Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1891 — Cutting Corn With Horse Power. [ARTICLE]

Cutting Corn With Horse Power.

Hoard's Dairyman. The Rural New Yorker, of Jun< 20, contained an illustrated description of a corn cutting machine tbal is much like a reaper with a side elevation from which fee cut com is delivered upou a wagon with low truck wheels—the wagon and cutting machine being moved forward at th« same speed, there bing a pair ol horses to each. The apparatus was made at the solicitation of Professoi I. P. Roberts, of Cornell University, 4nd was used last fall to cut 100 tons of ensilage corn. It is claimed that in corn yielding fifteen tons to the acre a ton cau be cut and loaded in five minutes. The! cuts show two drivers and a loader, but Professor Roberts says the loader can be dis pensed with, generally. It did great execution. So did the apparatus gotten up by Mr. W. V. Clough, of Geneseo, 111., which simply had a strong knife ot scythe fixed to the frame of the rack on the trucks. Moving the machint forward against the cornstalks severed them from the hills while twe “men standing - on the rack caught them and gathered them in, in good shape across the wagon until it was loaded. One row of corn was cut as fast as the team walked, and that is all any machine can be expected to do. If a broad sword fastened at the side of the truck will do all that a reaper and elevator and a team cud do, the question is, why not take th« broad sword? The number of men is the same. Mr. Clough cut fifty loads Eer day with the machine last fall. loth machines did great execution, and either of them cut enough in all conscience. We thjnk we know Prof. I. P. Roberts well enough to believe that he is the apostle of simple directness in all things; and settle the question of efficiency with him, he then goes for the simpler methods. We do not know which will be the preferable machine. Time and practical use must determine that. We only acquaint the corn cutting world that both machines are in the field, and that the hard, back-aching work of cutting by hand may be avoided. Let both win—they are needed, for the field is vast. * -