CHAPTER IV

THE HIRED MAN


Modern farming is greatly handicapped by the difficulty of getting good
help. I need not go into the causes which have operated to bring about
this condition; it exists, and it has to be met. I cannot hope to solve
the problem for others, but I can tell how I solved it for myself. I
determined that the men who worked for me should find in me a
considerate friend who would look after their interests in a reasonable
and neighborly fashion. They should be well housed and well fed, and
should have clean beds, clean table linen and an attractively set table,
papers, magazines, and books, and a comfortable room in which to read
them. There should be reasonable work hours and hours for recreation,
and abundant bathing facilities; and everything at Four Oaks should
proclaim the dignity of labor.

From the men I expected cleanliness, sobriety, uniform kindness to all
animals, cheerful obedience, industry, and a disposition to save their
wages. These demands seemed to me reasonable, and I made up my mind to
adhere to them if I had to try a hundred men.

The best way to get good farm hands who would be happy and contented, I
thought, was to go to the city and find men who had shot their bolts and
failed of the mark; men who had come up from the farm hoping for easier
or more ambitious lives, but who had failed to find what they sought and