When the United States entered World War II in 1941 the nation was pulled out of its economic depression with the creation of new jobs. The war also caused a boon in the rice industry with the demand for more food products. “In the 40s, after World War II was over and there was not as much need for rice,” said Lloyd Maxwell. “The market became flooded, and prices dropped. That’s when the government started getting their toe in the water concerning the rice industry,” exclaimed Lloyd shaking his head. “They started the allotment program. We would have to report all the land we were farming for rice and the acreage we had in production. The government would take an average of a period of three to five years of how much rice we were farming. From that average they would figure how much they would allot you to farm, and you would not necessarily get the full amount,” Lloyd explained. They would cut as much of 15 percent off some farmers and that is all the land they would be allowed to farm. The government got so tight on it they would go out and measure your fields to make sure you were farming your correct acreage allotted to you. If you missed it by a few acres, they would make you plow it under, and they would stand and watch to make sure you did it. It would cost you a pretty penny to plow it under and we had to do it at times,” Lloyd quipped with exasperation. Lester Hankamer said they had a field near Liberty County that they miscalculated by two acres one time. “The government inspectors from the Liberty office waited until we harvested our fields,” said Lester, “then rode with us as we harvested that last two acres separately. Then they made us dump all the harvested grain back into the field. They even watched us clean out the augers to make sure we cleaned every grain of rice out,” he concluded. Lloyd said, “The government put a price on the allotments and as time went on the allotments got more valuable, they were actually a commodity. If you sold your land the allotment did not go with the land, you could sell it to the land buyer, or you could sell it to another farmer, but it was sold separately. We’ve bought some allotments that might have originally been worth $50 an acre,” said Lloyd, “but we paid $200 an acre for them. The allotment program continued into the 80s.
“When they were ready to harvest the rice, they cut inside the levees, which were tall, you know,” explained Lloyd trying to help me understand the harvesting process. “They used a steel wheel LA Case tractor to pull the binder. They would follow around the levee clockwise and the tractor would be up on the side of the levee. The cutter bar was on the right and when the rice was cut it would be dropped off on the right side where they would just miss it when they made the next pass.
“I remember riding on an old binder cutting rice,” said Lloyd, drawing on his childhood memories. “Purvis Douglas was driving an LA Case tractor pulling this old binder and Will Thomas was sitting on the seat on the back of the binder and I was sitting in his lap. Those old binders were wheel driven, the tractor would pull the binder and the wheels would turn a chain, which worked the sickle. They had a catcher on the end that was a canvas mat with wood strips on it. The rice would land on it and the canvas would roll over to the right where there was a catcher with a metal lever. You would pull the lever and it would throw a wrap of twine around the rice and tie it once and that would be a bundle. The bundle would roll off to the side and the crew would come by and pick the bundles up and tie about 15 bundles together standing up. Then they would tie five or six bundles across the top of them and they would act like a watershed. If it rained those bundles on top would force the rain to fall off on the sides and protect the shock, the bundles tied together was called a shock,” clarified Lloyd. “They let the shocks of ripe grain dry in the field, when they got to about 12%-14% moisture content they used pitchforks and threw the shocks on the bundle wagon. There was a guy on the wagon who lined the bundles up. The bundle wagon, which was pulled by mules, took them over to the threshing machine. They would place the bundles on the chain-driven conveyor belt or elevator that would take them up to the cylinder on the threshing machine. You didn’t dare cross the bundle because you might choke the machine down. Grandpa said there was one farmer who would take a five-dollar bill and attach it to a pitchfork he stuck in the ground. Five dollars was about two-three-days wages back then. He’d say, ‘Anyone who can throw those bundles fast enough and not cross them and choke it down, I’ll give him that five dollars.’ He said those guys were throwing those bundles like crazy! Before the invention of the threshing machine, they would have to thresh the rice by hand like you’ve seen them do in the Middle East,” noted Lloyd.
“The next improvement after the binders for harvesting was the Case L A Model Combine,” continued Lloyd. “It had a Wisconsin AC (air-cooled) engine on it and it had an 8-10 foot cutter bar. They’d pull it with an LA Case tractor, just like they pulled the binder. The first ones that came out didn’t have a hopper on them, they had the clean grain auger that went up there and forked down and they’d hook sacks up to the elevator. So, when the combine was running, they were thrashing the grain which came down the elevator to the sacks. They had a platform there and a sack sewer would stand on it and catch the rice, loading up two sacks at a time, he’d sew them up and hang them on the side. There was a little chute facing the rear where he would slide the sacks off. The sacks would land in the field and the crew would come by and load them on the sack wagon. They always had plenty of labor in the field at that time. They eventually took the sack platform off and added a tank with an auger, just like the regular combines have now,” concluded Lloyd.