A case worker accompanied by an impartial investigator made a five-day tour of the Wallace farms. Twenty-one farms were visited. The survey showed the reasons why relief clients preferred home without relief to jobs in the berry field. The morning paper had carried a call for 1000 hands. In every case the grower agreed that he could use more hands, but added that he could act along as he was.
Most growers call for more labor than they require.
A field over-manned is picked out in a half day instead of a full day and obviously each picker's earning power is cut in half. At the same time, quarters are overcrowded. If the pickers' cottage is made to house twenty persons it must care for thirty, and little relationship between size of house and size of labor force was found in the Wallace area. In no instance did the investigator find board paid. Both pickers and growers declared this to be an unheard of practice.