FARMERS: Crisis in Beets

The Governor of Idaho spoke too soon. He had said that he would not let a free Japanese laborer come into the State. Last week, because coast Nisei would not come—or could not come—to Idaho, Governor Chase A. Clark and 450 Capitol and Highway Bureau employes were out in the fields themselves, thinning and weeding sugar beets, trying to save the $10,000,000 crop.

Though a skilled laborer can work fast enough to earn $14 a day at it, President W. W. Hall of Idaho College, after an all-day, back-breaking job with the short-handled hoe, earned only $1.25. Faced with more than 70,000 weedy beety acres, the Governor offered as much as a week off .with pay to any State employe,who would turn to. To meet the crisis, WPA projects in all beet-growing communities were abandoned, able-bodied reliefers were drafted. Holidays were declared so that tradesmen could help. They did their best, but to farmers it was apparent that an amateur best was not enough.

Sore-muscled Idahoans looked longingly toward California, where migrant Mexicans, Koreans and Filipinos who used to come to Idaho are staying contentedly on good pay, doing less back-breaking work, filling the Nisei's jobs.