Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1916 — HIRED HANDS. [ARTICLE]

HIRED HANDS.

By Walt Mason

Upon the farmers’ rolling acres, the hired men, husky harvest makers, now push the gleaming plows; all day above their tasks they’re bending, and when the twilight is descending they milk 3,000 cows. They rise before the dawn is breaking, and give their sweat-stained mules a raking, with brush and currycomb; with pails of swill they go areeling, to feed the porkers, loudly squealing as they blow off the foam. They feed the calves and groom the chickens, and milk more cows to beat the dickens, before the rise of sun; and while the rest of us are snoozing, the glory of the morning losing, their day’s work is begun. The eight hour day? Doh’t josh or mock them; such levity would pain and shock them; some 18 hours they toil, between the hour of their upgetting, and their retiring, tired and sweating, and caked with fertile soil. We boost and praise the festive farmer, and say he Is the honest charmer who keeps the nations fed; but, by the boosters, bards and sages, of him who tills the land for wages, there’s mighty little said.

Nicaragua, the most recent country to issue a blue book, confines hers not to a discussion of hostilities, which she has recently avoided, but to explaining the nonpayment of her debts which also have been avoided with fair success.