The Tractor; Selling It as an Agricultural Implement and Fitting It to the Midwest Crop Areas (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ...higher wage-scale paid by industrial concerns, the more illusory environments of city life and the sapping of man power by war have all contributed to deplete the farm labor market. Some Pertinent Figures The remarkable increase in farm wages in Kansas in recent years is shown in the estimates by Edward C. Paxton, Kansas field agent for the Bureau of Crop Estimates. The average harvest wage paid in Kansas in 1919 was 131 per cent of the 1918 price and 253 per cent of the 1913, or pre-war price. Harvest laborers received, on the average, $5.42 per day and board in 1919, as compared with $4.14 in 1918 and only $2.14 in 1913. While farm wages for ordinary labor, other than harvest work, have not been as high, they do show an even more noticeable increase. Such wages have risen from an average of $1.53 in 1913 to $2.74 in 1918 and $3.71 in 1919, including board. the work day did not become involved in farm labor until long after it had been a strike issue in the industrial world. It is also possibly true that the harvest labor used in 1919 was really less experienced and efficient than that supplied in 1913. To Command a Premium "The price of farm labor in recent years has shown a trend to approximate the prices prevailing in the industrial market. Because of the relative conditions under which farm labor and city labor are performed, it is even conceivable that the time may soon come when farm labor will actually command a premium. In the Old Days "Historically, it is of interest to compare farm wages now with those paid in 1893, when the financial condition of the country was at very low ebb. In 1893 the Kansas farmer hired labor by the month for an average of $16.27 with board, and $24 without board. Today he pays three times...