When the harvest time has come, notwithstanding the large acreage of grain, yielding hundreds of millions of bushels, the small, widely scattered holdings and the surface of the fields render all of our machine methods quite impossible.  Even our grain cradle, which preceded the reaper, would not do, and the great task is still met with the old-time sickle, as seen in Fig. 176, cutting the rice hill by hill, as it was transplanted.

Previous to the time for cutting, after the seed is well matured, the water is drawn off and the land permitted to dry and harden.  The rainy season is not yet over and much care must be exercised in curing the crop.  The bundles may be shocked in rows along the margins of the paddies, as seen in Fig. 176, or they may be suspended, heads down, from bamboo poles as seen in Fig. 177.

The threshing is accomplished by drawing the heads of the rice through the teeth of a metal comb mounted as seen at the right in Fig. 178, near the lower corner, behind the basket, where a man and woman are occupied in winnowing the dust and chaff from the grain by means of a large double fan.  Fanning mills built on the principle of those used by our farmers and closely resembling them have long been used in both China and Japan.  After the rice is threshed the grain must be hulled before it can serve as food, and the oldest and simplest method of polishing used by the Japanese is seen in, Fig. 179, where the friction of the grain upon itself does the polishing.  A quantity of rice is poured into the receptacle when, with heavy blows, the long-headed plunger is driven into the mass of rice, thus forcing the kernels to slide over one another until, by their abrasion, the desired result is secured.  The same method of polishing, on a larger scale, is accomplished where the plungers are worked by the weight of the body, a series of men stepping upon lever handles of weighted plungers, raising them and allowing them to fall under the force of the weight attached.  Recently, however, mills worked by gasoline engines are in operation for both hulling and polishing, in Japan.

The many uses to which rice straw is put in the economies of these people make it almost as important as the rice itself.  As food and bedding for cattle and horses; as thatching material for dwellings and other shelters; as fuel; as a mulch; as a source of organic matter in the soil, and as a fertilizer, it represents a money value which is very large.  Besides these ultimate uses the rice straw is extensively employed in the manufacture of articles used in enormous quantities.  It is estimated that not less than 188,700,000 bags such as are seen in Figs. 180 and 181, worth $3,110,000 are made annually from the rice straw in Japan, for handling 346,150,000 bushels of cereals and 28,190,000 bushels of beans; and besides these, great numbers of bags are employed in transporting fish and other prepared manures.