FARM LABOR 



$15. The western wheat will be harvested 

 by a machine drawn by 28 horses. In the 

 same time four men with this outfit will cut 

 and thresh 700 bushels of wheat, worth $500. 

 When the threshing machine was first 

 introduced in Ohio, it was stubbornly 

 opposed by all farm laborers. "They 

 claimed it," says Bateman, "as a right to 

 thresh with a flail, and regarded the intro- 

 duction of machinery to effect the same 

 object in a few days which would require 

 their individual exertion during the whole 

 winter, not only as an invasion of a time- 

 honored custom, but as absolutely depriving 

 them of the means of obtaining an honest 

 livelihood. At a later date, when a reaper 

 had been introduced into a field of ripe 

 wheat as a matter of experiment only, every 

 one of the harvest hands deliberately 

 marched out of the field and told the pro- 

 prietor that he might secure his crop as best 

 he could, that the threshing machine had 

 deprived them of their regular winter work 

 twenty years ago and now the reaper would 

 deprive them of the pittance they otherwise 

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