HOW SMITH LOST HIS COOK.
Farm Hand Made Love to Her In-
stead of Doing Chores.
The farm-hand problem is troubling the farmers in the same old way. Charles C. Smith, who owns a large farm and ranch in Greer county, Ok., is in Kansas City, staying at the Sexton hotel. Mr. Smith said yesterday that it is hard to obtain the necessary help on the farms, and that the experienced farm hands are either taking advantage of their knowledge of farming to establish homes in the country for themselves, or are attracted to the city.
"I encountered the hardest luck last year in my farming experience," Mr. Smith said yesterday. "I wrote to an employment agency in Kansas City to send me a man and wife who wanted to work on the farm. The man the agency sent represented himself as a married man, but his wife was not with him. He had been there only a few days until he began making love to my cook, who had been with me several years. At the end of two weeks they went to Vernon and were married. Then he hired him and his wife out to another farmer in the neighborhood. That is only one of the hard luck stories the farmers have to tell about the hired hand problem."
