DEMAND FOR HARVEST LABOR IN THE WHEAT BELT. 19 
for six-man crews; the combine for three-man or four-man crews. 
The binder can be operated by one man, who can, if he wishes, cut 
a few acres and then stop cutting and go back and shock or even 
cut 100 acres or more and then shock it; or by two men, one cutting 
and one shocking; or by three men, two cutting and one shocking. 
All of these methods were used on farms visited. In large scale 
operations, such as those on a 4,000-acre farm in North Dakota, a 
cutting crew and a shocking crew may be employed. On this farm 
18 binders were cutting, and a crew of 20 men, including the fore- 
man, were setting up the bundles in shocks. A farmer who harvests 
with a binder, therefore, has more choice in the matter of hiring labor 
than the farmer using other methods. 
Fic. 5—Front view ofa combine. The grain chute extends to the right, with the grain running out into 
the grain barge. This combine furnished traction for itself and for the grain barge. When full, the 
barge is hauled aeyby a team and another empty bargeis substituted. One teamster and a team are 
thus kept busy hauling. This method of harvesting and threshing reduces the use of man and horse 
power to a minimum. 4 
The demand for labor where binders are employed is elastic within 
a harvest season. It is also more elastic from year to year than the 
demand where the use of headers predominates. When money is 
scarce, debts pressing, wages high, prices low, the crop poor, or other 
difficulties drive them to it, farmers in a binder country may do a 
much larger share of the harvest work than they would do if able 
to hire labor without serious inconvenience. Apparently such pres- 
sure existed in the case of seven Kansas farms which hired no labor 
in 1921. The same farms hired a total of 39 harvest hands in 1920. 
In 1921 these farms cut with binders and hired no labor; in 1920 
they cut with headers and hired crews. 
