The Burley tobacco is made into plugs for chewing and is used in pipes. It is grown very extensively in central Kentucky. It was on one of these tobacco farms that this conversation took place. The worm that infests the plant looks like a caterpillar with a smooth skin. A small boy described it as a “bald-headed caterpillar.” It has huge eyes and is twice the size of the woolly caterpillar. These creatures crawl all over the plants, and, because of their size and their voracious appetite, unless they are closely looked after, soon destroy all the leaves. The plants cannot be sprayed with poison for obvious reasons. The only prevention is to have the worms picked off by hand. This work falls to the lot of the boys and girls in the district. It is not a very congenial task, and it is hard work for the children stooping and raising the leaves as they toil all day in the burning sun. The little girls wore their sunbonnets tied under their chins but pushed back on their necks. They were barefooted and carried a tin can in one hand to hold the worms. They followed down each row peering under the leaves and picking off the worms. “Wormin’ time” came just at the period when they ought to have been in school, but the tobacco had to be saved. =The Beet-Fields.= There is a settlement of Russians near Billings, Montana. The fathers, mothers, and all the children work in the beet-fields. The work commences early in the spring when the beets have to be thinned out. Apparently no child is too young to pull beets. I saw boys in the beet-fields hoeing and the hoe-handle was almost as big as their little bare legs. When the crop is ready to harvest, the dirt is loosened about the beets and then they are pulled out by hand. The dirt is knocked off the roots and they are thrown to one side so that when a row of beets has been pulled they look like hay in a windrow. This work is heavy and hard, for a beet will average from seven to eight pounds, and by the time a person has lifted them all day long from five in the morning to seven at night, he has lifted several tons. After the beets are laid in rows they have to be topped with a strong, broad-bladed knife with a hook at the end. The beet is held against the knee of the worker, and with one stroke of the knife the top is severed from the root. In the beet-fields the beauties of nature are reduced to a dull round of production. According to a report made by the National Labor Committee there are five thousand children working in the beet-fields. “Money and not children is evidently the chief concern of these families” is the testimony given in the report made by Miss Ruth McIntire. She says: “An eleven-year-old girl was found, who with her sister aged seven, was kept out of school to work in the beet-field, although her family boasted that they had made ten thousand dollars last year from their farm. A certain parent declared to a school principal that his boy was worth $1,000 for work during the beet season.