Chairman. I am perfectly willing to. admit that at certain seasons of the year there is a shortage offarm labor. because farmers can not give steady jobs In the winter to as many men as they can give steady jobs to in the summer. The reason I Interrupted the gentleman from North Dakota by asking him the question as to whether the farmer could retain these contract laborers against their will was because I had in mind an experiment tried by the State of South Carolina a number of years ago. The commissioner of agriculture of that State. Mr. Watson. was much interested in securing certain legislation under which South Carolinaillegally. I thinkimported from 700 to 800 immigrants in a vessel which she chartered. They were nominally brought to America to work on the farms. That was the theory ostensibly. anyway. The immigrants no sooner got to the State of South Carolina than those who took service on the farm at all refused to stay there because they were offered higher wages In .the cotton mills. Within a year half of these contract farm laborers who had been imported by the State of South Carolina had left the State of South Carolina and had been merged into the general Immigration of the United States or had returned to their own country. I am told that not one single one of those men imported as farm laborers by the State of South Carolina can be found within the confines of that Commonwealth today.
Keywords matched
immigrants Immigration contract laborers