Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1915-08-07
SOME nARvesrs.

! Grandfather was a famous GRADER
He used to confess it and grandmothe1
corroborated it by tales of grading
! contests in which grandfather had
come off first best in the days wher
grading was an art long before Mann!
| or Mccormick or Seymour and Morgan
had dreamed Of a sickle bar and sell
| rakes and the like. If grandfather
had been living this season he could
have shown those Minnesotans some.
thing about the way to swing cradle
and lay a smooth swath. 1t is a mat
ter of form largely, life golf The
swing and the follow thru resemble
each other. But it includes endurance
also. Thirty six holes and three acres
of heavy wheat in the swath are diff
ferent. But grandfather could lay fou,
acres of heavy grain in straight, shin
Ing swaths Wien he was young man
and take notice of the girl who waited
on the table at supper. So grandmother
said, and she waited on the table
when her fathers Graders were har-
vesting his grain. Afterward grand
mother did considerable grading. there
were eleven in grandfather's family
but that's another story and deals with
another sort of grading
One wonders where those Mime
sotans got the cradles. Perhaps some
10 ct
eastern Tennessee with cradles and
makes hand corn planters had a few
in stock, but the probabilities are that
all the grain cut in Minnesota with
cradles wouldn't make days thresh-
ing for big steam threshing machine.
OF course the oid fashioned way where
the big barn floor was cleared and the
TAILS swatted n regular time upon the
wheat heads was different and be-
longed with the cradle and the so cents
a day that was the wage of Graders
and threshers in The day of grand
fathers and cradles and fails.
1t would be a lesson in progress to
put the grandfathcrs and the cradles
and the fails along side the new har-
vesters with the new gasolene binding
attachments nd the new rigging that
picks up all down grain and mark the
difference; to set the threshers at work
with their fails along side the big sep
arator with its twenty-four horse en-
CINE and blow stacker merely to create
and drive home the comparison. But
some of US would 30 hungry perhaps
while we waited for the wheat to get
to market
However things evened themselves
pretty we'll then as they do now. A
glimpse at grandfather's account book
shows that when he Graded three or
four acres in a day for the other man
he got a bushel Of wheat or so cents
for the labor and that when he hired
he paid the same prices. The modern
farmer with machinery can scarcely
cut three acres for the same price
that Of a bushel Of wheat Laborer
or farmer he got along somehow and
raised nine children and saved some
money as he went. He appears to
have had a good time for he and
were never tired of tell
ing OF the pleasures and happiness of
those days when they We're young
and deprecating the tendencies Of their
grandchildren. Perhaps their youth
and the fact that the world was all
ahead had something TO do with it.
Perhaps their desires were limited and
little things went long way in the
path Of pleasure and happiness. Folks
usually have pretty good time when
they are young, don't they? Judging
from old folks conversation.
Anyhow since men began to grow
grain and save crops and avoid famine
and make profit somehow the crops
have been gathered, whether with
cradles or gas engines and tractors
and threshed whether with fail or
cylinder teeth. families have grown up
and parted and men and women have
sprung and ripened like the grain and
been gathered to the never ending llar-
vest. And so it will always be. Back
Of the harvest and bigger than floods
and the sunshine are life and homes
and the springtime of youth and
human harvests and autumns and win
tiers. Time and invention and progress
do not vitality change these.
But It would be fun to put grand
father and the grandfathers who hailed
the cradle as their great grandsons
greeted the gasolene binder into hun
dred acre field OF down oats this year
and see what the old fellows would do.
However it is safe to say that they'd
save the crop.