The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1915-07-10
Kansas Meeting Place of Mot
ley Army During Harvest.
Made Up of College Men, Run
away Boys and Criminals.
MANY TO BECOME CITIZENS
Stay i'm Kansas and Help De-
velOp the State.
Many Foreigners Get Start in
Kansas Harvest Fields.

It's harvest time, and harvest time
means that Kansas has within its
borders many thousands of strangers
men of all races and Municipalities,
birth and training who are helping
the farmers reap the crop
1t is estimated at the office of the
state free employment bureau that
there are between thirty thousand and
thirty-five thousand such men in the
state today. They are a polyglot lot.
Among them are the scourings of the
great cities of America, runaway boys.
criminals, collegians preparing for
football, men in search of health and
foreigners arriving to make a place
for themselves in the new world Some.
are old men, with shaggy gray hair
hanging down over their shirt collars
men who have drunk deeply in the
cup of life. Others are boys in their
teens, their eyes shining and smiling
as they search for adventure in the
harvest fields.
In Wichita recently a Slav from
Serbia who came to Kansas to escape
the war, a mining captain from New
Zealand, who speaks five languages,
a Frenchman and a Canadian applied
at the branch office of the state free
employment bureau for work on the
same day. The situation is typical of
that throughout the state.
These men have come into Kansas
on freight trains. on passenger trains
horseback. a-foot-in fact in every
is done the ma jority of them will scat
ter as quickly as they gathered.
Thousands of them are scattered
throughout the wwheat belt.
1t is near a little town in the west
ern part of the state last week that
typical group was gathered around
tie pile fire. Some thirty men lounged
about, waiting for the harvest to be
gin Off to one side was a bent little
man Despite his bent figure and his
unkempt gray hair, his eyes still
shone bright as he confided to the
man who sat next to him that he had
once pulled an engine" on fast linn
tied train 'in the east.
''Wife?''
The query came from a young man
who had spent the winter in Alleging
camp in Wisconsin.
Yes, and whisky. Mixed 'em. My
job lasted six MONTH The old man
shifted his legs and closed his eyes.
The seventeen year old boy across
the fire Vas slim slim pale sa and t0 witS
tobacco juice and he sought to i'm
press his fellows with his knowledge
of camp life. s,s,s.
boys, according to Kansas police
authorities. They point out that the
s'wanderlust' germ turks in every cor
ner and crevice at this season. Scarce
ly a day passes that officials OF cities
in the wheat belt do not pick up
youngsters who have been unable to
resist 1.-The call to the fields" In the
majority of cases parents are notified
and the boy is sent home. Frequently,
however, the parents direct that the
boys be allowed to work in the fields.
And yet in this heterogeneous crowd
J. c. Mohler, secretary OF the state
board of agriculture, recently asserted
is found annually numbers of recruits
for Kansas citizenship. He asserted
that numbers of these men stay in the
state and have a powerful influence in
it's future development