f^ .'" /■(E^«s,-i- ■%"r — ^•"■^' 



-1864. 



THE ILLINOIS FARMER. 



259 



L 



Fifteen days use of the machine 

 would pay for it. This is on the sup- 

 position that men can be had at the 

 calling, but during harvest this is not 

 the case, and this year farmers have 

 had to pay an average of $2 50 a day 

 and board, besides spending consider- 

 able time in looking them up ; and in 

 many cases a damaging delay in not 

 getting them. -• : : • 



2d. The saving of grain. We have 

 seen no mode of harvesting in this re- 

 spect better. Many persons think the 

 header is in this respect perfect, but it 

 is no better, nor can it be more success- 

 ful in the saving of the crop. But as 

 there are serious difficulties in the way 

 of the universal use of the header, we 

 wil only revert to the usual mode of 

 harvesting by binding. 



Grain, however short or brittle in 

 the straw, can be bound. Flax a foot 

 and a half high can be put into neat 

 bundles, while barley, with its long, 

 prickly'alons can be readily done up in- 

 to chubby bundles. 



The cost of the machine is seven- 

 five dollars ; add to this ten dollars for 

 freight and attaching to reaper, and we 

 have the nett cost of eighty-five dollars. 

 Any farmer owning a reaper will find 

 it profitable to have one of these bind- 

 ers attached. If he has not sufficient 

 grain of his own to cut he can find 

 work with his neighbors at paying pri- 

 ces, for if he only gets the actual cost 

 of binding by hand he will earn at 

 least five dollars a day, providing he 

 can cut ten acres. The binder will 

 bind all that any team or machine will 

 cut. On this point there is no room for 

 cavil. "W"e would prefer the binder's 

 station to that of the raker's. The abil- 

 ity of the machine is therefore limited 

 to the number of bundles that can be 



presented to it. 



For the harvesting of ripe timothy 

 this machine must be valuable, as the 

 binding can be done without waste. 



With this machine attached to J. H. 

 Manny's reaper, made by Emerson & 

 Co. half a dozen years since, the boys 

 have done our harvesting. We would 

 not like to say how young the driver 

 was for fear people might think we 

 made men of rather small boys. But 

 this we will say in defense that eight 

 to ten hours was considered a day's 

 work. We believe in saving labor, in 

 part to redeem the curse of Adam. — 

 We do not infer the curse entailed fif- 

 teen hours of harvest labor, with sweat 

 rolling in cascades, when with a Bur- 

 son he could do the same in one-fifth of 

 the time with moderate labor and a sav- 

 ing of grain more than equal to the cost 

 of wire and use of machine. Such im- 

 plements are rapidly placing the farm- 

 er on an equal footing with the mechan- 

 ic whose sweat runs in less copious 

 streams than formerly. What oceans 

 of sweat has not the busy saw, the 

 plainer and the morticer saved to the 

 mechanic ; and why not allow the farm- 

 er to save in the same direction,?^*^*' '* 



The binder has won a place in the 

 list of valuable labor saving imple- 

 ments. 



Trade of Chicago. 

 Through the politeness of Messrs. 

 Hammill & Satchell, commission mer- 

 chants, No. 32 North Dearborn street, 

 Chicago, we are in receipt of the sixth 

 annual statement of the trade and com- 

 merce of Chicago. It may be of inter- 

 est to our readers to take glances of 

 the growth of the West as indicated by 

 the trade at its great commercial cities. 

 All of the river towns, including St. 

 Louis and Cairo, have been great out- 

 lets of Western products that do ncA, 

 come in this report. A portion of the 



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