THE WHEAT CULTURIST. 365 



derfully making bands in this manner will facilitate the 

 labor of binding sheaves of any kind. 



A BINDER S DAY S WORK. 



Before horse-reapers were employed to cut our grain,, 

 when young boys were ambitious to rake and bind 

 grain, six hundred sheaves were considered a boy s day s 

 work, and a thousand sheaves for a man. But if a man 

 rakes and binds one thousand sheaves in the course of 

 twelve hours, he must labor faithfully and understand 

 how to make his band in the best and most expeditious 

 manner, and how to bind by exerting the least strength, 

 and in the shortest period of time. A laborer who re 

 ceives a man s wages, ought to rake and bind three 

 sheaves in two minutes, on an average of the minutes in 

 the working hours. Ambitious men will do more than 

 this. But muttering laborers, who are always fearful 

 that they are going to do too much, and who will let a 

 sheaf drop half bound, when the dinner-horn blows, will 

 not rake and bind more than five hundred sheaves in a 

 day ; and even one-fourth of those will have to be re 

 bound before they are put in the mow. In these days 

 of agricultural machinery, men and boys ought to edu 

 cate their ambition to accomplish as much as laborers 

 could perform when their fathers were young. But in 

 most instances, our old men, now in their dotage, will 

 mow around our common mowers, every ten rods ; and 

 cradle around them twice in cutting across a ten-acre 

 field ; and cut their corners at the end ; and then cradle 

 around to the place of starting, and take a refreshing 

 nap in the shade before their competitors come up, and 

 are ready for another start. This is a fact. And I 



