Shearing

“ The shearer, who was quite a young man, sat upon a box close to the drive, and when he received a sheep it was always the same way—between his knees—and he commenced and finished the shearing of each animal exactly the same way, every clip of the large shears counting to the best advantage. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the end of the day’s work everybody can count up for himself.”
“I suppose,” said Ned, “that the shearers occasionally cut the sheep while shearing them.”
“Occasionally!” was the reply; “you had better say frequently, or very often; and some of them are much worse than others. We have proposed to the Shearers’ Union to establish a system of fines for ‘tomahawking’ sheep, but the union refuses to do anything about it. We always have a boy here, and sometimes two boys, while the shearing is going on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Further up along this water is a brush shearing-shed, a rough framework of poles with a brush roof. This kind of shed has the advantage of being cooler than iron. It is not rain-proof, but shearers do not work in rainy weather; shearing even slightly damp sheep is considered the surest and quickest way to get the worst kind of rheumatism. The floor is covered with rubbish from the roof, and here and there lies a rusty pair of shears. A couple of dry tar-pots hang by nails in the posts. The “board” is very uneven and must be bad for sweeping. ”

“ We're shearing the sheep very close and clean. You won't have 'em done no otherways. Not like some sheds where a man can "run" a bit and make up for lost time. Now, we've all come to think this, sir, that if we're to go on shearing the sheep well, and stick to them, so as to get them done before the dust and grass-seed come in, you ought to make us some allowance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So much is this a matter of certainty from experience, that a clause is inserted and cheerfully signed in most shearing agreements, 'that any man getting drunk or bringing spirits on to the station during shearing, loses the whole of the money earned by him.' The men know that the restriction is for their benefit, as well as for the interest of the master, and join in the prohibition heartily. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The additional slope which shearing stress produces in any originally horizontal layer is g/C, where g is, as before, the intensity of shearing stress and C is the modulus of rigidity. In a round or rectangular bar the additional deflexion due to shearing is scarcely appreciable. In an I beam, with a web only thick enough to resist shear, it may be a somewhat considerable proportion of the whole. ”

“ In the fishing industry, as in other seasonal occupations, there is a demand for experienced workers that cannot always be had when most needed.
4. Sheep shearing.—Sheep shearing is a skilled trade. Thousands of men are needed to harvest the [108] wool crop each year and these men are forced to become migratory. The shearing season, like the harvest, moves from border to border during a period of three or four months. In the Southwest the sheep are sometimes clipped twice a year. The shearing jobs are usually short but lucrative. ”

“ In designing a shearing specimen it is necessary to take into consideration the proportions of the area of shear, since, if the length of the portion to be sheared off is too great in the direction of the shearing face, failure would occur by compression before the piece would shear. Inasmuch as the endwise compressive strength is sometimes not more than five times the shearing strength, the shearing surface should be less than five times the surface to which the load is applied. ”

“ One hundred men for one day rather than one man for one hundred days. Results soon began to demonstrate themselves. In twelve months the dams were full, the wells sending up their far-fetched priceless water, the wire fences erected, the shepherds gone, and 17,000 sheep cropping the herbage of Anabanco. Tuesday was the day fixed for the actual commencement of the momentous, almost solemn transaction—the pastoral Hegira, so to speak, as the time of most station events is calculated with reference to it, as happening before or after shearing. ”

“ Shearing was in former times done by hand, by means of shears, but is to-day universally effected by means of a cutting device which works on the same principle as an ordinary lawn-mower, in which a number of spiral blades set on the surface of a rapidly revolving roller pass continuously over a straight fixed blade underneath, the roller being set so that the spiral blades just touch the fixed blade. ”

“ Sometimes the entire down can be taken from the animal at one shearing, and almost in an unbroken fleece, when it begins to loosen. The shearing has the advantage of preserving more perfectly the parallelisms of the individual filaments, which much increase the facility of combing and preparing the down for manufacturing purposes. ”

“ Not an instant is lost; not a nerve, limb, or muscle doing less than the hardest task-master could flog out of a slave. Occasionally you see a shearer, after finishing his sheep, walk quickly out and not appear for a couple of hours, or perhaps not again during the day. Do not put him down as a sluggard; be assured that he has tasked nature dangerously hard, and has only given in just before she does. Look at that silent slight youngster, with a bandage round his swollen wrist. Every "blow" of the shears is agony to him, yet he disdains to give in, and has been working "in distress" for hours. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lose your temper, and be over particular: off go Billy May, Abraham Lawson, and half-a-dozen of your best men, making a weekly difference of perhaps two or three thousand sheep for the remainder of the shearing. Can you not replace them? Not so! Every shed in Riverina will be hard at work during this present month of September and for every hour of October. Till that time not a shearer will come to your gate, except, perhaps, one or two useless, characterless men. Are you to tolerate bad workmanship? ”

“ He put up his two pairs of shears, put on his coat, and walked out of the shed. The time was passed when Red Bill or Terrible Dick (ruffians whom a sparse labour-market rendered necessary evils) would have flung down his shears upon the floor and told the manager that if he didn't like that shearing he could shear his———sheep himself and be hanged to him; or, on refusal of instant payment, would have proposed to bury his shears in the intestines of his employer by way of adjusting the balance between Capital and Labour. Many wild tales are told of woolshed rows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After this incident all went well, and at about 8 o'clock we arrived at a sheep station, where many men were shearing and where no white women had ever been before. The shearers took out the horses and brought us some tea in a pannikin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He did not do any regular work with the shearers, but pretended to help in the yards, his real aim being to get the grog, which is always more freely circulated at shearing-time: he did not get much, for he was apt to be dangerous when drunk ”

“ The die being quite flat, it follows that the shearing action proceeds from the center to the circumference, just as in a shearing machine it travels from the deeper to the shallower end of the upper cutter. ”

“ If an employer does his best to mete out justice he is always appreciated and supported by the majority. These few instances will serve as a description of the whole process of settling with the shearers. The horses have all been got in. Great catching and saddling-up has taken place all the morning. By the afternoon the whole party are dispersed to the four winds; some, like Abraham Lawson and his friends, to sheds "higher up," in a colder climate, where shearing necessarily commences later. From these they will pass to others, until the last sheep in the mountain runs are shorn. ”

“ 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. ”