The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1903-08-28
''HIRED MAN" GOING
The italian Woman Taking His
Place in Eastern Market
Gardens.
Massachusetts Farmers Set on Foot
an Important Labor
Movement.

Boston, Mass, Aug. 28.-The hired mon
has toilsomely grunted down to the field
wheeling his seed potatoes In barrow,
occasionally setting 1t down to spit on his
hands. The Italian woman who 1s sue"
ceeding the hired man on the Massachu-
setts farms sets the heavy sack on her
head and trudges away to the plowed
piece.
The hired man growls about the wealth
err, the grub. the beds and everything else
with which he comes in contact. Most
of his growing Is Of the harmless variety,
but he has always esteemed the right to
growl an inalienable one. But the new,
improved, groWl-less variety" as the
Massachusetts farmers are calling the
Italian woman, takes all that comes to her
with a bovine sort of calm and With
smiles instead of the particularly black
sort Of scowls that have characterized the
features of the discontinued hired man..
Any Massachusetts farmer will tell the
inquirer that for years the hired man has
been growing scarcer. Most labortng men
prefer the Cities and In these days most
men Of fair amount Of wit have trade.
So it has at last got to the pitch where:
the average laborer takes job on g. farm
only when he can get nothing else to do
and is always on the lookout for place
somewhere In town. It Is thus that the
Italian woman substitute for the Yankee
hired man has come into her place.
Last year several market gardeners ca
tering for the Boston trade saw regularly
on their trips to Faneuil Hall market Ital-
ian women trudging thru the streets of
the north end bearing burdens on their
heads that would stagger donkey. Some
Of these were carrying away from places
where building was going on huge bundles
of lumber ends that the contractors had
allowed them to pick up.
They're certainly good and rugged"
| 60 b n{4At
they can play truck boss, I reckin they
! can pull weeds and hoe without needing a
man to stand over EN- with pink sun
shade and feed 'em ice cream sody."
Not long after that several farmers who
have places near Boston hired a few 1tal-
| ian women and put them at work in their
gardens. One Of these men, who does a
| big business In garden truck and needs
considerable help, says:
Il wouldn't have the old-fashioned hired
man around now II could get him thir-
teen to a dozen, packed in q crate. Those
women stick right to their business, don't
have to be pried up every morning, and
most of all. are careful and not wasteful.
THAT counts for great deal in market
gardening, tell you. They do all the
work that the ordinary hired man can do.
They help plow, they hoe, they weed, they
cultivate. they pick vegetables and get
| them ready for market-and In that last
work they can beat any man that ever
| pulled beans. know of hundred of
| those women who are employed right
around my place In less than square mile
of territory, and next year there'll be still
| more of them. I know for fact that just
! as fast the Massachusetts, farmers are
able TO stock up on EN-, those women are
taking the places OF men,
| It now comes to light thru the testi-
| mony of men who own employment agen-
| cies, that Massachusetts, farmers have
really set foot a most important labor
movement that is likely to affect the en-
tire country. News travels fast among
| employers Of labor.
| At tho present time agents are hustling
about all over the central west trying
| to get farm help for the crops of the Pa
| cific coast. These agents say that there
was never time in the history Of the
country when it has been SO hard to get
men to work in the vineyards and the or
| chards. Two months ago there was
pressing demand for about ten thousand
persons to work in the agricultural sec
lions Of California. No laborers were
| available.
Therefore the agents came as far east
| as Kansas and Dakota after men. But
| the employers Of the central west were not
whit better off than their far western
| contemporaries Farm laborers were at
a premium and many Of the big grain
raisers were nearly out Of their senses.
They threatened to lynch the California
agents If they went to hiring men away
| from them.
| Therefore the agents came further east
ant got news of the success OF the Italian
woman in the market gardens Of Massa-
chusetts, and hired q number OF them at
\ coed wages.