The development of the modern binder to reduce all this labour has been a very gradual process. There was no great difficulty in cutting the corn and delivering the stuff, but the tying of it into sheaves was the problem to be solved. As early as 1858 Marsh in America designed and carried out an arrangement whereby the cut grain crop was caught on revolving webs of canvas and carried up on to a table, where two men stood who made bands of its own material and bound it into sheaves as it fell in front of them, dropping the sheaves off on to the ground as made, while the machine travelled along. The invention of a tying apparatus was the next advance, and in the 'seventies the American firm of Walter A. Wood & Co. brought out an arrangement for tying the sheaves up with wire. So slow and expensive had been the process of evolution, however, that it was reported at the time that the above firm had spent L20,000 in invention and experiment before they had even a wire-binder fit to put on the market.
While the string-binder is now in universal use in Great Britain, the British Colonies, America and all countries where farming and farm work are advanced, and hand labour is only followed where peasant-farming or small farming obtains, it must be noted that in certain regions the system of reaping or harvesting of corn crops has developed a good deal beyond this. In Australia and some of the hotter districts in the west of the United States the "stripper" is in use, an implement which carries long grooved teeth which are passed through the standing grain crop and strip off the heads, leaving the straw standing. The heads are passed backwards to a thrashing (rubbing) arrangement, which separates the corn from the cobs, chaff, etc., and the grain is sacked up straight away. The sacks are dropped off the machine as the work proceeds and are picked up by wagon for transport afterwards. It is a significant fact that strippers worked by hand, though pushed through the crop by oxen, were in use on the plains of Gaul in the first century of our era, though this system seems to have been lost sight of till re-invented by the Australians.
Again, in the Western states of America, where the climate is not hot and dry enough for stripping purposes, the method f ol lowed is to cut the straw as short as possible—just below the heads—and these fall on to a travelling canvas and are carried up into a thrasher and the grain separated and sacked as the work proceeds. An immense combined implement is used for this reap ing and thrashing purpose, taking a width of up to 4o ft. of crop at a time, and being propelled by a 50-horse-power traction engine running on broad roller-wheels, though smaller machines of, say, 20 horse-power are also common. Sometimes the "head ing" only is carried out, and the cut heads carried on a canvas up into a wagon travelling alongside, and then carted away for sub sequent thrashing, the "header" thus being the form of reaper adopted also in the Western states of America. Indeed this form of harvesting is now being introduced into the middle States, wherever the weather and the grain are dry enough to enable the latter to be stored in bulk straight away. It has even been sug gested that it might be tried in Great Britain, but the climate would make it necessary to kiln-dry the grain bef ore it could be stored in granaries, while the straw of all kinds is valuable for feeding and littering live stock. In those western regions, as in
many other places on the prairies in general, the straw is of no value, and therefore the whole is set fire to and burned off, thus returning a certain amount of fertility to the soil in the ashes.
In the normal and ordinary system of reaping with the string binder in Great Britain the rule is to "open up" a field by cutting "roads" round it : that is, a headland or roadway is mowed by the scythe and tied up by hand. Then the string-binder is started to cut around and continued till a finish is made at the centre of the field. Sometimes the crop is partly lodged and can only be cut on three sides of the field, and the binder is "slipped" past the fourth side. It is customary in some parts to yoke three horses to the machine and keep these at work all day with an interval for the midday meal only, but a better plan is to allow two men and four horses to each, and put one couple on and one couple off for meals and resting alternately. By this means the binder is kept going continuously without any stoppage for perhaps 14 hours daily in fine harvest weather. With a six-feet cutting width an acre per hour is fair work, but some have exceeded that, especially with wider cutting widths. A ball of twine weighing 3 to 4 lb. is the usual requisite per acre for binding the sheaves, and it ought to be of Manila hemp.
The sheaves are dropped off on to the ground as tied, but some farmers use the "sheaf-carrier," which catches these as they are shot out from the binding apparatus, and dumps them in lots of six or so—sufficient to make a stook or shock. The stooking that is, the setting up of the sheaves on end to dry—is a separate operation, and from two to three men can set up an ordinary good crop as fast as the binder can cut it. In this work the sheaves are set with their butts wide apart and the heads leaning against one another like the two legs of the letter A : a full-sized stook or "threave" is 24 sheaves—a relic of the days when the crop was all hand-reaped by piecework at so much per threave—but in prac tice now seldom more than 6 sheaves (3 each side) are put to each stook. When sufficiently dried or "fielded" the sheaves are then carried by cart or wagon to the stackyard, where they are built up sheaf by sheaf into round or oblong stacks or sheds : that is, they are stored until required for thrashing and foddering pur poses. The drying may be a tedious affair, and wet weather in harvest time may be a national disaster from the spoiling of the corn, both in grain and straw.
The tremendous development in labour-saving in the matter of reaping the corn crops is well exemplified in a comparison of harvesting with the hand hook or sickle as compared with the string-binder. With hand-reaping six men (or women) cut the corn and laid it on the bands in sheaf-lots: one man came behind and tied the sheaves and set them up in stooks. Thus a gang of seven worked together and harvested about two acres per day. With the binder three or four men handle say twelve or fourteen acres daily : in other words, there is only one-tenth of the manual labour required now in reaping that was necessary fifty years ago, for harvesting machinery has revolutionized farming as a whole, and given the nations cheap bread. (P. McC.) See also HARVESTING MACHINERY.