Reaping

in agriculture, the harvesting or cutting of grain. No doubt grain was pulled by hand before an implement was invented. The earliest prehistoric grain sickle of which remains have been discovered was a curved blade of flint. Short curved flint scythes have been found also--some of them rounded at one end as if for the reception of a handle. Later, primitive sickles were made of bronze and iron. The "sickle of our grandfathers" was a curved scimiter-like blade of steel with a sharpened or else a finely serrated or notched edge. The reaper thrust his hook into the standing grain, gathered a cluster into his left hand, then cut it off with a quick sweep; laid the handful on a pile, and reached for another. A band of reapers advanced up a field like a rank of soldiers, each cutting his strip. At the harvest season the shoemaker was expected to leave his bench, the petty shopkeeper his till, to aid in harvesting. Women and children worked in the harvest field.

Parties of reapers from the cities and from the pastoral portions of Europe went into the grain-raising districts for harvest wages. The Highlanders came down from their mountains; the Irish crossed into England to cut the corn, as grain is called. Long, laborious hours were enlivened by harvest songs:

The completion of harvest was followed usually by harvest home festivities. The small fields of Central Europe are still reaped with a heavy scythe. About the time of the War of 1812, in this country at least, the scythe blade was widened to carry cut grain on its upper surface, and a frame of fingers was added to prevent the grain from falling off. This was the grain cradle. A quarter of an acre was a day's work for a sickle. The expert cradler was able to lay from two to four acres in long, even swaths.

In 1834 a patent was issued to Cyrus Hall McCormick of Virginia for the invention of a reaping machine drawn by horses. His first machine was exhibited in 1831. A Mr. Obed Hussey who took out a patent in 1833 claimed that McCormick stole his ideas, but the credit of invention is allowed McCormick. The latter began manufacturing, and in 1847 established himself at Chicago to be near the grain fields of the Northwest. The first reaper was a hand-rake. The grain fell on a platform as it was cut. A man swept it off with a rake-like fork as often as enough collected to form a gavel, as an unbound bundle was called. The next step was a self-rake. A wooden arm operated by machinery moved across the platform periodically sweeping off the gavel. Next came the dropper. The grain fell on a hinged platform of slats, which the driver controlled by a pedal. As soon as a gavel had collected on the platform the driver allowed the rear end to drop into the stubble. The gavel slipped off, the slats were tilted up again to catch a new gavel. The hand-rake and the self-rake delivered the gavel behind the running gear, leaving the freshly cut swath free for the passage of the machine. The dropper was a light running, simple machine, but it left the gavel directly behind the sickle bar. Each row of gavels must be bound and thrown aside before the dropper could cut another swath. The dropper was succeeded by the harvester. The grain fell on a continuous canvas carrier that delivered it on a table at which two men stood to bind. As the men rode and spent no time in walking from gavel to gavel, they were able to do the work of from four to six men binding on the ground. By allowing their bound bundles to accumulate before pushing them off, they were able to drop them in windrows for the accommodation of the shocker.

The reapers described appeared in rapid succession. As harvest wages ranged from $2.50 per day and upward, farmers seized upon each labor-saving machine, discarding half worn reapers in favor of the newest invention. About 1875 the successful selfbinder appeared. This machine replaces the two men of the harvester by an automatic binder. As often as a gavel collects, an iron harpoon, carrying a strand of twine after the fashion of a sewing machine needle, descends, binds the bundle, knots the twine, and shoves the bundle into a carrier. The driver again, by means of a pedal, dumps the bundles in windrows for the shocker. This self-binder has been improved, but it is still the prevailing type of machine in the great wheat fields of the world. With it, one man and four horses can do the work--and do it better--of from 50 to 100 men with sickles. A score of such machines sweeping around one of the immense wheat fields of North Dakota is a sight well worth seeing.

In regions having a rainless harvest, as southern California, where grain hardens in the ear, a combined reaper and thresher is used to some extent. It cuts a swath from sixteen to forty feet in width. A continuous canvas catches the heads as they fall and carries them into a separator. An attendant receives the grain in bags, which he ties and throws off to be collected by wagons at the close of the harvest.