PRICE FIVE CENTS, 
$2,00 PER YEAR, 
NEW YORK, MARCH 11, 188 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1882, by the Rural New-Yorker, in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. J 
BONANZA SERIES- No. 6. 
Harvesting. 
See the sickle gleaming brightly 
'Mid the wealth of gulden wheat; 
While, Uke moonbeam* stealing gently, 
Rifts of sunshine seem to meet.. 
Armies here or busy reapers 
; dally singing o'er the lle.lds, 
As iliev view the great abundance 
Bounteous Nature gladly yields. 
What shall the harvest he f” is the query 
prompted by the solicitude of thousands of 
yeoman as they watch the growing and ma¬ 
turing grain, under the influence of rainfall 
and drought, storm and the scorching sun, 
with alternations of hope and fear with each 
succeeding change in the weather; and com¬ 
paratively few ever give a thought to the fact 
that the results so earnestly desired, of a good 
manager and part owner, about the first of 
August. Last year he employed 170 self- 
bindfng harvesters—one to every 160 acres— 
about 800 head of horses and males, 600 of 
which were owned by the proprietors of the 
farms. One driver and two shockers are re¬ 
quired to each harvester, which, with inci¬ 
dental labor, gives employment to fully 900 
men; they harvest about 12 acres per day to 
each machine, or an aggregate of 2,010 acres 
per diem. The wages paid during harvest are 
$2 per day “and found,” The same system of 
sub-division exists in the management of this 
army of workers—by divisions and gangs—as 
has been referred to in the second of this se¬ 
ries, The teams in harvesting are not crowd¬ 
ed, but pursue an even, steady gait, making 
about 17 miles of travel each day. The cost 
of cutting and shocking is $2 per acre, less 
from 20 to 25 per cent., by owning the teams 
and mackinerv. The Walter A. Wood Au- 
where the "Bonanza” farms of Mr. Dalrymple 
are situated, the rainfall, which is considered 
reliable, comes principally in June and July, 
during the growing season, and is sufficient 
for the maturity of the crop to the best ad¬ 
vantage. 
There is a grandeur peculiar to itself winch 
leaves its imprint upon the mind of one who 
visits any of these farms in harvest-time. 
Standing in the stubble, whose millions of 
golden spires, laden with the staff of life, have 
been gathered into shocks, neat, trim, well- 
capped, and as regular in their long rows as a 
well-disciplined army, and extending as far 
as the eye can reach, growing smaller and 
smaller to the vision until they appear like 
mere specks in the horizon, and then and tnere 
to rellect upon the beneficence of an all-wise 
Creator, and the bounteous reward accorded 
to patient industry,'the marvelous and mys¬ 
terious power of reproduction by which 
utility to yonder reapers, and from these to 
the more practical ideas of the values in land, 
cost of production of crop, net profits to the 
producer, the opportunities for young men 
among our Eastern readers to acquire a com 
potency in Western farming—one really pities 
the many who hear and read of the wonderful 
West, and, though they have never seen it, 
and will not come within reach of con¬ 
viction, wrap the mantle of incredulity, 
fringed with bigotry, the more closely 
around them, and rest content in their ig¬ 
norance. 
The Rural New-Vorkkr is thoroughly 
cosmopolitan in its interests and influence, and 
from its established reputation for probity is 
doing much to break down the walls of sec¬ 
tional prejudice, disseminate practical infor¬ 
mation of the whole country among its hus¬ 
bandmen, eradicate errors, inculcate truth, 
and promote all the agricultural interests and 
stand and yield, are largely dependent upon 
their own ntelligenco and pains-taking in the 
preparation of the ground, the selection, 
cleaning and solving of the seed, and its thor¬ 
ough, equable covering with pulverized soil— 
the consciousness of having done all these well 
would inspire confidence and mitigate ai^iety. 
Harvesting commences on the “ Bonanza ” 
arms of which Mr. Dalrymple is the general 
BONANZA FARMING—HARVESTING. 
tonmtie Self-binder is preferred to all others 
on the Dalrymple Farms. 
It is not our province or mission here to en¬ 
ter upon the consideration of the vicissitudes 
of a maturing crop of wheat or oats; the vari¬ 
ations in the size, hight or growth of straw 
and their causes; nor the relation of different 
varieties of wheat to the several kinds of soil; 
but, in the Red River Valley of the North, 
(Drawn From a Photograph.) Fig. 78 
Mother Earth receives the seed to her fruitful 
bosom, to return in a few weeks only more than 
ten-fold; to think that the unthrashed wheat be¬ 
fore you may fill its mission of mercy as bread 
in some famine-stricken land, or hold the bal¬ 
ance of power as a commercial factor between 
nations; to consider the uses of the straw for 
farm or manufacturing; to reflect upon the 
inventive genius that gave shape, power and 
i resources of the nation, as the basis of sub¬ 
stantial prosperity. 
Barbed Wire a Terror. 
Whether the bovine race have inherited a 
dread of prickly points from their having been 
in very early times, as we read in ancient au¬ 
thors, driven by the goad, or whether the goad 
came into use through early drivers of bul- 
