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.

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