| OCR Text |
Show Farmers Protest : Beet Labor Scale As Too Drastic Objections to wage scale set-ings set-ings for sugar beet laborers are being registered in growers' and processors' circles. Rates approved Tuesday by Secretary Sec-retary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace are: Blocking and thinning, thin-ning, $8 per acre; first hoeing, $2 per acre; second, $1.50 per acre; pulling and topping, 90 cents a ton for fields yielding to 12 net tons per acre, in excess ; of 12 tons, SO cents per ton. Where loading is done by topper, 10 cents per ton is added to topping rates. Free House, Garden In addition to wage scalings, the order provides that producers shall . furnish . laborers free .a house, garden plot and like items. Last year state men report rates were $7 per acre for thinning, thin-ning, $2, first hoeing, $1.25 second, sec-ond, and for both topping and loading, approximately 70 cents per ton. ' Comments were: Frank Wpod, Trenton, first vice-president, Utah Beet Growers' association, "If these rates go into effect, they will take away all the growers' profit from' the benefit payments and will make his income just about match the outgo." Vice President H. A. Benning, general manager of Amalgamated Sugar company, Ogden;. Greater mechanization of beet fields' work as a means of cutting down labor costs will be in sight. Farmers probably anticipated this raise in labor cost he believed,, but saw danger in fall harvest schedules. Vice-President Fred G. Taylor, acting general manager of Utah-Idaho Utah-Idaho Sugar company: Regarded the order as a probable compromise compro-mise by the secretary to. aid laborers la-borers ' an attempt on the part of the secretary to grant beet laborers la-borers additional participation in benefit payments which are being made." fiT |
