The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-04-30
RY ISAAC 1. TOTEM.

III you want competent nelp, nelp
that you can rely upon from one day
to the next and throughout the entire
day, / would commend women and
girls to you every time remarked an
extensive onion grower to the writer.
THE procuring of help to care for
my fifty acres of onions said he, lis
proposition of considerable proper
ton; and the help that / obtain, if not
competent, means a great money loss
to me.
Il have been in the onion raising
business for five years and, during
that time, / have been compelled to
do large amount of hustling around
to get help.
'One year l went to a reform school
and got several boys to weed onions
for me, but the constant supervision
that l was required to give the boys
proved to me that help from that
source was not what l wanted.
THE boys seemed to like to work
for me, and many of them cried when
l took them back to the school.
Another year l went to the city
and procured some scrub women and
had each of them bring four or five
boys with them. Each of the scrub
women were held responsible for the
boys they brought. l provided tents
to house them and supplied cots and
provisions. This plan worked fairly
we'll while | was around, but the wo-
men could not control the boys. Boys
will be boys.
THE women themselves did excel
lent work; they were very careful;
but the boys would get to racing to
see Which one could weed the fast
est and in doing so would pull out
almost as many onions as weeds, and
they would forget themselves and
drage their feet on the rows.
Il have had boys and girls working
thought the boys could do more work
than the girls because they moved
down the rows faster; but when
compared the work and saw how much
better the girls did theirs, and then
compelled the boys to do equally as
good work, the girls got along much
faster than the boys.
Boys want to play too much. They
throw Jumps of dirt at each other,
get into petty disputes and chase each
other about over the onions, and quite
frequently get to fighting. The girls
never do such things.
"Of course, all the boys do not do
these things either, but the majority
of them do.
Il prefer men to boys for the work
of wedding; but it is practically out
of the question to procure men to get
down on their hands and knees to
weed. They all claim that the work
is too hard for them, and it seems that
boys and girls can stand the work
better than the men.
THE men that | employ run the
wheel hoes and so do many of the
women that work for me.
I'm running the wheel hoes the
men get over more ground in a day
than the women do, but the women
are more careful about their work.
Il have found the women and girls
so much more reliable and so much
more thorough than the men and
boys that l wish that l could get all
women and girls to do my work for
me in the onions"
1t is not an uncommon sight to see
northern Indiana and the people living
in that part of our state have become
so accustomed to seeing the women
at work in the fields that they think
no more about it than we do in seeing
women at work behind the counters
in our stores or women at work in
our offices.
The women prefer the work in the
onions to domestic work and it is far
more remunerative than taking in
washings and the like.
Women who do this outdoor work
are not all wash-women or scrub-wo-
men; many of them never took in
washings or did scrubbing or anything
else for hire.
Many of the women who work in
the onion fields earn and receive $500
day, which is considered, in many
places, very good wages for ordinary,
men day laborers.
Some of the women put out onion
patches of their own and look after
the work in tending them just as
we'll as the men do. 1t is not unusual
for one woman to tend from one to
three acres of onions all by herself,
and from that small patch to receive
more money for her summers work
nnct for Ai~
yearly salary in offices and elsewhere.
There are a few of the onion grow
ers who require the women and girls