THE WHEAT CULTIJKIST. 325 



CHAPTER IV. 



WHEAT HARVEST. 



" How the harvest spreads the field ! 

 Waving grain to reapers yield 1 

 Scythes and sickles flash around, 

 Rakes and pitchforks clear the ground." 



EDWARDS. 



THE season of wheat harvest, when I was in my boy- 

 hood, used to be a joyous and propitious period for poor 

 people. Several days before wheat was fit to harvest, 

 the streets would often be lined with cradlers and rakers 

 and binders, going from those sections of the country 

 where they thought the soil was too poor to produce 

 wheat, to the wheat-growing districts, in quest of labor. 

 For ordinary farm labor, men were accustomed to re- 

 ceive fifty cents in money ; or one bushel of Indian corn ; 

 or half a bushel of wheat, for the labor of one day. For 

 a day's work in the harvest field, a cradler was accus- 

 tomed to receive one dollar, or a bushel of wheat ; or 

 two bushels of Indian corn. The men who raked and 

 bound after a cradler, alone, received one dollar each, 

 as raking and binding the wheat that a cradler cut down, 

 was considered equal to the labor of cradling the same 

 amount of grain. When two men followed a cradler, 

 they received fifty cents each, per day. A boy who could 

 rake gavels, received twenty-five cents for his day's work, 

 or half a bushel of Indian corn ; and the man, or boy, 



