Northward Bound

Across the level fields of Comanche County, as far as the eye could see, the wheat nodded under the Oklahoma sun. When a breeze stirred the golden grain swayed in long waves. A breeze was welcome; sweat, running down the back, made an itchy paste of the chaff blowing from the two self-propelled combines that were cutting and threshing the wheat on Farmer Wilbur Morrison's 400 acres.

As they worked, Farmer Morrison, short, fat and overalled, wore a worried look. The harvest of his months-long labor was in the hands of an outsider: Thomas L. Dupree, a big (6 ft. 2 in.), husky (228 lbs.) tramp harvester who had come in from Kansas with his caravan of combines, trucks and harvest hands. But Morrison's worries were nearly over. Swiftly, Dupree and his crew cut the grain, loaded it into their trucks, and hauled it to the elevator a few miles away. When a crack in the truck body let out a thin trickle of wheat Morrison blocked the leak and bent down to scoop up the spillage. "Worth almost $2 a bushel," he muttered. "I want all of it."

At noon, Harvester Dupree and his four helpers rode one of the trucks over to the weed-grown yard of the cotton gin in Faxon (pop. 178). Where cotton had reigned, wheat was now king. There were their headquarters--a 27-ft. trailer, complete with electric washing machine and king-size electric refrigerator. From the trailer came the mingled smells of good Texas beef, potatoes, beets and beans cooked by Mrs. Dupree and daughter Doris Gean, 18.

A Tramp's Job. Last week Dupree and 2,400 other self-contained tramp caravans like his were busy getting in the Oklahoma harvest, part of the greatest wheat crop in U.S. history. The Department of Agriculture raised its estimates of its size once more, this time to 1,409,000,000 bushels. The job would not have been done without the cutters who have taken the place of the old migrant harvest hands. The business was born during the war, when wheat farmers expanded their acreage far beyond what they could harvest with their own machinery (TIME, July 31, 1944).

In Oklahoma, they were directed by the state's labor service from headquarters at Stillwater. The state service sent out mechanized brigades wherever needed, on a few hours' notice. When the cutters, some of whom own up to twelve combines and employ 25 hands, finish in Oklahoma, they will go to work in Kansas, helped by 4,000 combines owned by Oklahoma farmers. By September, they will be sweeping like beneficent locusts across North Dakota into Manitoba.

Banker's Pay. Custom-cutting will remain profitable as long as wheat prices remain high and farmers grow more than they can cut with their own machinery. Dupree, a trucker in Phillipsburg, Kans. in the winter, has done well enough to acquire two combines, two trucks, a pickup and trailer (worth more than $16,000).

The cutters, who do not like to invite income-tax trouble for their informal business, tend to keep a tight lip about their profits. But a man like Dupree may gross as much as $40,000 between March and September 15. Working ten hours a day, five days a week (with two days out for traveling or bad weather), Dupree's caravan will cut 80 to 100 acres a day, at $3 and up an acre plus fees for haulage to elevators.

"I cut some wheat last year for $16 an acre," says Dupree. "That was a tough job. The straw was thick and matted, beat down by hail. But at those prices I could risk my machinery to go in and lift it off the ground."

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