Mary Elting

“ The giant shovel digs; the overhead crane lifts; the pile driver pounds. All machines multiply the power that’s in the muscles of men—or of animals. The pushingest animal is an elephant. In some places in the world, elephants are trained to clear land by putting their foreheads against a tree and heaving until the tree topples over.
A tree-dozer can out-push an elephant. The one in the picture has a special forehead built in front. With a slow, steady shove, it clears the way for roads or opens up fields for farms.
Farmers used to dig their fields by hand. ”

“ Many people call road rollers “steam rollers.” That’s because the first ones really were driven by steam engines. Men have a lot less fuss and bother with a modern Diesel-engined tandem. There’s no need to start the fire or shovel coal to keep steam up. You can still see some steam rollers at work, though, because they are strong machines that last a long time. But when one wears out, it is replaced with a modern roller.
After the roller finished smoothing all the asphalt down, Charlie’s road was ready for traffic, but the job still wasn’t quite done. ”

“ It would take a whole book just to list the other machines that help different kinds of farmers. But here are some that are fun to know about:
One clever contraption attached to a tractor grabs hold of nut trees and gives them a hard shaking. The nuts fall on the ground, ready for a kind of giant vacuum sweeper to come and suck them into a truck.{42}
Crops that grow underneath the earth need their own sort of harvesting machine. There are potato diggers and many others. The sugar beet digger works in a particularly clever way. Machine fingers feel for the beet tops. ”

“ Cotton is a crop that has always taken an enormous amount of work. Even after cultivating machines were invented, men had to go through the fields twice every year and hoe out weeds around the plants by hand. One farmer rigged up a contraption that made hoeing{37} easier. He hitched an air compressor to his tractor and ran hoses from the compressor to four special hoes. Then the escaping air jiggled the hoes in the men’s hands and saved the work of swinging them up and down.
Nowadays some of the big cotton farmers have an easier way of solving the problem. ”

“ So the farm machine makers had to change as many of the machines as they could, placing them beside the tractor or out in front where the driver can watch what is going on.
Tractors themselves come in many sizes and shapes. Some are built very high off the ground so they can pass over tall crops without hurting the plants. Some have four wheels that can be pushed close together for work in one field and pulled wide apart for work in another. Some have three wheels.
Mostly, farmers buy tractors the way people buy automobiles. ”

“ Each railroad car empties its coal in a stream onto a moving belt. The belt carries the coal to a machine called a giraffe, which works like an escalator. The giraffe lifts the coal into a tall hopper. ”

“ At cotton picking time, machines now do the work{38} in many places. Cotton is ready to pick when the little round heads of white fluff called bolls break open. Not all the bolls on one plant burst at the same time. A man who picks by hand can tell by looking which ones are ready. Of course the machine doesn’t have eyes, but its tiny barbed steel fingers catch up only the opened bolls. The fingers are fixed on a turning drum. They pluck the cotton from the plant, carry it around to be pulled off and blown through a big pipe into a large basket behind the driver. ”

“ Men do nothing but throw the junk away and let the beets slide into the truck that travels alongside.
A farmer always has to keep an eye on what his implements are doing, unless he has a helper who rides along on machines like this big reaper. When the tractor{43}
{44}
pulls a cultivator or a planter, the driver must turn his head often to see how the work is going. For a long time, farmers complained that this was a pain in the neck, and they really meant that their necks hurt from turning so much. ”

“ Harbors and rivers must be kept safe for ships. If mud and sand pile up in a thick layer on the bottom, ships may get stuck. So dredges go to work clearing the mud and sand away. Often a clean-up job takes a long time. The men who run the machinery live on board the dredge, just as sailors live on a ship.
Some dredges have scoops that dig under water. Others, like the one in the picture, use giant suction pumps. The mud or sand they suck up is called spoil.{15}
If there’s hard-caked mud on the bottom, cutter heads break it up. ”

“ Many shovels and other construction machines ride to work on long gooseneck trailers. They travel faster that way than they could on their own crawlers. And, in cities, the caterpillar treads might damage the pavement. To load and unload a shovel, the operator sets a short ramp of heavy planks against the trailer. Then the shovel creeps up and down on its own crawlers.
The kind of shovel that’s used on a job depends upon the work that must be done. If a basement has to{49} be dug through hard rocky earth, Charlie may operate a crowd shovel, which crawls down into the hole. ”

“ DRILLING MACHINES
Everybody knows that oil wells and derricks go together. The tall derrick towers are needed to hoist drilling equipment in and out of the hole.
When men start to drill a well, they fasten a cutting tool, called a bit, to a piece of pipe which hangs upright{70} in the derrick. Machinery turns the whole thing round and round, so that the bit grinds down into the earth. When one length of pipe, called a joint, has almost disappeared into the hole, men screw another joint onto the top of it. Now the engine turns the double-length pipe, and the bit digs down deeper. ”

“ An even bigger pounding machine is the pile driver. It can hammer a great thick log down into the ground almost as easily as a man can hammer a nail through a board. One kind of pile driver does its pounding job with a steam piston. ”

“ People often call the shovel a “steam shovel,” but that’s not its right name. You hardly ever see a real steam shovel any more. Years ago the big digging machines were driven by regular steam engines. Before they could start to work on a job, the men had to build a fire in the boiler and wait until they had enough steam pressure to make the shovel go. Of course, this wasted a lot of time. So, when very strong gasoline and Diesel engines came along, builders began using them for their shovels instead of steam engines. ”

“ Many farmers use their tractors for harvesting wheat, but Dan doesn’t. Instead, he rents a shiny red{23} reaper which he calls a “package job,” because it moves itself along and does the whole harvesting at once. It cuts the wheat, shakes the grain loose from the stalk and separates it from the husks. If there are weeds growing in the wheat, the machine separates the weed seeds from the wheat kernels and spills them into different bags. ”

“ Dan says it won’t be long before somebody invents a machine that will reap the wheat, grind the flour and bake bread right there in the field!
All of Dan’s machines are wonderful inventions, but they can be dangerous, too, if people are careless. ”

“ People have been trying for at least a hundred years to invent a perfect cotton picker, and they haven’t succeeded yet. The machines still can’t do as careful a job as skilled men and women can do by hand.
SPRAYING MACHINES
Nobody could possibly do by hand all of the spraying that protects farmers’ crops. Mechanical sprayers come in many shapes and sizes. The most usual sort for big fields travels along behind a tractor, shooting chemicals out from nozzles in a pipe that is twenty or thirty or even sixty feet wide. ”

“ So, in many places, a machine bores holes for telephone poles, just the way a carpenter bores a hole with a brace and bit. Then the machine’s long arms reach out, lift a pole into the air and plug it down neatly into place. ”

“ They just keep the weeds from growing in the first place. As the planting machine drops the cotton seeds, it spreads weed killer along each side of the row. This killer is a particular kind of chemical that keeps the weeds from sprouting, but it does not hurt the cotton. The only weeds that grow in the field come up between rows where it’s easy for a cultivator to scratch them under. ”

“ At ports on the Great Lakes, machines reach down into ore-carrying ships and unload them with great speed. At the end of each of these unloaders hangs a clamshell bucket. Just above the bucket is a little room where a man sits and watches what goes on. He signals to the operator, telling him just where to drop the bucket so it can pick up a mouthful of ore. The ship can be unloaded by two men who do nothing but signal to each other and push levers. But usually there are several machines working at the same time so that the job goes as quickly as possible. ”

“ You may wonder why anyone wants to use a trailer home in the roadless wastes of the Far North. The fact is that men work there the year round, prospecting for oil. When they think they have located oil there or anywhere else, well-drilling machinery goes to work. ”

“ The stacker fits onto the tractor. When it was first invented, farmers thought it was a sort of luxury, because{29} it was used so seldom. Then they discovered that they could put it to work on other jobs, too. If a platform of boards is fitted across the forks of the stacker, it turns into an elevator that a man can stand on. Then he can paint the barn or pick apples from high branches without having to climb up and down ladders.
MILKING MACHINES
It would take a lot of work to milk all of Al’s cows. So he uses milking machines. When a man milks a cow, he squeezes with his fingers. ”

“ They pick a model they happen to like and then argue that it’s the best in the world. Of course, a little light “cub” tractor is easier to handle than a big one, but it can’t do the hard work of a heavy model with huge rear wheels and tires. And here’s something about the tires—farmers often fill them with water instead of air to give them more weight when they grip the ground. ”

“ Automatic gadgets empty the milk from the glass tanks, wash them, sterilize them and get them ready for the next round. All the time men are busy keeping the stalls clean and tending to the machinery. Most dairies milk the cows twice a day, but the Rotolactor milks three times.
MACHINES FOR EVERY JOB
The Rotolactor was invented for one particular kind of huge dairy. But farmers everywhere like to have good machinery to do special jobs.
For hilly country, there’s a plow that has one of its blades higher than the other so it can work on a slope. ”

“ In winter, these farmers must put antifreeze{45} not only in the radiator but in the tires as well!
On enormous farms where very heavy work must be done, there are often crawler tractors to do it. Instead of tires they have caterpillar treads that give a better grip on the ground. Then they can pull a whole string of plows the way you see them in the picture, staggered out behind.
This kind of tractor was first named caterpillar by only one manufacturer. But people liked the idea, and they began to call all crawlers caterpillars.
A caterpillar is powerful enough to push a snow plow, too. ”

“ All summer long, tractors pull mowing machines beside the highways, cutting the grass. Brush and small trees must be kept cleared away so that drivers can see ahead. In winter, the motor graders and the snow plows can keep the road clear. But in places where heavy snow piles up into drifts, caterpillar tractors often push special snow plows that eat through the drifts with powerful whirling blades. With one motion these plows dig out the snow and throw it off to one side of the road.
The caterpillar treads work better in snow than wheels with tires. ”

“ Small blades on the cultivator cut through the weeds and break the soil into loose chunks. The pictures show several kinds of cultivator blades.
All summer long the corn grows tall. Dan waits till the ears are dry before he harvests them, ready for his cows and chickens to eat in winter.
Dan’s farm is small, so he can’t afford to buy a big corn-picking machine. But his neighbor Al has one that he rents out, and one morning Dan drives it to his{22} cornfield. His tractor seems lost inside the picking machine. ”

“ Men, working on the floor and high up in the derrick, hoist more and more joints into position and screw them together as the bit goes on down. After a while, the bit gets dull. A new one must be put on. So, strong cables that run over wheels at the top of the derrick begin lifting the whole string of pipe out. Joint by joint, they unscrew the pipe and stack it out of the way. When the last joint comes up, men change the bit. Then back the pipe goes, joint after joint, into the hole. ”

“ Instead of fingers, the milking machine has four soft rubber funnels that fit over the cow’s teats. A pump squeezes the funnels, presses the milk out and sends it through hoses to the milk can.
A farmer has only two hands. ”

“ Wherever the asphalt wasn’t spread evenly, men with rakes finished the job by hand. Then came the tandem roller to pack it down and make the surface smooth.
A Diesel engine moved the roller’s great weight quickly back and forth over the asphalt. In no time the road was as smooth as a table top. If the driver wanted{66} to, he could turn his seat sideways. Then he could easily see whether he was guiding the roller straight forward and straight back. ”