Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1907-07-17
HARVESTERS' FUN
Kansas Farmers Have Strange
Expe riences With Raw
College Students.
MUST HAVE THEIR PLAYTlME
Youths Take Their Interest in Baseball
and Other Sports With Them
to the Fields.

The beginning of harvest in the
southern Kansas wheat belt a few
days ago brought the farmers to town
looking for help. writes a Newton
Kan) correspondent of the Kansas
City Star.
Want some college boyS:" was ask
ed of one well to do wheat raiser.
He laughed. well, hardly" he said.
Not if they are like those l Had last
summer"
Wouldn't they work."
''Yes, they worked pretty well, but
they did so many things besides. One
of the first things they did was to or
game Il baseball team among the men
and challenge the workers over on the
next farm. That meant that we had
to give them Il lay off one whole after
noon. Then they invited all the girls
in the neighbOrhOod to n dance in my
big barn without asking my permits
sion, and had 20 take 4 day to fix for
that. 1t was too much"
but you got your wheat upE
"After awhile l wouldn't have,
though, If l hadn't thought of Il
scheme. Those boys We're so interested
In baseball that they demanded horse
to send one of the buRch to town every
night to get the scores made during the
day. That cost me the use of the ami
NAL the next day. and it made the
boys nervous, for they wouldn't 20 to
bed until the messenger came back
about midnight OF course they could
not do very much the next day. getting
up at 4 o'clock, as they had to do.
well, went to Hutchinson. where
they have newspaper. and there
l made arrangements to have the
baseball news tclephoned to my farm
every afternoon. ! ran an extra line
from the house to the wheat field and
put up a big bulletin board that could
be read half Il mile away. Then | had
my siXteen-year-old girl take the mes
sages and chalk them on the board.
The reapers could see the board every
time they came around to that side of
the field. and they fairly ran the teams
TO death trying to get there fast. That
bulletin board was a wonderful help,
and 1t kept the boys on the farm too
The college yell has not made much
progress in the wheat belt. The high
schools are catching on. but they do
not have the real thing yet. SO when Il
dozen lusty young men gather under
the window of the farmers house and
shout:
Bubble bubble, new wheat stubble.
We are out In search for trouble
Kansas. Kansas.
Is not heaven
Harvesters OF nineteen seven!
the farmer and his wife are likely to
tell them to shut up The variety OF
yells that have been perpetrated 10y the
college boys at the expense Of the
Kansas wheat harvest doubtless has
hurried gray hairs into the heads of
some of the grain producers. No won
der they do not petition for a crew of
college boys.
a few OF 'em ia all right" explained
one farmer. "but when you get bunch
together they are too swift for me-"
Bring Lot of Brightness.
However, the college boys bring Il lot
Of brightness into the west. They
leave behind them Il string of good
stories and the choruses of the latest
songs. They teach young folks every
thing that's going. and the neighbor-
hood is frightened for long time.
Some of the western girls are about
as smart as the college boys, and they
know how to "work" the harvestcrs as
IN, C,I; ~ ut
the last election n young woman ran
for the Office OF superintendent of
schools. She had hard fight, and she
knew it. So she took horse and bug
gy and went across country election.