Patent for an improved and practical stalk cutter that cuts corn or cotton stalks at their roots "while the machine is drawn along a row of the standing stalks, and simultaneously reduce[s] the latter to small pieces which can be plowed under the soil and serve as a fertilizer, the complete reduction of the stalks to fine fragments adapting them for quick decomposition and prevent them from becoming and obstruction to a plow or harrow used to till the soil" (lines 12-20).