oom 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. I advertised my wants in a
morning paper, and asked my son, who was on vacation, to interview the
applicants. From noon until six o'clock my ante-room was invaded by a
motley procession--delicate boys of fifteen who wanted to go to the
country, old men who thought they could do farm work, clerks and
janitors out of employment, typical tramps and hoboes who diffused very
naughty smells, and a few--a very few--who seemed to know what they
could do and what they really wanted.

Jack took the names of five promising men, and asked them to come again
the next day. In the morning I interviewed them, dismissed three, and
accepted two on the condition that their references proved satisfactory.
As these men are still at Four Oaks, after seven years of steady
employment, and as I hope they will stay twenty years longer, I feel
that the reader should know them. Much of the smooth sailing at the
farm is due to their personal interest, steadiness of purpose, and
cheerful optimism.

William Thompson, forty-six years of age, tall, lean, wiry, had been a
farmer all his life. His wife had died three years before, and a year
later, he had lost his farm through an imperfect title. Understanding
machinery and being a fair carpenter, he then came to the city, with
$200 in his pocket, joined the Carpenter's Union, and tried to make a
living at that trade. Between dull business, lock-outs, tie-ups, and
strikes, he was reduced to fifty cents, and owed three dollars for room
rent. He was in dead earnest when he threw his union ca