18 FARMERS' BULLETIN. 



introduction of this valuable machine in the rice fields of the Philippines 

 is an unsettled question. The Bureau has a reaper and binder among its 

 collection of agricultural machinery, and a thorough test of its efficiency 

 will be made as soon as practicable. 



Where it is not possible to make use of the twine binder, sickles and 

 cradles are employed, the rice being cut with about 2 feet of straw and 

 tied in bundles about 6 inches in diameter. Some 25 or 30 of these 

 bundles are shocked together and a few bundles placed on top of the 

 shocks to protect the grain from too much sun and from the depredations 

 of birds. 



THRESHING. 



The machines employed in threshing rice are practically the same as 

 those used in the wheat fields of the western United States. Their 

 capacities range from 40,000 to 90,000 pounds of paddy per day, and it 

 can readily be seen that a small farmer does not stand in need of a 

 thresher for his exclusive use. Not only this, but in the United States 

 the cost of a threshing machine including engine is $1,200 gold, and it is 

 only persons of some means, even in America, who can purchase them. 

 (Fig. 15.) 



In order to overcome this difficulty it is customary for some person to 

 buy a machine and charge the farmers so much per sack for threshing 

 their rice. The threshers are portable and are hauled from place to place 

 by the traction engines, which furnish the power for operating the 

 threshers. (Fig. 15.) In case a farmer has only fifty or a hundred sacks, 

 however, he has to haul the rice in the straw to the machine, because it is 

 not profitable to move the thresher unless it can do a day's work in one 

 place. 



Eice threshing is a very profitable business in the United States. As 

 much as $75 net per day is earned by some threshers, and although the 

 rice industry may not have recovered sufficiently from the recent troubles 

 to warant their introduction in the provinces just now, we can see no 

 reason why threshers situated at central points should not prove profitable 

 in the near future. 



V 



