Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1918 — ALLEGED LABOR SHORTGE LAID TO DRAFT EVASION [ARTICLE]

ALLEGED LABOR SHORTGE LAID TO DRAFT EVASION

To the Editor of The Star: Here is a paragraph from an editorial in the Country Gentleman: We gather. that if the farmer is willing to pay the shirk-work labor of the cities from SSO to S7O a month to kill his horses and min his machinery his labor problems are solved. He can then discount as tommyrot the alleged shortage of help on the farm. He may consider it all a myth that 1,000,000 farm boys have gone to war: that potatoes rotted in the ground last winter for lack of labor to dig them. I read some five or six farm papers and they all have the same song about farm labor, but they always begin on the city labor that is willing to help by a thorough cussing out. They are told that they are a worthless, lazy lot and not wanted. Of course that makes the city man feel fine and do a big day’s work. Then the farmer makes another roar about the scarcity of farm labor, but if you travel through the farming country as I have you will soon find the true reason for this talk about the scarcity of farm labor—and that is the draft. I know it to be a fact that farmers with sons of draft age have refused to hire men and then make affidavits that they can not run their farms without the help of their sons, and in this town of about 7,000 people there are at least 150 experienced farmers and farm hands, but if they hired their help that would remove the only excuse their sons have for evading the draft; so there you are. This talk to me, sounds like it was made in Germany. B. F. SMITH. Seymour, Ind.—lndianapolis Star.