Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/600

Rh the harrow. The harrowing is done with 25-ft. harrows, drawn by four horses, and operated by a single man. One man can harrow 60 to 73 acres a day.

The seeding follows immediately with four-horse press drills that cover 12 ft. The harrows and drills are worked in “gangs” as the

ploughs were. Each drill will go from 20 to 25 m. a day. When the weather is good the seeding upon a 5000-acre farm will be done in twenty or twenty-five days. It is usual to seed a bushel and a peck of wheat to the acre. The wheat used for this purpose is carefully selected after the harvest of the previous year, and is thoroughly cleaned of foreign seeds. Through years of cultivation, varieties of wheat have been produced which are particularly well adapted to the soil and climate of this region. It has been found more profitable to use the native “blue stem” or “Scotch-Fife” wheat than the seed from any other country, or even from the neighbouring states. Counting the seed, wheat and the labour, it costs about $1 an acre to harrow the ground and plant the wheat.

When the planting is done the extra labourers are discharged again, and the regular ones are put to work on the corn, oats and millet,

which are grown to feed the horses. The men who do the most important work are all temporary labourers. They come from the cities of the east or the farms of the south. They begin with the early harvest in Oklahoma, and work northwards up the Missouri and the Red river until the season closes in Manitoba. They are not tramps, but steady, industrious men, with few bad habits and few ambitions. On well-managed farms drinking and gambling are strictly forbidden. The work is hard, and, as there are few amusements on the farm, the men spend their resting periods in sleep. Their dormitories are usually comfortably furnished, their dining-halls clean. The bonanza farmers find it good policy to feed their men well. Many a strike has occurred in the midst of the harvest because the quality or quantity of the food served was not what it ought to have been. The largest part of this food is brought from the eastern states. Some potatoes, turnips and beans are grown upon the farms; but the corned beef, bacon and groceries come from the cities. It is estimated that it costs 35 cents a day to feed each labourer. Farmers say that a good name in these respects enables them to get the choice of workmen, and that no money brings such sure returns as that expended in the bedrooms and upon the food.

The harvest labourers begin to arrive from the south about the middle of July, and by the end of this month the harvest is at its

height. A farm of 5000 acres will use 75 or 100 extra men. With the men comes the new machinery in train loads. It is estimated that at least $5,000,000 worth of agricultural machines is annually sold in this region. The wheat farmers say that it does not pay to take undue care of old machinery, that more money is lost in repairing and tinkering an old machine than would pay for a new one. The result is that new machinery is bought in very large quantities, used until it is worn out or cannot be repaired without considerable work, and then left in the fields to rust. Heaps of cast-iron can be seen already upon many of the large farms. Of course a great many extra parts are bought to take the place of those which break most frequently, and some men are always kept at work repairing machines in the field. One of the big 10,000-acre farms will use up two car-loads of twine in a single hardest, enough to lay a line around the whole coast of England, Ireland and Scotland. The harvesters vary in size according to the character of the land. Upon the rougher ground and small farms the ordinary binders are used; upon the great plains, like those of California, a great harvester is used, which has a cutting line 52 ft. wide. These machines cut, thresh and stack the grain at the rate of 1600 sacks a day, and cover an area in that time of 100 acres. These machines can only be used where the wheat ripens thoroughly standing in the field. The harvest labourer earns $10 a week everywhere in America. The bonanza farmer expects one machine to cut at least 250 acres, and three men are required for each of them. The harvest lasts from ten days to three weeks, according to the weather. Including the labour and the wear and tear, it costs about 60 cents an acre to harvest wheat.

The wheat is not stacked as in the Eastern states and in England, but stands upright in shocks in the field. The grain cures very

rapidly in the dry climate, so that by the time the wheat is all cut and shocked on one end of the division, it is ready for the thresher at the other. The shocks of wheat are hauled directly to the thresher and fed into the self-feeder. It usually takes a day and a quarter to thresh the wheat which it took a day to cut. The farmer estimates that a threshing-machine can thresh all the wheat ordinarily grown upon 2500 acres, so that a 5000-acre farmer would have at least two machines running at the same time. Time is a very important thing in threshing, since a rainfall might spoil enough grain in one night to buy several machines. The threshing season is thus a time of great pressure and of extensively active work. The wheat straw is worse than a waste product—it is a great nuisance upon the bonanza farm. A little of it is used for fuel for the engines and for bedding the stock; but the bulk of it is dragged away from the threshing machine by machinery, and left lying in great heaps until an opportunity is afforded for burning it up. This is usually done immediately before the ploughing in the autumn. The grain falls from the spout of the thresher into the box-wagon, which carries

it to the elevator. The elevator is placed at the railway station, and is usually owned by the bonanza farmer.

From the time the sheaves of wheat are tumbled into the wagon until the flour reaches the hands of the cook, no hand touches the

wheat that passes through the great Minneapolis mills. When the box-wagons reach the elevator the loosing of a bolt dumps the grain into the bin, where it remains until the pulling of a lever lets it into the cars. Every pound of it is weighed and accounted for, and entered upon the books, so as to show the exact product of each division of the farm. After the rush of the threshing is over the farmer studies these books carefully to see what his land is doing, and makes his plans for the next year, so as to rest or strengthen those divisions which are failing. It costs about $1.50 an acre to thresh the grain and put it into the elevator. This sum, added to the estimated cost of the other processes mentioned above, makes the total cost of growing an acre of grain about $3.80. This includes the cost of labour, seed and wear and tear of machinery, but does not include the interest on land or plant. The taxes on land will average 25 cents an acre. The farmers estimate that the other improvements, the waterworks, elevators, insurance, horse feed, &c., will make this up to $6 an acre. The best of these farms will yield 20 bushels to the acre. This makes the wheat cost 30 cents a bushel. During the last five years the average farm-selling price of wheat in the North-West has been 58 cents. An acre thus produces $11.60, making a gross profit of $5.60. Still to be provided for is the interest on the operating expenses for eighteen months, which will, at 8%, be 48 cents per acre. Interest on the capital in land, improvements and machinery, at $30 per acre, make $1.80 more, or a total interest charge of $2.28. When this is deducted from the gross profits of $5.60 prices found above, we have a net profit of $3.32 an acre, not an exorbitant one by any means. This is about 8% on the capital invested in the land, plant and operating expenses. But we have described the conditions on one of the best bonanza farms. The average yield per acre in this region is not over 18 bushels, and the average expenses would be higher than those given.

Every bonanza farmer's office is connected by wire with the markets at Minneapolis, Chicago and Buffalo. Quotations arrive

hourly in the selling season, and the superintendent keeps in close touch with his agents in the wheat-pits of these and other cities. When the instrument tells him of a good price, his agent is instructed to sell immediately. The farmer on the upper waters of the Red river (of the North) is kept fully informed as to the drought in India, the hot winds in the Argentine and the floods of the Danube. Any occurrences in these distant parts of the world are known to him in a surprisingly short time. The world's great wheat fields almost lie within his sight, so well does he know the conditions that prevail in them. Ten days are allowed for delivery, so that he can usually ship the wheat after it is sold. In the early days of wheat-farming the bonanza farmer often speculated, but experience has taught him that he had better leave this to the men in the cities, and content himself with the profit from the business under his eye. The great elevator centres are in Duluth, St Paul, Minneapolis, Chicago and Buffalo. These elevators have a storage capacity of from 100,000 to 2,500,000 bushels. The new ones are built of steel, operated by steam or electricity, protected from fire by pneumatic water-pipes, and have complete machinery for drying and scouring the wheat whenever it is necessary. The elevators are provided with long spouts containing movable buckets, which can be lowered into the hold of a grain-laden vessel. The wheat is shovelled into the pathway of the huge steam shovels, which draw it up to the ends of these spouts, where the buckets seize it, and carry it upwards into the elevator, and distribute it among the various bins according to grade. A cargo of 200,000 bushels can thus be unloaded in two hours, while spouts on the other side of the elevator reload it into cars, five to ten at a time, filling a car in from five to ten minutes, or the largest canal boat in an hour. The entire work of unloading, storing and reloading adds only one cent to the price of a bushel of wheat.

The great wheat-growing states like Minnesota have established systems of inspecting and grading wheat under state

supervision. In Minnesota the system is carried out by the Railroad and Warehouse Commission (1885), which fixes and defines the different grades of wheat and directs the work. At present there are 18 grades recognized in this state. The first is described as “No. 1, hard spring wheat, sound, bright and well cleaned, composed mainly of hard ‘Scotch-Fife,’ weighing not less than 58℔ to the measured