24 BULLETIN 1230, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
who know the average acreage in a county to compute pretty accur- 
ately the duration of the demand for labor in their counties. Atten- 
tion has been called to the fact that the average cut per man appears 
to be less in binder than in header counties. The typical cut in 
binder counties ranged from 40 to 60 acres per man, with the 50-acre 
figure of the formula more representative of binder counties than it 
appears to be of header counties. The formula can be used for binder 
counties, in the writer’s opinion, if the figure 1.5 is changed to 2.3 
without changing the ‘‘50-acre”’ figure for the cut per man. 
One more fact brought out by the tables must be carefully consid- 
ered in connection with the use of this formula. The counties with 
the same average cut per man seemed to be bunched in rather definite 
areas. The most accurate use of the formula would require, instead 
of using an absolute figure such as “50” or “‘70” in the formula for 
the “cut per man,” that a figure true for the local area should be 
inserted in computing the demand for a given county. 
In computing the total demand for the State in order to advertise 
for harvest labor the total demand should not be found by adding the 
individual county needs. Allowance must be made for the facts that 
individual harvesters work in two or more coynties and that some 
portions of the State will be finished harvesting before others begin 
to harvest.!7 This reduction would ordinarily amount to 20 or 25 per 
cent of the gross total. On the other hand, the demand for threshing 
labor may begin before the demand for harvest labor subsides and 
intensify the demand for labor during the closing weeks of the harvest. 
Each year, for instance, the counties northwest of Grand Forks, N. 
Dak., are hiring harvest hands when southern North Dakota is calling 
for threshers. 
LABOR DEMAND IN THRESHING. 
Threshing is done after the harvest is completed on the individual 
farm. Grain cut with binders is ordinarily allowed to stand in the 
shock for a period of one to several weeks before being threshed. 
There are three important exceptions to this rule. Many of the 
larger farms, which hire a considerable number of men for harvesting, 
find it advantageous to hold their harvest crews for threshing and 
therefore start threshing as soon as they complete their harvest. 
The fields which they cut first are ready to thresh by the time they 
have completed the last of their harvesting. In Kansas many 
farmers who cut with headers haul the heads centile | to the thresh- 
ing machine instead of stacking them and threshing later, thus com- 
bining the harvest and threshing into one operation. This can be 
done because the grain is allowed to ripen before being cut. When- 
ever combines are used the threshing is, of course, performed with the 
harvest. There are from 1,500 to 2,000 farms in Oklahoma and 
Kansas where combines are employed. 
Two hundred and fifty-seven, or 22.3 ae cent, of 1,150 farms givin 
Kans., at the end of the header harvest in that county, who said that they had worked in the binder harvest 
of eastern Kansas, then came to the header harvest of Pawnee County, and were then returning to work 
in the binder threshing of eastern Kansas. When this was completed they would return to western Kansas 
for the header threshing. They were Missouri farm boys and had made this double shift from eastern to 
western Kansas for five successive harvests 
