
with a new crop of wheat 
that perhaps would not sell 
higher than the old one would 
have sold. Thus we see Chat 
there is a risk in holding. 
On the other hand, if the crop had been 
sold and the money put to interest for one 
year at 6%, provided it could not be more 
profitably invested, coul^ not a slight differ¬ 
ence between cost of production and the sell¬ 
ing price have been made up without so much 
risk to the producer? If a business man 
makes what he finds to be a poor investment, 
he gets what cash he can out of it as quick 
as he can and invests his' money in some¬ 
thing which he thinks will bring him a 
Is it not usually the safer plan for the 
farmer to do the same rather than to take 
greater risks on borrowed capital?—A. J. 
Legg, West Virginia. 
I hate a sharp tongue, the ruin of kingdom 
and home. I long for silence.—C onfucious. 
