THE WHEAT CULTIJEIST. 



325 



CHAPTER IV. 



Wheat Harvest. 



" How the harvest spreads the field I 

 Waving- grain to reapers yield ! 

 Scythes and sickles flash around, 

 Eakes and pitchforks clear the ground." 



Edvtaeds. 



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 rakei^ 

 and binders, going from those sections of the conntry 

 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, 



