4 8 



THE WHEAT INDUSTRY 



harvesting machine which cuts the grain, gathers 

 it into loose bunches which can be dropped in 

 cross rows called windrows. In some cases these 

 bunches are bound by hand, in others they are 

 stacked without binding. The machine is quite 

 light, cuts a swath about four and a half feet wide, 



FIG. 26. Harvesting wheat with a reaper. 



and is pulled by two or three horses. The size of 

 the machine and its light weight make it well 

 adapted to fields of small size, of irregular shape, 

 or of steep slope. Hence the use of the reaper as 

 a wheat-harvesting machine is limited in this 

 country to the hilly lands of the Eastern states. 

 In the wheat harvest of the central plains or the 



