Expenses of Corn Harvesting. [Jan., 



Attempts were made to do so, but it proved difficult owing 

 to the very fine harvest. Under these circumstances stooking 

 is less important, and done more at odd times, rendering it 

 very difficult to ascertain the acreage covered. 



Cost of Harvesting, — We are now able to estimate from 

 what actually took place something about the cost of harvest- 

 ing. When estimating, it is usual to fix on some arbitrary 

 price per day as representing the cost of each horse, and in 

 the same way the wages per man per diem is assumed. I 

 think it better to leave out the monetary item, and to estimate 

 in terms of days' work only, then anyone having these figures 

 before him can put his own price for horse or man. 



Cutting with Binder, — The data already given in Table III. 

 give most of the information required on this point, the 

 only addition being for the man described as "cutting 

 corners." It was noticed on many occasions that one man 

 so occupied kept two machines going at the same time, and 

 this is obviously one of the advantages of two machines being 

 set to work side by side. When, however, machines are 

 working near to one another, one man is equally able to keep 

 the corners mown, help to put in and keep the new knives 

 sharp, and, if necessary, take a turn at driving the binder. 

 But it must not be forgotten that over and above all this, the 

 extra man has to open up the field before the machine appears 

 on the scene, so that in allowing an extra man to each machine 

 at work, we are not over-estimating the manual labour 

 employed. The amount of work done by the horses was, in 

 my opinion, excessive, but the figures show as far as possible 

 what actually took place. Ten hours was the time occupied 

 in working per day, after deducting all delays for meals, light 

 refreshments, &c, on the farms in question. The figures 

 show that one man cutting corners, and one man driving a 

 binder, with three horses, cut 12*3 acres per day of 10 hours, 

 or 0*17 men and 0*24 horses per acre. 



Carting and Stacking, — The amount of carting and stack- 

 ing per day of 10 hours may be estimated as follows. It will 

 be seen in Table VII. each load represents 10 cwt., made up 

 of four examples of wheat and four examples of barley cart- 

 ing. Fortunately on these farms a more or less accurate 

 account of both weight of straw and weight of corn produced 



