31 



such as loadino; hay, iimnure, small grain, and other heavy objects 

 on the farm; and for loading dirt, lumber, or telephone poles. Some 

 form of loading device will greatly reduce the hard work on the farm 

 and \vill be the means of rapidly introducing the corn shocker. 



CORN PICKERS. 



In the so-called "corn belt," where corn is the principal crop raised, 

 it has not been possible so far to utilize all of the cornstalks, as there 

 is not enough live stock to eat them. The crop is raised for the ears, 

 which are picked by hand at maturity. A wagon is driven along the 

 rows of corn and one or two men walk along the rows, husk the ears 

 from the stalks, and toss them into the wagon. It is estimated that 

 50,000,000 acres of corn are annually gathered in this way. This is 

 somewhat tedious work. It is usually done after the other fall work 

 on the farm has been finished, at a time of year when the weather is 

 often cold and disagreeable. It is often difficult for the farmers to 

 secure capable men to do this work at the time they are needed, even 

 at good wages. To relieve them, inventors have been busy for over 

 fift}^ 3^ears trying to build and perfect a machine to pick the corn from 

 the stalks. 



DESCRIPTION. 



The first machine for this purpose v was invented by "Father 

 Quincy" in 1850. The picking mechanism of his machine consisted 

 of a revolving cylinder on which were placed four rows of projecting 

 metallic fingers placed at such a distance apart as to permit of the 

 passage of the stalks but not the ears; these were snapt off and 

 were received on an inclined convej^or belt which discharged them 

 into a spout, from which they slid into a wagon driven alongside of 

 the machine. 



Only a short time after the Quincy patent had been issued another 

 one was given to William Watson, of Chicago. His machine was 

 somewhat more elaborate than that of Quincy in that it was provided 

 Avith a cylinder and concave designed to husk and shell the corn. 

 Practically all of the corn pickers consisted of rollers inclining up, 

 in such a way that the front end of the rollers would pass below the 

 lowermost ears and rake the stalk from the bottom to the top. A 

 great many devices were employed for removing the ears, such as 

 cutters, gathering prongs, rotating toothed cylinders, roller and 

 breaker devices, parallel vibrating bars, etc. 



All of the early machines were designed to be pushed from the rear 

 and were provided with some form of dividers to guide the corn to 

 the snapping devices, as shown in figure 18. The snapping-roller 

 type of corn picker received serious attention from manufacturers 



