The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-09-01
KANSAS IN HARVEST TIME.
When Every Farmer Wants to Kidnap
 Five Men.

I w uGu EFEIy W ants lO LAAAA4otS Five Men.
 There are no bonanza farmers in
 Kansas as there were in Dakota in the
 early days of the Northwest country craze The Kansas wheat farmer owns anywhere from quarter to section
 (16O to $40 acres.) Occasionally, if he be ahluent the wheat raiser owns two or three sections of land, but these are the exceptions. The average farmers from 100 to 400 acres of wheat. The one hundred-acre man issconsidered small
 farmer, although in the thickly settled parts of the country east of the Missis- sippi river that would be considered a large acreage.
 The ground is ploughed, narrowed or dragged and the seed is drilled in at the rate of a bushel to the acre. Occasion ally in the wheat belt disking is made to answer the purposes of ploughing, and here and there is a farmer who drills his seed into the stubble of the previous crop without any further pre- paration.
 In the wheat belt, as elsewhere, it is the experience of the men who follow the business. that the one that makes the most thorough preparation reaps the best crop. The grower who drills his seed into the stubble gets fifteen bushels per acre and the man who oplows his ground gets thirty bushels. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, as an instance. the Russians in Ellis county blow their ground only once every three or four years, and they get very good crops. Where wheat ground Is plowed by contract the price is S1 per acre. The expense of planting, harvesting and marketing runs from $3.50 to $7 an acre. Perhaps a fair average would be s4.50. ..s
 Once his crop is planted the wheat grower has nothing more to do with it until harvest time. During the fall and winter it yields steady returns as pas ture land. In November the wheat grower turns his cattle and horses into his field and they live on the growing wheat during the winter and far into the spring. Once this was thought to injure the crop. Now it is believed that 1t is a distinct advantage. It pre- vents a too rank growth of straw and keeps the soil tramped firmly about the roots of the wheat
 The wheat havest in the wheat belt lasts from ten days to two weeks. It is the one busy season of the wheat farmer. Threshing may wait day or a week. The planting season runs through two long months, but the harvest is always a thing of the here and the now.
 To the harvest field two processes are brought--those of the header and the self-binder The former requires a larger force, the latter involves the greater amount of labor. The Kansas wheat is harvested mostly with the header is an instaneous. 1t cuts the grain and gets it Tn stack ready for threshing the same day. Following the bundles are shocked and afterward stacked by a more leistIrely process, or hauled to the machine direct from the shock. The header cuts a swath of grain twelve feet wide. From the sick le the grain is elevated by carrier to a wagon equipped with what is known as header box. The "header box is mounted on a farm wagon, the motive power of which Is furnished by team of horses The wagon is driven parallel to the header and at the same speed until the box is full Then 1t goes to the stack and another wagon takes its place. From four to six horses are re- cuired to operate a header. They are hitched to a lever behind the sickle and push the machine instead of pulling it. Seven men make header crew. . One is required to drive the horses attached to the machine. There are two wagons equipped with 'header" boxes to take care of the grain, While one of these wagons is loading at the machine the other is unloading at the stack. There are two men to each wagon. one to drive the team and the other to dis tribute the grain as 1t come from the header carrier. They unite in unload- | ing the grain at the stack. Then there is the skilled labor of the wheat field, and helper The header will cut from 25 to 35 acres of grain day, and a crew of seven men will have 1t safety in the stack at night. Headers are so called because they cut the grain at height of ten to fifteen inches from the ground. The binder sickle runs close to the ground and leaves a stubble from four to six inches long. The binder process 1 is slower than the header and requires less help. Three horses are required to | pull a binder. and the machine cuts, under favorable circumstances, about fifteen acres day. Following the | binder which gathers the wheat into
 bundles and ties it automatically, are two men. They gather the bundles of
 wheat and set them up ten or fifteen
 bundles each. The binder is about half as fast as the header and requires less than half the force, but it imposes the additional labor of stacking later on. The continual call for hep from the wheat country is easy to understand when one knows that when it comes to harvesting wheat is now or never. A header crew will take care&of no more than. 300 acres. In other words, during the harvest season header crew is re- quired on every farm. The farmer who raises 300 acres of wheat cannot as g. rule, furnish more than two members of the crew from his own farm. He cannot secure these men from among his neighbors, who also raise wheat. The result is that five of the seven men re- ouired some come from outside the