Wheat harvest in 1922.

Wheat harvest today.

by James Jordan, Sumner Newscow — A lot has changed in 100 years when it comes to harvesting wheat in Sumner County.  But the goal has always been the same for wheat producers: maximizing yields. After all, it is the lifeblood of the local economy. 

In 1922 the ultimate goals were the same as the farmers of 2022. They also struggled with uncooperative weather, disease, pests, faulty harvesting equipment, workers, and the travails of just getting the grain into the bin.

But there were also a lot of things different 100 years ago.

In 1922, farmers were happy with 15-bushel-an-acre wheat. Today wheat producers want 30 to 40 bushels-per-acre wheat.

Subsequently, in 1922, approximately 5 million bushels were cut as opposed to the 14.5 million bushels of wheat cut in 2021.  For years, 1914 was the benchmark year with an early record was 7 million bushels produced. In 1875, when this wheat-growing thing got started, about 300,000 bushels of wheat were produced in Sumner County.

In 1922, the harvest itself was pretty different.

For one thing, getting farm laborers was a huge issue. Today, it only takes a few people to harvest 100 acres of wheat.  But in 1920, that was not the case.

There was some mechanical equipment called binders, but a lot of it was still done by hand.

While today’s harvest usually took a little more than a week to harvest all of Sumner County, In 1922 it was three weeks or longer. And that did not include the threshing that came later.

While we have custom cutters today that travel and cut wheat for people, there were traveling workers 100 years ago who descended on the area during harvest.

In some of the early years, local farmers had to go to Wichita to recruit. But by 1922 there were more workers around than were needed. There were people from Arkansas, Missouri, and other states, who followed the wheat harvest for work.

Workdays were 10-12 hours, and meals were included.  There was a significant disparity in pay depending on where you went, and the timing.

The pay was $3 a day, which the Wellington newspapers said was lower than it had been. Still, workers were accepting it. The pay included meals and may or may not have included a place to sleep. Wheat was selling for 85 cents a bushel, and the papers said because of that workers should not be paid more than $3.

That same year in Arkansas City, workers were being paid $5 to $6 a day.   

The Farm Bureau acted as a go-between — registering laborers and then assigning them to farmers seeking help.

Here is a paragraph from the Wellington Daily News from early June 1922.

The workers can be divided into two distinct classes. One comes from Arkansas, western Kansas, Colorado, and they are good workers and want to work. The other class are men from elsewhere who go about looking for work, but when they come within sight of a job their legs weaken, and they start arguing about wages, and finally deciding to not work for such a low wage. These men spend their time riding and loafing.

Newspapers around the county praised men from Arkansas and said most were good. They also criticized those who argued about wages, or who loitered about and didn’t really seem to want to work. There were people from all over and from many different occupations. It was a few weeks of decent-paying work.

The papers chastised some farmers for working on Sunday though.

On June 18 the Wellington Monitor said:

A number of people harvested wheat last Sunday, thereby disobeying the law of God and the State of Kansas.

Even so, it seemed to happen regularly.

There were some who came in covered wagons and brought their family. They went back home with as much as $100, which would be about $1,200 today. That was for about three weeks of work.

The harvest got going on June 13, but farmers generally waited until June 14 and 15 to hire workers. 

The harvest was done by early July, but there was some rain that slowed things down for a few days in 1922.

Wheat was being cut in earnest by June 16.

In early July, the Wellington newspapers said there was a shortage of workers. The cutting of wheat was almost done, but there was still threshing and stacking left to do. The papers said there were too many workers around while the wheat was being cut, but many had apparently gone to other places to work instead of staying for the rest of the harvest.

The same situation was developing in Cowley County. The Arkansas City newspaper reported that there had been a good number of workers around, but they had apparently disappeared by the end of June.

There was also an article in the Winfield paper on June 30, saying Dodge City was calling for men to work and needed them badly. Dodge City was offering four to six dollars per day.

The Winfield paper also reported on some rain that slowed the harvest down.

In 1920 the Arkansas City Traveler reported there were too many workers. It said they were making between $5 and $7 a day.

There had also been efforts to unionize farm workers to get better pay. The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) had a campaign in Sumner and Cowley Counties during the wheat harvest of 1920.  Papers in both counties denounced the move and called it propaganda.  Apparently it never caught on. At the same time, farmers were getting together and fixing prices in different counties.  Like always, there was a conflict between workers and employers.

Some other items:

The Winfield Daily Free Press had a story in April 2020 about the idea of providing basic services, like public bathrooms for farm laborers in the towns.

“Ordinary comforts should be provided for any transient in every important town or city in the Wheat belt.”

There were some issues with these workers showing up in towns looking for work, and they usually had to wait a few days after they got to whatever town they landed in. There was petty crime and conflicts with residents. The feeling was that it would help if you could provide some basic services and entertainment. 

This was to be carried out by the Methodist Church in partnership with the state agriculture college. 

These centers had places for people to relax, even get a bed and meals for a low price. It also had ministers preaching at various times. There were card games being played.

An article in a January 1920 Caldwell Messenger showed average wages for farm laborers. In all of Kansas, farm workers received an average of $5.40 per day with meals. This was a jump from the year 1919, when the average was $4.14. That was still better than the average of $2.14 in 1913. Those numbers are for harvest workers. General farm labor, not including harvest, was about a dollar lower in each of those years.

It noted the average farmhand was working two hours less a day in 1919 than they worked in 1913.

The length of a work day had only become an issue after strikes in the Industrial world.

A 17-year-old from Missouri was told to get out of town after agitating farm hands. He was said to have encouraged other workers to shock oats in a manner so they would rot, and he was calling for higher wages. “And generally making himself obnoxious,” the papers said.

In a June 1922 article from a Mulvane paper, it said workers are being paid $3 a day, and farmers are having no trouble getting men at that price.  “Only a few agitators and I.W.W. members are objecting to the wages being offered. Most of the men applying for work seem anxious to be employed and willing to take what is offered to them.”

From the Wellington Daily News: Farmers in Harvey County got together in 1920 and agreed on a set the price at $5 a day for harvest laborers.  The same article noted that several other counties have also set prices on the maximum pay for laborers, which was between $5 and $7 a day for a 10-12 hour day.

According to the Hunnewell Herald, the average pay for a harvest worker was $5.50 to $6 a day, plus room and board for a 12-hour work day. It cited a state report that said 90,000 men would be needed statewide to help with the harvest, and in some cases, people were making 50 cents an hour.

A story in the Wellington Monitor blasted such stories, saying that many men were never needed, and that the high pay being offered was exaggerated. It said that led to too many people loitering about in the towns.

In June of 1920, the Wellington Daily News reported that 11 I.W.W. “agitators” had been arrested and given jail sentences.  They were arrested in Wellington and in Caldwell on Friday, and were taken to the Justice of the Peace on Saturday, and given jail sentences of 30, 60, and 90 days.  They were also fined $100 each.  The paper said they were charged with vagrancy.

The real issue was that they were trying to get workers to demand higher wages.

The paper ended the article with this note:

“With eleven alleged I.W.W. agitators now in jail here, in keeping until the harvest is over, it is believed that any other agitators will get out of this part of the country.”

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