T HE above quotation sounds as up to date as last week. It is from the Report of the Commission on Country Life, published in 1911.1 The complaint has been chronic throughout our agricultural history. At some times and in some places, the complaint had a basis in fact; more often it has not had. Perhaps there will be greater complaint in the months ahead. Growing uneasiness has characterized the farm labor picture for several years. This feeling gradually has increased as the immediate postwar years faded behind us and yet there continued to be a supposed farm labor scarcity-if the policy of labor importation can be taken as evidence. Serious wartime farm labor shortages (in a general severe labor shortage situation) were solved almost exclusively by a domestic program of labor recruitment and relocation assistance. In contrast, during the 1950's, as unemployment was rising and as agricultural economists talked more and more about redundant labor on America's farms and in rural areas, the most important single measure ever to deal with this subject authorized heavy use of foreign labor. Public Law 78, enacted in 1951, was speedily implemented, and importation of foreign workers was multiplied many times. For the years 1955 through 1959, the number of foreign workers was approximately five times greater than during the peak war-year of 1944 (Table 1). At this point, we can quote again from the 1911 Report of the Commission on Country Life: There is a growing tendency to rely on foreigners for the farm labor supply.... It is the general testimony that the native American labor is less efficient and less reliable than much of the foreign labor.2