The Great Plains During World War II

WESTERN FARMERS
ARE TOLD TO SOLVE
LABOR PROBLEMS


Businessmen, Women and
Children Must Help Grow-
ers, Gross Declares.


Farm communities to Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho will have to solve their own labor supply problems, John E. Gross, regional representative of the United States employment service, warned Thursday in announcing there is an estimated shortage of 10,000 laborers in farm areas of these states.

"The United States employment service can no longer promise to alleviate such tremendous labor deficits by the transfer of large numbers of surplus workers from other areas," he said. "It will continue to assist in the recruiting and clearance of labor as long as workers are available but the problem now has become so acute that it can be solved only by a budgeting of the labor resources within each community This means employment of women and children on farms. It means business houses may be obliged to close part time during the peak seasons and that even bank clerks may become cherry pickers."

Among the factors contributing to the acute farm labor shortage, Gross listed a 40 per cent increase in sugar beet acreage in the mountain states, accompanied by a 40 per cent decrease in the normal agricultural labor supply, migration of farm workers to industrial areas and the induction of thousands into the armed forces.