Agricultural machinery

“ The extended use of agricultural machinery has been a prominent feature of that great improvement in the cultivation of the soil which has taken place during the present century. Forty or fifty years since the greater portion of the corn grown in this country was thrashed by the flail; now steam-thrashing machines are used in every district, and the flail has been almost banished; even agricultural labourers rejoice in the change, and confess that they would most reluctantly resume the use of the flail; the young men of the present day would probably not submit to such monotonous work. ”

“ The highest possible concentration of productions affords, of itself, mighty advantages. Hedges, making boundary lines, wagon roads and footpaths between the broken-up holdings are removed, and yield some more available soil. The application of machinery is possible only on large fields: agricultural machinery of fullest development, backed by chemistry and physics could to-day transform unprofitable lands, of which there are not a few, into fertile ones. ”

“ And when we compare the flail of a few years ago with our present threshing-machines, and note how mechanical power has, in a very few years, almost entirely taken the place of hand-labour in this, as in every other art, we shall see that the improvement in agricultural machinery has been making most rapid strides, and that the manufacture of agricultural implements has grown to a most important industry. ”

“ The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. ”

“ Machinery also has added largely to the facilities for its cultivation. Ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, and other machines have made it possible for the farmer of comparatively limited means to produce immense quantities of food for man and beast, so that starvation in almost any part of the globe can be averted by the over-production in other parts. In 1855, at a great trial of threshing-, reaping-, and mowing-machines in France, the American machines gained a complete victory. In 1862, the United States Government established the Agricultural Department at Washington. ”

“ In 1969 the agricultural mechanization enterprises controlled 70 percent of the available farm tractor power and an even larger share of the tractor-drawn and self-propelled farm machinery. State farms owned virtually all the balance. Collective farms, which cultivated 75 percent of the arable land, possessed only 1.6 percent of the tractor power and a still smaller proportion of major farm machinery items. ”

“ One student of agriculture has estimated that it would require the whole agricultural population of the United States one hundred days to shell the average corn crop by hand, but this is an exaggeration.
The list of labor-saving machinery in agriculture is by no means exhausted. There are clover hullers, bean and pea threshers, ensilage cutters, manure spreaders, and dozens of others. On the dairy farm the cream separator both increases the quantity and improves the quality of the butter and saves time. Power also drives the churns. ”

“ As sold on the market, with the shell, pulp and skin removed by a mechanical process that requires an expensive outfit of machinery, the product is the result of a development in agricultural methods that is not surpassed in the wheat industry of Argentina or our own country, and which is very far ahead of that of the rubber industry in the north. ”

“ Agricultural operations are conducted by the aid of machinery upon a larger scale, and within the past six months a score or more of establishments for the manufacture of agricultural implements have been equipped with machinery, and facilities in the Western States, that indicate more clearly than anything else can do the magnitude and scope of our agricultural interests. ”

“ In response to the demand for agricultural implements and machinery with which to cultivate five hundred million acres of newly utilized wild land, there have come into existence numerous great establishments for the making of machines that have been especially invented to meet the peculiarities and exigencies of Western farm life. ”

“ An American reader does not need to be told that farm work has been greatly changed by the introduction of improved tools and machinery. Even an implement so old and apparently so simple as the plow will do now better work with half the force formerly required. Cultivating and harvesting machines of various kinds spare land and labor. The introduction of artificial fertilizers has given new freedom and efficiency to the agriculturist. ”

“ Twelve threshing-machines, kept busy in the midst of this sea of yellow grain, beat out the straw and chaff and in the season filled two freight trains a day with enough wheat in each train to give two thousand people their daily bread for a year.
Led on by such pathfinders, American farmers launched out bravely, until now they are using very nearly a billion dollars' worth of labor-saving machinery. The whole level of farm life has been raised. ”

“ In the present time of water-power and steam-power corn-mills, one man is able to grind the flour necessary for the support of several thousand men; in early ages the labor of one person in the grinding of wheat served but to supply the wants of twenty others. In both cases machinery was employed for reducing the grain to flour ”

“ If anything goes wrong, they gallop to the machine in question, repair it and get it moving again without delay. The harvested corn is carried to the threshing machines which work day and night without interruption. They are stoked with bundles of straw fed into the stokehold through pipes of sheet-iron. The corn is threshed, winnowed, weighed and filled into sacks by machinery, then it is put into railway trucks which run alongside the farm, and goes to Duluth or Buffalo. ”

“ I recognize the enormous waste involved in the movement of an engine, boiler, etc., weighing several tons, back and forth across our fields, and apprehend that it must be difficult to avoid a compression of the soil therefrom. A stationary engine and boiler at either end of the field, hauling a gang of plows this way and that by means of ropes and pulleys, must involve a very heavy outlay for machinery and a considerable cost in its removal from farm to farm, or even from field to field. ”

“ The subjugation and tillage of a farm, like the running of a factory or furnace, involves a continual use of Power; but the manufacturer obtains his from sources which supply it cheaply and in great abundance, while the farmer has been content with an inferior article, in limited supply, at a far heavier cost. Yet the stream which turns the factory's wheels and sets all its machinery in motion traverses or skirts many farms as well, and, if properly harnessed, is just as ready to speed the plow as to impel the shuttles of a woolen-mill, or revolve the cylinders of a calico-printery. ”

“ Surely it is up to the American farmer to husband his resources by the use of labor-saving machinery, by using the tractor and other power machines to conserve horse feed, by the cultivation of all waste land possible and by practicing economy and thrift. ”

“ This machinery is to include more powerful tractors and grain combines, milking machines, and sprinkler irrigation systems. Machinery is also to be provided for the harvesting of corn, sugar beets, cotton, rice, fruits, and vegetables and for the harvesting and processing of feed crops. Adequate information on the progress of the mechanization program during the first two years of the five-year period is not available, but there is evidence that shortages of spare parts and trained operators continued to immobilize substantial numbers of farm machines. ”

“ Where formerly the farmer was content to perform certain parts of his work by hand, he today employs machinery for the same task, and is far more particular as to the working of his soil and the cost of production per acre. By the use of machinery his crop is marketed at less expense, in a shorter time, and he has more time in which to enjoy life than ever before. ”

“ Nowadays everything holds together in the world of production. Cultivation of the soil is no longer possible without machinery, without great irrigation works, without railways, without manure factories. And to adapt this machinery, these railways, these irrigation engines, etc., to local conditions, a certain spirit of invention, and a certain amount of technical skill must be developed, while they necessarily lie dormant so long as spades and ploughshares are the only implements of cultivation. ”

“ In the hay harvest, horse power is applied by means of the mowing-machine, the hay-tedder, the rake, and machines for loading and unloading the hay. Another class of machines, as, for example, the one for threshing, deal with the gathered crops. The use of a system of machinery like that applied to dairying has made great changes in certain lines of agriculture. From horse power, too, there has been a partial change to steam power. About the year 1850 the steam plow began to be used in England. ”

“ Modern farm machinery is heavier, it cuts wider and digs deeper and does more thorough work. Modern farm requirements go scientifically into the proper cultivation and preparation of soil to increase fertility. Old methods used up fertility until the land refused to produce profitably.
[88] Although the old familiar horsepower has been greatly outclassed, it has not been discarded. There are many small horsepowers in use for elevating grain, baling hay, cutting straw for feed and bedding, grinding feed and other light work where engine power is not available. ”

“ The soil is drained by the aid of properly constructed plows for preparing the trenches; roots are steamed and sliced as food for cattle; and the thrashing machine no longer merely beats out the grain, but it screens it, separates it, and elevates the straw, so as to mechanically build it up into a stack. I do not know a better class of machine than the agricultural portable engine. Every part of it is perfectly proportioned and made; it is usually of the locomotive type, and the economy of fuel in its use is extremely great. ”

“ The consequence is that the farms are littered with ill-adapted and inferior implements and machines, representing twice the investment that, intelligently placed, would provide an equipment that with half the labor would do better work. It is the purpose of the exposition to bring the farmers face to face with the very best machinery that invention and experience have produced. ”

“ Five cents a quart at retail has been the ruling price in many of these Western cities. Blackberries, raspberries, and other small fruits will also be very abundant. The extent to which the farm-work is done by machinery is truly wonderful. The farmer rides while he plows, harrows, and plants the corn, and the wheat is mostly sown in drills. The expense of ditching the land has been very great, amounting in some cases to ten dollars an acre, but now a machine digs the ditch, throws the dirt one side, lays the tiling and covers it up again. ”

“ The era of hand cultivation is giving way to that of farm machinery propelled by horse-power and even by steam, gasoline, or electricity, with its resulting great increase in the efficiency of labor. Eleven years ago the editor of The Dakota Farmer, in his testimony before the United States Industrial Commission, put the matter tersely, and with little exaggeration, as affecting his own section of the country, at least, when he said: "When I first worked out it took five binders to follow a machine, one man to rake off, and one to carry the bundles together. ”

“ The tendency of farm machinery to throw men out of employment and send many to the city is shown by these facts from the thirteenth annual report of the U. S. Commissioner of Labor. The sowing of small [Pg 75] grains is accomplished nowadays by machine methods in from one-fifth to one-fourth the time formerly required for hand-sowing. One man with a modern harvester can now do the work of eight men using the old methods, while the modern threshing machine has displaced fourteen to twenty-nine farm laborers. Machinery displaces the labor or increases the crop, according to circumstances ”

“ Yet their machinery costs nearly twice as much per acre as that on the larger farms that have nearly three times as much machinery. Machinery can be used more effectively on large farms. One mower, one hay rake, one tedder, one hay loader, one corn harvester, one grain harvester, one grain drill, one manure spreader, one potato digger, one potato planter, can do their work on a 250 acre farm as readily as on a small farm. Few of the small farms have half of these tools. If a small farm does have nearly all the list, it cannot use them enough to pay for the investment. ”

“ In 1898 the output of this one factory for the year was 74,000 self-binding harvesters, 107,000 mowers, 9,000 corn harvesters, and 10,000 reapers, amounting to 200,000 machines. This output, together with 75,000 horse rakes, also made, averaged a complete machine for every forty seconds in the year, working ten hours a day. The estimated annual production of all factories in this class of agricultural implements is 180,000 self-binding harvesters, 250,000 mowing machines, 18,000 corn harvesters, and 25,000 reapers. ”