Harvesting corn in a $300,000, eight-row combine is a solitary, highly mechanized business. Such was not always the case. Up through the late 1930s, most corn was picked not by machine, but by hand.
Today, corn is harvested by the kernel, but for most of human history the grain was harvested and stored by the ear. In Octobers now long past, the Corn Belt countryside would be dotted with groups of men and boys methodically working their way through the fields, picking the ears by hand.
A good picker - also known as a husker, shucker or even jerker - could work two or three rows simultaneously, snapping the ears off the stalks, removing the husks, and bouncing the now-cleaned ears off of a raised backboard (or "bangboard") of a horse-drawn wagon.
The most difficult step was stripping the husk off the ear. For this, many used glove-like husking hooks. Strapped to the wrist or across the palm, these tools featured a sharp steel edge that when drawn down the husk separated the shuck from the ear.
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Like a lot of manual farm labor, husking was simple to learn yet difficult to master. It demanded stamina, speed and hands of iron. The more accomplished huskers competed against each other in local, county, state and national contests, and crowds numbering in the tens of thousands would gather in fields to watch men "bang" upward of 50 ears a minute.
The typical husking contest lasted 80 minutes. Speed was not the only measure of success. Pickers, for instance, were penalized for leaving corn in the field (referred to as "gleanings"), or failing to strip away enough husk on the picked ears.
Irvin (also known as Irvan) Bauman, an unmarried, 22-year-old farmer from Congerville, captured the 1935 state championship. A crowd estimated at 25,000 gathered at the Woodford County farm of George Shuman to watch Bauman husk 2,662 pounds of corn, with a deduction of 105 pounds for missed corn and excess husks. Bauman's net load of 36.5 bushels was not far from the then-world record of 36.9 bushels.
Much like Depression-era John Henrys, huskers such as Bauman toiled in the twilight of their trade. According to legend, Henry, the steel-driving railroad worker, died of exhaustion in his heroic contest against a steam-powered hammer. Likewise, huskers would prove no match for the pitiless efficiencies of mechanical corn pickers.
By the 1937 harvest season, the Pantagraph reported that machines were expected to husk "fully half" of the corn crop in many Central Illinois communities.
"Most of the talk here is about new corn picking machines," said Livingston County farm adviser John L. Stormont of Pontiac.
In McLean County that year, implement dealers sold 150 mechanical pickers, which were expected to gather about 3 million bushels of corn, eliminating an estimated $150,000 in husker payroll.
In 1939, the state title match in Danville drew a crowd of 90,000. The champion was Ecus Vaughan, a Kentuckian who helped work his half brother's farm in Monticello. "Despite a record-breaking crowd," the Pantagraph reported, "many of the farm advisors reported interest in husking contests waning, due to more and more general use of machines."
After World War II, the Corn Belt underwent the final shift from horse to tractor, a revolution in farming that sped the switchover from hand husking to corn pickers. Combines, an even more intricate harvester that also shelled corn, would soon replace pickers.
Husking competitions are still held today, though they no longer attract crowds in the tens of thousands. The annual Illinois contest is scheduled for today on a farm south of Roseville in Warren County. The national competition will be Oct. 20-21 in Dell Rapids, S.D.
