AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
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VOLUME XXXIII.— No. 10. 
NEW YORK, OCTOBER, 1874. 
NEW SERIES— No. 333. 
HUSKING CORN 
When we try to realize the enormous bulk of 
cur corn crop, the figures commonly used fail 
to give us any clear idea of it. In round num- 
bers, a large crop will now reach a thousand 
million of bushels. This quantity of corn in 
the ear, would fill a crib of ordinary bight and 
width long enough to reach from New York to 
San Francisco. Shelled, all this com would 
make up 3,000,000 carloads, which would make 
a train of box-freight cars 17,000 miles in 
length, or which would extend nearly three- 
quarters of the distance round the earth at the 
equator. The idea that all this vast quantity 
of corn has to be handled ear by ear in the sin- 
gle process of husking alone, presents to our 
minds a waste of human labor that is surpris- 
M A C H I N 
Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist 
ing, to say the least, and opens up a field for 
the exercise of mechanical ingenuity large 
enough to occupy scores of inventive minds. 
The general average saving of labor by the use 
of machinery upon the farm is in a ratio of 10 
to 1. That is, with the assistance of machin- 
ery, the labor of ten men is done by one man. 
The mower or reaper, driven by one man, does 
the work of ten mowers. The thrashing ma- 
chine, worked by four to eight men, saves labor 
in about the same proportion. And in almost 
all the work of the farm we have the help of 
machinery, except in the harvesting of corn. 
The greatest need of the time is a corn har- 
vester. A corn-husker wc have, but unfortu- 
nately it is far too little known and used. From 
three or four years' knowledge and study of 
this machine, we believe it to be at least as val- 
uable a help to the farmer, and as great a labor- 
saver as the mower or reaper, and were corn- 
buskers in as general use as the reapers, we 
should consider them equally indispensable. 
The usual amount of corn that can be husked 
by a fair farm hand in a day is from 30 to 40 
bushels. We have found few men to husk 
more than this, although we have heard of 
those who profess to be able to husk 100 bush- 
els a da}'. If we take this extreme quantity as 
the limit of a man's work, then the husking 
machine that will husk 100 bushels in an hour, 
will do as much more than band labor as may 
reasonably ho expected of any farm machinery. 
