STANDARD DAY S WORK IN CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 
19 
hauled depends almost entirely upon the ground covered by the 
picker. 
Table XVIII shows an average day's work for 40 of these ma- 
chines drawn by 5 horses, and for 20 machines drawn by 6 horses. 
The addition of the sixth horse apparently results in an increase of 
only about three-tenths of an acre per day. 
Table XVIII. — Husking corn from the standing stalks with a mechanical 
picker. 
Number 
of horses. 
Number of 
reports. 
Amount husked per 
day. 
5 
6 
40 
. 20 
Bushels. 
336 
351 
Acres. 
6.8 
7.1 
Twenty-six of the 40 men who report the use of five horses on the 
picker used two men and teams for hauling to the crib, making a 
total crew of three men and nine horses. Their average performance 
was 333 bushels per day, or 111 bushels per day per man employed, 
and 37 bushels per horse. As compared with husking by hand as 
given in Table XVII, the mechanical picker, if used with a crew of 
this size, increases the efficiency of each man about 35 per cent but de- 
creases the efficiency of the horse labor by about 10 per cent. The 
work for the men with the mechanical picker is not nearly so heavy 
and does not require so much skill as does husking by hand, while 
the work of the horses is a great deal heavier. 
SEEDING GRAIN. 
Kegardless of the fact that numerous experiments have shown that 
oats which are drilled give better yields under most Corn Belt condi- 
tions than do those which are sown broadcast, 1 a large majority of 
the farmers still broadcast their oats, using end-gate seeders at- 
tached to the box of an ordinary wagon for this work. No small 
grain except oats is raised on most of the farms and only about 25 
per cent of the farmers reporting have considered it worth while to 
buy grain drills. . 
END-GATE SEEDER. 
The width of cast of these seeders as reported by the users varies 
from under 20 to over 40 feet. The majority of the farmers, however, 
reported using seeders which seeded strips of from 28 to 37 feet on 
each trip across the field. (See Table XIX.) 
1 See Bulletin No. 136, University of Illinois Experiment Station, " Methods of Seeding 
Oats, Drilling, and Broadcasting." Also Farmers' Bulletin 892, " Spring Oat Production." 
