38 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



When the grain is ripe, a harvesting machine is, by the same 

 means, pulled across the field. 



Its cutters are often twenty to twenty-six feet wide. . . . When the cutters 

 have performed their work, automatic rakers gather in the grain stalks and 

 carry them to rows of knives where they are at once headed. Then, in the 

 same operation, the wheat is threshed out, cleaned and sacked, and behind 

 the great combination harvester there is left a trail of sacked wheat ready for 

 the market. Another traction engine with a train of a dozen cars follows in the 

 wake of the thresher and harvester, gathering up the wheat and carting it to 

 the granary. In this manner fully seventy acres and more of wheat land are 

 harvested in one day. 1 



With the aid of these engines the work of " plowing, cultivating, 

 seeding, and harvesting on farms of a thousand acres in extent " 

 may be done by half a dozen men in " much less time than a 

 whole army of employees could do the work on a farm of half the 

 acreage." 2 For the profitable use of such vast machine power, 

 large fields are a self-evident necessity. 



The farm machines in use in the Central States are less massive 

 and of a more varied nature, and yet, in the rate of progress which 

 they show, are no less wonderful than those above described. 

 Instead of a hoe for covering seed corn dropped by hand, the 

 farmer now uses a check-row planter drawn by horses and deposit- 

 ing the seed at regular intervals so that the rows may be cultivated 

 with equal facility either in the direction of the planting or across. 

 As a means of cultivating the corn, hoes are now laid aside, and 

 in their stead the farmer quite commonly uses a riding plow. 

 Steam-power corn-huskers and corn-shellers are found. Instead 

 of the old hand-method of shelling corn by scraping the ears 

 against the handle of a frying pan or the blade of a shovel, by 

 which means hardly six bushels could be shelled in a day, the 

 farmer may now have his corn shelled at the rate of a bushel 

 a minute, and the machine which does the work will also " carry 

 off the cobs to a pile or into a wagon and deliver the corn 

 into sacks." 3 



1 George E. Walsh, " Steam Power for Agricultural Purposes," Harper's Weekly, 

 Vol. XLV, p. 567. 



2 Cassier's Magazine, Vol. XIX. p. 139, and Harper's IFeekly, Vol. XLV, p. 567. 



3 U. S. Dept. Agr., Year Pook. 1899, pp. 316-318, 332. 



