326 



THE WHEAT CULTUKIST. 



who could bind the gavels, after they were raked, was 

 paid seventy-five cents per day. Cradlers and rakers 

 and binders were required to do their work in a neat 

 and farmer-like manner, or they must find employment 

 somewhere else. 



This incentive prompted men to learn how to work 

 with skill and efficiency. Such cradlers and rakers and 

 binders as most farmers are now obliged to rely on, are 

 most inefficient and miserable help. Whether they 

 swing the cradle, or rake and bind, or shock the bound 

 grain, their work is performed in a most perfunctory, Slov- 

 enish, and unsatisfactory manner. Nothing will have a 

 tendency to make an ambitious and neat farmer so ut- 

 terly sick of his employment, as to see most of the farm 

 laborers of the present day swing the cradle in grain 

 of any kind, or rake and bind the gavels, and put the 

 sheaves in stooks. When I was a young man, very few 

 of the farm laborers of the present day would have re- 

 ceived more than a boy's wages, until they had learned 

 to work in the harvest field with efficiency and in a neat 

 and skilful manner. When a man or boy failed to 

 cradle grain neatly, or rake it clean, or to bind his 

 sheaves tight, and in the middle of the gavel, it was a 

 very common occurrence to hear the proprietor tell him, 

 " You do not work to suit me. You can find work 

 somewhere else." But, at the present day, good cradlers 

 and neat and skilful rakers and binders are the excep- 

 tion — ^not the rule, as it should be. To aid practical 

 farmers in performing their work in the easiest and most 

 economical manner, is my object, in penning the follow- 

 ing pages. Let farmers first learn how to liandle tools 

 with skill and efficiency, and then they will be prepared 

 to teach their awkward laborers. 



