Shearer

“ In this establishment the shearing is all done by machinery. It takes a skillful man to run these rapidly clicking shears over the animal's body and make no serious wound. The overseer told us that in the case of an inexperienced man the sheep would "fight him all over the pen." The shearer reaches out his right hand and grasps one of the three or four sheep that have been pushed into a little compartment from the main pens. The beasts stand stupidly huddled together. The shearer takes one by its left hind leg, and by a skillful twist he throws it on its back and pulls it toward him. ”

“ In their white canvas shearing suits they worked very steadily, almost in silence, as if drowsed by the "click-clip, click-clip" of the shears. And the sheep, but for an occasional wriggle of legs or head, lay quiet enough, having an inborn sense perhaps of the fitness of things, even when, once in a way, they lost more than wool; glad too, mayhap, to be rid of their matted vestments. From time to time the little damsel offered each shearer a jug and glass, but no man drank till he had finished his sheep ”

“ Less than five minutes it took from the time a sheep was grasped, dragged in, thrown down, seized by the shearer's knees, till it was set free, clean shorn, and its three-pound fleece tossed on a table outside. A good shearer shears seventy or eighty sheep in a day; men of extra dexterity shear a hundred. The Indians are famous for skill at shearing, and in all their large villages are organized shearing-bands, with captains, that go from ranch to ranch in the shearing-season. There were a half-dozen Indians lying on the ground outside this shearing-shed at Puente, looking on wistfully. ”

“ A skilful shearer will clip the fleece from a sheep in one unbroken continuous sheet, retaining the form and relative positions of the Sheep shearing. mass almost as if the creature had been skinned. In this unbroken condition each fleece is rolled up by itself and tied with its own wool, which greatly facilitates the sorting or stapling which all wool undergoes for the separation of the several qualities which make up the fleece. Mechanical shears have almost revolutionized the shearing industry, a good shearer shearing from 100 to 200 sheep per day. ”

“ So Shearer had picked out a barn-boss of his own. This man was important, for the horses are the mainstay of logging operations. He had selected also, a blacksmith, a cook, four teamsters, half a dozen cant-hook men, and as many handy with ax or saw.
“The blacksmith is also a good wood-butcher (carpenter) ,” explained Shearer. “Four teams is all we ought to keep going at a clip. If we need a few axmen, we can pick 'em up at Marquette. I think this gang'll stick. ”

“ As soon as these lads saw that a sheep was wanted by the shearers within, they sprang towards one in the field—the [331] more boisterous and stubborn an old ram the better—and tugging and pulling and pushing and shouting—sometimes mounted astride of the poor obstreperous brute, and holding his horns like a bridle—they gained their point, and dragged their captive up to the shearer, like little victors as they were, all glowing and ruddy with conquest. ”

“ As I approached I heard a sound like that of a cream separator, and was surprised to find that the shearing was being done by machinery. With these tame, modern sheep shearing is not the exciting [Pg 102] process it used to be. The legs of the creatures were not tied up in a bunch with a hame-strap to keep them quiet. The shearer merely made the sheep sit on her hind-quarters, while he tucked her head under his arm. He had a contrivance that looked like a small mowing machine, and was busily cutting swaths of wool along her sides. ”

“ Shearers travel from shed to shed; some go a travel season without getting a pen, and an unlucky shearer might ride or tramp for several seasons and never get hands in wool; and all this explains the existence of the “footman” with his swag and the horse man with his packhorse. They have a rough life, and the Australian shearers are certainly the most democratic and perhaps the most independent, intelligent and generous body of workmen in the world.
Shearers at a shed elect their own cook, pay him so much a head, and they buy their rations in the lump from the station store ”

“ There's five-and-thirty shearers here a-shearing for the loot,
So stir yourselves, you penners-up, and shove the sheep along --
The musterers are fetching them a hundred thousand strong --
And make your collie dogs speak up ”

“ Quickly it is all over and an attendant pushes the sheep through another aperture back into an outer pen. The men work very rapidly and a good shearer can easily handle one hundred sheep a day. Some expert shearers can handle nearly two hundred. These men are paid nine cents a head for their work. ”

“ Red Bill, Flash Jack, Jem the Scooper, and other roaring blades, more famous for expedition than faithful manipulation, are shearing today with a painstaking precision, as of men to whom character is everything.
Mr Gordon marches softly up and down, regarding the shearers with a paternal and gratified expression, occasionally hinting at slight improvements of style, or expressing unqualified approval as a sheep is turned out shaven rather than shorn. All goes on well. Nothing is heard but expressions of goodwill and enthusiasm for the general welfare. ”

“ I have shown that our shearing by affliction glorifies God, rewards the Shepherd, and benefits ourselves. I have shown that the Lord measures and tempers our affliction, and sends the trial at the right time. I have shown you in many ways that it will be wise to submit ourselves as the sheep does to the shearer, and that the more completely we do so the better. ”

“ By and by, perhaps, when a member of Camp One fell sick or was given his time, Tim Shearer would send word to one of the other five that he needed an axman or a sawyer, or a loader, or teamster, as the case might be. The best man in the other camps was sent up.
So Shearer was foreman of a picked crew. Probably no finer body of men was ever gathered at one camp. In them one could study at his best the American pioneer. It was said at that time that you had never seen logging done as it should be until you had visited Thorpe's Camp One on the Ossawinamakee. ”

“ In ten minutes the surfaces of the buckets are black with flies. We have given over trying to keep them clear. We stir the living cream aside with the bottoms of the pints, and guzzle gallons, and sweat it out again. Occasionally a shearer pauses and throws the perspiration from his forehead in a rain.
“Shearers live in such a greedy rush of excitement that often a strong man will, at a prick of the shears, fall in a death-like faint on the board. ”

“ This plank floor on each side of the small enclosure is for the shearers, and there is a small door abreast of where each man stands. He lets his sheep out of that door after they have been sheared; and there is a small yard outside each door, where they remain, so that they can be counted by the manager, and thus all disputes avoided.
"The shearer drags a sheep from the pen, and places it between his knees with its head uppermost; he always stands when at work, and for a novice it is very wearying till he gets used to it. ”

“ The shearers are paid by the number of sheep they shear, and they work very fast, every man trying to see if he cannot be the "ringer," as they call the man who has sheared the greatest number of sheep at the close of the shearing. ”

“ The shearing had been delayed owing to the bad weather, but was to commence the following Friday in the large shed holding thirty-two shearers. These shearers travel about the country, going from one station to another during the shearing season. They are given their "tucker" and bunks in a shed fitted up for that purpose, and are paid at the rate of 1l. per every 100 sheep shorn; and a very good man can shear 100 a day. ”

“ I was much impressed by the silence in the shed; not a sound was to be heard except the click of the shears, and the wool-sorter's decision as he flings the fleece behind him, given in one, or at most two words. I was reminded how touchingly true is that phrase, "Like as a sheep before her shearers is dumb." All the noise is outside ”

“ The posture of the shearer should be such that the sheep is actually confined to its position, so that it is unable to start up suddenly and tear its fleece; but it should not be confined there by severe pressure or force, or it will be continually kicking and struggling. Clumsy, careless men, therefore, always complain of getting the most troublesome sheep. The neck, for example, may be confined to the floor by placing it between the toe and knee of the leg on which the shearer kneels ”

“ Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in on their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing them to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. ”

“ It was worse, they say, in the days of the hand-shearer. [130] I am bound to say, however, that the creature makes no fuss about it, remains perfectly still, and does not appear to suffer any pain. Nature is often kinder than we know, even to her most humble children, and some soothing and healing process seems to be at work.
The shearers appear to be a rough set of men, and spend their whole time moving in gangs from station to station, beginning up in the far north and winding up on the plains of South Australia. ”

“ The interior of the shed when shearing is at its height commends itself very forcibly to the attention of the artist. The heaps of fleeces, mellow masses of gray, yellow, and white, the throng of anxious sheep, watching with painful interest their companions struggling in the swarthy arms of the stalwart, bare-chested shearers, saddles, broad sombreros, whips, and weapons grouped in so many pendent escutcheons of the great Mexican vagabond family, the flitting coleritos, the scarfed shearers themselves, all are so many veritable "bits." ”

“ Their nerve, muscle, eye, endurance, will be all at, so to speak, concert-pitch, and sheep after sheep will be shorn with a precision and celerity even awful to the unprofessional observer.
The unpastoral reader may be informed that speed and completeness of denudation are the grand desiderata in shearing; the employer thinks principally of the latter, the shearer principally of the former. To adjust equitably the proportion is one of those incomplete aspirations which torment humanity. Hence the contest—old as human society—between labour and capital. ”

“ Still, whether done by hand in the old way or by machines in the modern way, sheep shearing is arduous work. The shearers often go about in bands from ranch to ranch. The quickness and skill of some of the shearers borders almost on the marvellous. One hundred sheep daily is a fair average for good shearers, but some exceptionally expert operators can double that score. A great deal of care has to be exercised to clip the wool as close as possible, and still leave the animal uninjured. ”

“ This enclosure is subdivided into minor pens, of which each fronts the place of two shearers, who catch from it until the pen is empty. When this takes place, a man for the purpose refills it. As there are local advantages, an equitable distribution of places for shearing has to be made by lot.
On every subdivision stands a shearer, as Mr Gordon walks, with an air of calm authority, down the long aisle. Seventy men, chiefly in their prime, the flower of the working-men of the colony, they are variously gathered. ”

“ The shearing season on the plains is much like the threshing season in agricultural communities. With a crew of first-class shearers working in a shearing shed, it is not long until the floor is a sea of wool. Boys are kept busy picking up the fleeces, tying them into compact bundles, and throwing them to the men who have been assigned to the task of filling the wool sacks. ”

“ And then rose the sound through the livelong day
Of the constant clash that the shear-blades make
When the fastest shearers are making play;
But there wasn't a man in the shearers' lines
That could shear a sheep with the two Devines. ”

“ Some can finish off as many as six score sheep in a summer’s day; and if you consider the weight and uncouthness of the animal, and the general heat of the weather, you will see that, with justice, clipping or shearing is regarded as harder work than mowing. But most shearers are [332] content with despatching four or five score; it is only on unusual occasions, or when Greek meets Greek, that six score are attempted or accomplished.
When the sheep is divided into its fleece and itself, it becomes the property of two persons. ”

“ To harvest the wool from such an enormous number of backs is a task that calls for expert shearers, men who can handle the big shears of the machine clippers with a skill that comes from long practise. The shearing must be done at the right time of the year. If the wool is clipped too early, the sheep suffer from the cold; if the shearing comes too late, the sheep suffer from intense heat, and in either case are bound to lose weight and value. ”

“ The shearers being despatched, the sheep-washers, a smaller and less regarded force, file up. They number some forty men. Nothing more than fair bodily strength, willingness and obedience being required in their case, they are more easy to get and to replace than shearers. ”

“ Jim and I stopped at Boree shed till all the sheep were cut out. It pays well if the weather is pretty fair, and it isn't bad fun when there's twenty or thirty chaps of the right sort in the shearers' hut; there's always some fun going on. Shearers work pretty hard, and as they buy their own rations generally, they can afford to live well. After a hard day's shearing—that is, from five o'clock in the morning to seven at night, going best pace all the time, every man working as hard as if he was at it for his life—one would think a man would be too tired to do anything. ”