PRACTICAL PAPERS—HEMP CULTURE. 
263 
done in the winter. In this state a warm barn or shed will be 
required, as it cannot be exposed to heat. The clearest and 
driest weather is best for this operation; damp days will sus¬ 
pend the work, by reason of the clinging of the lint to the 
shives. 
Hand breaks for hemp, in Kentucky, are manufactured for 
about five dollars each; brakes worked by horse or steam 
power, which will dress 500 pounds of lint—about three-fourths 
of an acre of hemp straw—in a day, can be had for $250. Such 
a machine and its horse power could dress all the hemp grown 
in a neighborhood, perhaps in a town, being moved from place 
to place, like a threshing machine. Larger machines, which 
are stationary, and will rough dress five tons of lint in a day, 
working up the produce of 3,000 acres in a year, cost about 
$4,500. The process of breaking by hand, or otherwise is la¬ 
borious, yet more depends on the skill, than the strength of the 
laborer. 
_ \ 
The Value of the Crop. —Bough dressed lint as it comes 
from the break has sold at St. Louis during the spring of 1872, 
at $70 common; $80 good ; $90 prime; $92 to $100 strictly 
prime to choice ; $175 to $180 dressed; good hackled tow at 
$80 per bail of 500 pounds. These prices make the lint worth 
14, 16, 18 and 35 cents per pound, respectively. New York 
quotations are still higher. 
Land which will yield fifty bushels of corn, or twelve of 
wheat, will produce a thousand pounds of undressed lint per 
acre. The average crop in Kentuck} r and Missouri has been 
from 800 to 1,000 pounds of dew rotted lint per acre. Wis¬ 
consin ought to give as large a yield. Baised for seed, its 
yield is from thirty 'to forty-five bushels per acre, worth $1.50 
per bushel or more; and the coarse lint from the seed straw is 
worth $60 a bale, which will more than pay the cost of cultiva¬ 
tion. From these figures some estimate of the value of the 
crop can be formed, and it will be readily seen that few crops 
will surpass it in profit. Last year a farmer near Kankakee, 
Illinois, was paid $100 for the hemp straw, which grew on 
