The Fat of the Land | Page 8

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 had experienced the unrest of a hand-to-mouth
struggle for a living in a large city; men who were pining for the
country, perhaps without knowing it, and who saw no way to get back
to it. I advertised my wants in a morning paper, and asked my son, who

was on vacation, to interview the applicants. From noon until six
o'clock my ante-room was invaded by a motley procession--delicate
boys of fifteen who wanted to go to the country, old men who thought
they could do farm work, clerks and janitors out of employment,
typical tramps and hoboes who diffused very naughty smells, and a
few--a very few--who seemed to know what they could do and what
they really wanted.
Jack took the names of five promising men, and asked them to come
again the next day. In the morning I interviewed them, dismissed three,
and accepted two on the condition that their references proved
satisfactory. As these men are still at Four Oaks, after seven years of
steady employment, and as I hope they will stay twenty years longer, I
feel that the reader should know them. Much of the smooth sailing at
the farm is due to their personal interest, steadiness of purpose, and
cheerful optimism.
William Thompson, forty-six years of age, tall, lean, wiry, had been a
farmer all his life. His wife had died three years before, and a year later,
he had lost his farm through an imperfect title. Understanding
machinery and being a fair carpenter, he then came to the city, with
$200 in his pocket, joined the Carpenter's Union, and tried to make a
living at that trade. Between dull business, lock-outs, tie-ups, and
strikes, he was reduced to fifty cents, and owed three dollars for room
rent. He was in dead earnest when he threw his union card on my table
and said:--
"I would rather work for fifty cents a day on a farm than take my
chances for six times as much in the union."
This was the sort of man I wanted: one who had tried other things and
was glad of a chance to return to the land. Thompson said that after he
had spent one lonesome year in the city, he had married a sensible
woman of forty, who was now out at service on account of his hard
luck. He also told of a husky son of two-and-twenty who was at work
on a farm within fifty miles of the city. I liked the man from the first,
for he seemed direct and earnest. I told him to eat up the fifty cents he
had in his pocket and to see me at noon of the following day. Meantime

I looked up one of his references; and when he came, I engaged him,
with the understanding that his time should begin at once.
The wage agreed upon was $20 a month for the first half-year. If he
proved satisfactory, he was to receive $21 a month for the next six
months, and there was to be a raise of $1 a month for each half-year
that he remained with me until his monthly wage should amount to
$40,--each to give or take a month's notice to quit. This seemed fair to
both. I would not pay more than $20 a month to an untried man, but a
good man is worth more. As I wanted permanent, steady help, I
proposed to offer a fair bonus to secure it. Other things being equal, the
man who has "gotten the hang" of a farm can do better work