I
determined that the men who worked for me should find in me a
considerate friend who would look after their interests in a reasonable
and neighborly fashion. They should be well housed and well fed, and
should have clean beds, clean table linen and an attractively set table,
papers, magazines, and books, and a comfortable room in which to read
them. There should be reasonable work hours and hours for recreation,
and abundant bathing facilities; and everything at Four Oaks should
proclaim the dignity of labor.
From the men I expected cleanliness, sobriety, uniform kindness to all
animals, cheerful obedience, industry, and a disposition to save their
wages. These demands seemed to me reasonable, and I made up my mind to
adhere to them if I had to try a hundred men.
The best way to get good farm hands who would be happy and contented, I
thought, was to go to the city and find men who had shot their bolts and
failed of the mark; men who had come up from the farm hoping for easier
or more ambitious lives, but who had failed to find what they sought and
had experienced the unrest of a hand-to-mouth struggle for a living in a
large city; men who were pining for the country, perhaps without knowing
it, and who saw no way to get back to it.
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