“But what do these men who hire out during harvest time do during the rest of the year; do they have to earn enough in those two or three months to live on for the other eight or nine?”
“Well, they gets jobs sometimes, and they goes from one place to another.”
“But in winter time, when you say there’s not work enough to pay their board?”
“Well, they keeps a goin’ round from one place to another, and gets their living somehow.”
“The fact on’t is,” he said at length, as I pressed the inquiry, “there ain’t anybody that ever means to work any in this country, except just along in harvest—folks don’t keep working here as they do in your country, I expect.”
“But they must put in their crops?”
“Yes, folks that have farms of their own, they do put in their craps and tend ’em, but these fellows that don’t have farms, they won’t work except in harvest, when they can get high wages [$8 a month]. I hired a fellow last spring for six months; I wanted him to help me plant and tend my corn. You see I had a short crap last year, and this spring I had to pay fifty cents a bushel for corn for bread, and I didn’t want to get caught so again, not this year, so I gin this fellow $6 a month for six months—$36 I gin him in hard silver.”
“Paid it to him in advance?”
“Yes, he wouldn’t come ’less I’d pay him right then. Well, he worked one month, and maybe eight days—no, I don’t think it was more than six days over a month, and then he went away, and I hain’t seen a sight on him since. I expect I shall lose my money—reckon he don’t ever intend to come back; he knows I’m right in harvest, and want him now, if ever I do.”
“What did he go away for?”