Judith Gap journal. [volume] (Judith Gap, Mont.) 1908-19??, 1910-01-28

L TIC RAIN IureQ
Hand
1here are whole dr0veS of men in the city
who are coming to feel that the Opportunity
Agent who booked them for the Busting Me-
frop0Hs handed them gold brick about as biz
as a garbage can They haven't got ahead as
agen'enf stalks on their chests with the tread of
traction engine. Only q few days ago a men,
troubles.
He works for a big corporation and gets SIS
n1onth-just fifteen more than his first job
brought him when he left Garden Prairie eleven
years ago. He married a saiesIady, also from
country town. They have two children and pay
$35 month rent for house, living in the base
n'ent themselves and subrenting the other rooms
for light housekeeping: Their only huxuvis
forced on them early in their married life and it
has seemed impossible for them to shake it,
Somehow the wife and the children do not thrive
in the gaseous atmosphere of wholesale light
housekeeping: The man isn't afraid, he says, Of
being taken to the hospital because he's SO inhu-
manly tired at night that inferno could cut out
thing that ever breaks up his Sleep is the inter-
mitfent fear that he is about to be fired from the
job. Not that he couldn't find another in tirne
but the loss OF q fortnighfs pay would put him in
to dig out
"Son7etines," he confessed, ~ wonder i'll
didnt make mistake in coming into the city,
OF course ! could have gone on to a farm as
plain hired hand and been q Rube, but wasn't
stuck on smelling of the stable and sE0shing
around in felt boots; wanted to see life and have
chance at q career I've seen it and had it.
and unless life can show different front
before long I've had a plenty to hold me-"
"Are there any more around like you?" I
asked
"Ab0ut a n1iNion," he answered." and scads
of them worse up against it than am"
THAT reminds me- I told him, "0fa certain
farmer friend of mine out in Kate county. He
smells of the stable at regular intervals and the
saIes!ady In the city department store would like
" smoker at his 'Rube ways'-buf he clears up
from five to seven thousand q year contracting
that same stable smell, and man on earth can
fire him from his job, for he owns about 800
acres of rich farm land with buildings and herds
and equipment in keeping with his acres. He
started with no more than what you took to the
city and his first wages were less than yours
"But the funny part of it is that he says he'd
make his farm bring him in $50. 900 year gross
income If he could only get and keep good, reA-
able farm help. That farmer told me: I'd pay
men forty month and b0ard-0r m0re-nh
would only bring me men who would work and
square, decent and not on the hobo order. They
don't have to know a heap about farming, either
can tel EN- what they need to know as we go
along. But do you know what happens out here
when q farmer gets q hired hand who works
with his head as well as his hands, who takes an
honest interest in his work and is square and
steady? lie is snapped up and turned into
farmer on his own hook. had such a man a
while back. 1t wasn't what he knew about
farming when he came that made him valuable;
was the fact that he was worker that you
didn't need to tell him thing twice and that he
was steady and honest and took care of his own
money and his own things He had just about
proved the stuff that was in him when q big
farmer; farther up the road who wanted to move
into town, offered to turn over to my man his
$4,000 plant to be run on shares. OF course
the hired hand took i-and he will own the farm
before many years. You see there's such a lot
of young fellows who don't like the smell of the
stable and who want to see life in the cities that