96 MISCELLANEOUS FARM SUBJECTS 



than 3% feet long, arranged to cut within 2 inches of the ground, 

 extra heavy sections with rapid motion, and driving wheel with 

 broader rim and larger lugs than are usually made for self -rake ma- 

 chines. Opinions differ as to whether two or three rakes give the 

 best results. A team of four good farm horses is generally regarded 

 as necessary for cutting hemp with a self-rake reaper. 



Some form of harvesting machine must soon take the place of 

 the hemp knife, since it is becoming more difficult to secure the 

 skilled labor necessary to cut the crop by hand, and where hemp is 

 raised on a large scale it is impossible through the slow hand methods 

 to get it all cut at the proper time. 



Hemp-Breaking. Nearly all of the hemp is broken by hand 

 breaks, such as have been in use many centuries. The crude heavy 

 wooden breaks are all made by carpenters after one very simple pat- 

 tern, and cost only $5 to $6 each. With one of these an experi- 

 enced hand under most favorable circumstances can clean out about 

 250 pounds of fiber in a day. The average day's product of break- 

 ing is about 100 pounds of clean fiber. The work is performed by 

 alternately crushing or breaking the stalks between the long jaws of 

 the break and beating and whipping them over the break to free the 

 hurds from the fiber. It is a slow process, requiring not only 

 strength, but skill. The value of the product depends largely upon 

 the skill of the laborer. There is considerable loss of fiber in beating 

 it against the break to shake off the hurds, and with new and un- 

 skilled laborers this loss is often an item of importance. The prin- 

 cipal objections to hand breaking are its slowness and cost. To 

 break an average crop of 50 acres requires the services of 10 skilled 

 hemp breakers for two months and costs at least $500. The hand 

 break must give way to machinery. 



Several machines have been devised for breaking hemp, but 

 they have not given complete satisfaction. Very few of them have 

 succeeded at all in breaking hemp in commercial quantities. 



A machine consisting of a series of coarsely fluted rollers fol- 

 lowed by a rapidly revolving spiked cylinder has been in use for 

 some years in California and Nebraska. It breaks the hemp and 

 delivers the fiber in the form of tow. This machine seems to be 

 particularly well adapted to the preparation of fiber from tangled 

 hemp stalks cut with a mowing machine. 



In the hemp factories at Lexington there are machines consist- 

 ing essentially of long series of corrugated rollers which are occa- 

 sionally used for softening the fiber. It is said that these machines 

 may be used for breaking hemp, but they are not actually so used. 

 These and also the break used in California are too heavy to be taken 

 into the field, and they require more power than can be furnished 

 by an ordinary thrashing engine. Three decorticators have been 

 in operation near Lexington, by which the hemp stalk is crushed in 

 passing between rollers, corrugated for unretted hemp and smooth 

 for retted. The hurds are then loosened by a rapidly vibrating mech- 

 anism, and the fiber is partly cleaned by a kind of carrier, which 

 gives a rapid scraping motion. These machines break the hemp 



