Clifton Werts & bringing in the sheaves

I wrote the other day about Russell's Clifton E. Werts (1868-1943) and his innovative "house car" --- "Clifton E. Werts and Russell's First Motor Home."

But this was not Mr. Werts' only innovation. Like many farmers of his time, when something wasn't working the way he thought it should, he did his best to make it do so --- and that included his horse-drawn binder.

Made obsolete by today's combine harvester, the binder was invented during 1872 in Wisconsin and was among the major advances in agriculture of the time. Drawn by a team, the binder cut small grain and bound it into sheaves with at first wire and then twine. The sheaves usually were arranged into shocks with grain heads up to dry, then collected from fields later and carried to threshing machines.

Back in 1907, when his binder was failing to gain the traction needed to cut and bind, Mr. Werts had the bright idea of attaching a gasoline-powered engine to the horse-drawn device to make it work more efficiently. His effort was publicized by Henry Gittinger in his Chariton Leader, the news spread to the Des Moines newspapers by George F. Carpenter, then clerk of district court --- and the rest is history, sort of.

Here's how Gittinger reported the process in his edition of Aug. 8, 1907:

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The Leader printed an item a couple of weeks ago concerning Cliff Werts' putting a gasoline engine on his binder. Clerk G.F. Carpenter was in Des Moines and dilated on the matter to a Register and Leader reporter, and with it all Cliff finds himself as famous as the man who invented the split log road drag. The Albia Republican says of it:

"A way to harvest oats when they are down has been partially solved by a farmer of Lucas county, according to reports that have gone out from that county. Werts was the farmer's name and he was of an inventive turn of mind. The drive wheel on his binder would slide along on the wet places and he could get no good results from that direction, so he rigged up a gasoline engine and hooked on to the sickle and elevator and started her going. The horses drew the binder and the gasoline engine kept the sickle going like clockwork. The experiment is said to have been the biggest kind of a success and every farmer in the country has an application in to borrow the machine."

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Werts did not capitalize on his innovation and before too long, as tractors made horseflesh obsolete, power take-offs were used to power binders that, in turn, were made obsolete by combine harvesters.

But for a brief shining moment, there was glory in the Werts oat fields as the internal combustion engine helped propel the process of bringing in the sheaves.