Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 106, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1904 — FLOCKING TO HARVEST FIELDS. [ARTICLE]

FLOCKING TO HARVEST FIELDS.

Eastern Collegians to Help Reap Western Wheat. Hundreds of Harvard students and others from Tech, Tufts and other Boston institutions of learning are joining the thousands of students from all over the East in a rush for the West, where they may earn good wages at helping reap what promises to be the greatest harvest grown on the American soil. Last year many Harvard students tried it and were so pleased with their success that they will go again this year and take many others with them. As usual, out its call for 20,01X1 men to assist in harvesting its vast 1 grain crop, a call which to every American means plentiful prosperity for another year. Should Kansas fail to make the call, look out for a panic. Although the wheat acreage of Kansas was five per cent greater than usual this year, floods reduced the output so that its total crop is estimated at (15,000,000 bushels on 6,242,987 acres. Kansas has a State labor bureau which issues calls for laborers ns needed. This bureau gathers data from every quarter of the State as to the number of num needed per locality and the time when they will be wanted. It is no small job to gather 20,<HMI men of the right kind at the right moment. Much depends "oil whether the wheat ripens slowly or with a rush. When all is ripe practically all the men in the State, and not a few women, go to work. Men leave offices, shops and pulpits for the grain fields, as the wheat must all be gathered within ten or twenty days of the ripening or be lost.