Cutters and Binders Eased Cutting Corn by Hand

A market ready for invention of cutters and binders used during harvest eased the toil of cutting corn by hand.

By Sam Moore
Updated on October 11, 2022
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A field of corn shocks in Holmes County, Ohio.

Eighty-five years ago, an early October issue of the Farm and Dairy, a weekly farm paper still published in Salem, Ohio, carried the following news item: “Corn cutters throughout Ohio are making between $9 and $14 a day. The prevailing rate is from 18 to 20 cents a shock and the average cutter is able to dispose of 50 shocks a day. N.E. Shaw of the state agriculture department knows of one man who cut 80 shocks from sunup to sundown and received 25 cents a shock.’

Even though the Armistice ending the Great War had gone into effect in November 1918, the wartime boom continued through 1919. Many soldiers were still on occupation duty and had not yet been demobilized. This meant that farm labor was in short supply and wages were high, explaining how a man who was a good corn cutter could earn the princely sum of $15 or $20 a day.

An acre and a half a day

The pay in 1919 may have been good, but cutting corn by hand was still slow, hard work. A man with a corn knife was fortunate if he could cut and shock an acre and a half per day. One acre or less was more realistic. A shock typically held from 64 to 100 hills, although the farther away from the shock the cut hills were, the farther they had to be carried, making smaller-sized shocks more practical.

In check-row corn, the center four hills of an eight-row square area were not cut, but their tops were tied or twisted together to form a gallows, or support, for the shock. The remaining hills in the eight-row square area around the support were chopped off with a corn knife and carried to, and leaned around, the four support hills. When the shock was completed, it was tied with twine, long rye straw or twisted cornstalks.

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