HELPING THE FARMER - MACHINES

THE FIRST efforts at directing the forces of nature and employing them in the service of man were made by the farmer. The task of growing food was quite the most important of primitive occupations, and although the virgin soil was rich and the yield abundant there were regions where crops could not be raised except at the expense of constant toil. Infrequent rains made it necessary to carry water by hand from wells and rivers and pour it over thirsty lands. As the grain fields grew more extensive, irrigating ditches were used which saved the toil of carrying the water, although it still had to be raised by hand. Then machines were invented by which water could be raised by animal power and, finally, as we have already seen, automatic water-lifting machines were constructed by which the river itself was constrained to lift a part of itself and pour this part into the irrigation ditches.

While it is true that the earliest machines were built to lighten the work of the farmer, the attention of inventors was soon attracted to other fields of endeavor and the farmer was left to toil slavishly from daybreak to sundown with no further mechanical aid. The tools he used were improved in form and quality. Oxen were used to draw the plow. The wooden plow made out of a forked stick[240] gave way to a bronze plow and, finally, to one of iron. The curved knife or sickle went through a similar process of evolution from flint to iron. It was the only implement used for cutting the standing grain, and not until comparatively recent times did it give way to the scythe. Practically all the work of tilling, seeding, cultivating, harvesting and threshing was done by hand in practically the same way and with practically the same tools from the time of the Pharaohs down to the end of the eighteenth century.

THE FIRST HARVESTING MACHINE

To be sure, there is a record of a harvesting machine built in Gaul, while that province was under Roman dominion. Pliny described this machine in 70 A. D. It consisted of an ox cart which was pushed through a field of grain, instead of being pulled by the ox. This cart carried a rack or comb which caught the heads of the standing grain, tearing them off and delivering them into the body of the cart. Unfortunately this primitive, but useful, harvester was not extensively employed and in time it was lost to agriculture. Farmers reverted to the time-honored method of reaping by hand and the ox-pushed machine was forgotten. From time to time in recent years this machine has been reinvented and a machine similar in principle is used to-day to gather clover seed.
The scythe was a distinct improvement over the sickle. It enabled a man to use two hands at the work of reaping instead of one. It provided a much longer and heavier blade, and hence a much broader swath was cut at each stroke. A distinctly American improvement on the scythe is the grain cradle, consisting of a set of fingers above the blade[241] which catch the grain and lay it in a swath at the end of the stroke. This important improvement rapidly spread to all parts of the world and is still used to-day where it is impracticable to use a mechanical reaper. It is claimed that one man can cut and bind more grain with the cradle than three men could with the sickle.

EVOLUTION OF THE PLOW

The plow has undergone important developments in comparatively recent years. Wooden plows were still in use in America in Revolutionary times; usually the point was shod with wrought iron. However, these wooden plows speedily gave way to metal when iron came to be manufactured in considerable quantity in this country. A plow has to contend with two conditions of service that apparently conflict with each other. The constant friction of the soil against the blade tends to wear it away very rapidly, hence a very hard surface is requisite. On the other hand, the plow is apt to encounter buried stones and rocks which will shatter it unless it is soft. The problem then is to make the plow both hard and soft. The chilled iron plow was invented by Oliver, in 1855, to meet the first condition. When molten iron is poured into an iron mold the surface that comes into contact with the mold is suddenly chilled, producing a very hard surface that takes a good polish. This effect is accentuated by using a hollow mold through which water is circulated. The hard surface of the chilled iron wears well in sandy and gravelly soil, it does not rust deeply, and it clears well in sticky soil. However, it is very brittle and is liable to break if struck a sharp blow. A more recent improvement[242] is the soft-center steel plow. This is both hard and soft. It is composed of three layers of metal; the outer layers are of hard cast steel and the center one of soft steel. These metal layers are heated to a welding heat and then rolled together, producing a plow that has a hard outer wearing surface and at the same time is tough because the center layer of soft steel acts as a cushion to absorb sharp blows. To increase the wearing qualities of the plow still further a patch of very hard cast steel is welded over the point of the share. Thus both conflicting requirements of softness and extreme hardness are met.
We think of the plow as a very simple tool, but the modern implement is a product resulting from a vast amount of study and research into the materials most suitable for its construction and into the best form of share and moldboard. In place of a single plow for all purposes the modern farmer is offered a large assortment to suit various classes of work. At least three different kinds of plows are indispensable on every farm; the sod plow, the stubble plow, and the corn-cultivating plow. The sod plow is used for turning over the sod and breaking the clod. This is provided with a jointer or diminutive plow point set above the share, which turns over the edge of the furrow to prevent grass from growing up between the furrows. The stubble plow has a moldboard with less twist than that of the sod plow. This is used for plowing land that was under cultivation during the previous year.
The plow of to-day has become more than a hand-guided, horse-drawn tool. It has developed into a real machine, mounted on wheels, with a disk or coulter wheel that cuts the furrow cleanly, means[243] for leveling the plow and regulating the depth of the plow, and a seat for the plowman. It works upon soil with the same precision that a planer works upon a slab of cast iron. The furrow is neatly sliced, lifted, and turned over with mechanical accuracy. As the furrow slice slides over the moldboard of the plow the soil is pulverized by friction. The front furrow wheel runs in the furrow previously cut which serves as a track to guide the machine. The front and rear furrow wheels are inclined from the vertical so as to balance the thrust of the plow and they may be given a lead toward or from the “land” or unplowed part of the ground to regulate the steering automatically. The proper adjustment and balancing of a plow calls for considerable skill.
Agricultural operations are now conducted on such a vast scale that the single plow cannot begin to do the necessary work. Instead, sets of gang plows are used so that from a dozen to two dozen furrows may be turned at a time. Steam or gasoline tractors of the wheel or track-laying type are required to furnish the tractive effort needed to haul these huge plows. The larger tractors are so powerful that they haul not only the plow but a harrow behind the plow to break up the clods and a seeder behind the harrow to sow and cover the seed so that all three operations are performed simultaneously.
The disk type of plow is used in very dry and hard soil and also in very sticky soil. A rolling disk takes the place of the moldboard and share, and in this way friction is reduced very materially, with the result that less tractive effort is required to draw the machine.
[244]
There is scarcely any agricultural operation for which a machine has not been designed. We cannot attempt to describe them all. For tilling the soil there are plows, harrows, drags, and rollers of many different varieties; for seeding and planting there are grain and seed drills, corn planters, potato planters, etc.; for cultivating or working the growing crops there are cultivators, weeders, fertilizer drills, corn plows, etc.; and for harvesting or gathering the crops there are mowers, hay rakes and tedders, reapers and binders, potato diggers, corn binders and huskers, corn shellers, etc.

INVENTION OF THE REAPER

Most interesting of all are the reapers because they represent the first successful efforts to introduce machinery into farming operations. Toward the close of the eighteenth century the Royal Agricultural Society of England offered a prize for the invention of a successful reaper, which stimulated inventive effort in this field. But although many patents on reaping machines were granted by the British patent office, nothing was produced that completely met the requirements. In fact even as late as 1851 when a World’s Fair was held in London the British had no really successful reaper to exhibit. In the meantime, American inventors had been at work and two inventors in particular, Obed Hussey of Maryland and Cyrus McCormick of Virginia, had developed machines which had so far proved their worth that they were extensively used on American farms. These two inventors, working independently, produced machines that were very similar in basic principles. As our patent regulations of that period did not call for an extensive[245] search of the prior art there was no official investigation to show which was entitled to the honor of priority of basic principles or whether both did not include in their applications much that was old. Hussey filed his patent on the last day of 1833 and McCormick in June of 1834.
The main stumblingblocks of earlier inventors of reaping and mowing machines was in finding a suitable method of cutting the grain. Revolving combs for tearing off the heads of grain, fingers for gathering the grain and holding it against a revolving cutter, horizontally reciprocating knives—all these methods were tried without success. Nearly three years before Hussey obtained his patent, Manning, of Plainfield, New Jersey, solved the problem by inventing a reciprocating cutter with spear-shaped blades cooperating with a finger bar that guided and held the grain against the blades. This invention was apparently unknown to either Hussey or McCormick and their patents show cutting means that were broadly the same as that of Manning.

THE “FULTON” OF AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY

Of the two rivals, McCormick showed the better business ability in perfecting his invention and promoting it so that he eventually became to be considered the “Fulton” of agricultural machinery and the public forgot the pioneer work of Hussey. As a matter of fact, McCormick built his first successful reaper three years before he obtained his patent. Four horses were hitched to the machine and he went out into a neighboring field of oats to demonstrate it. In less than half a day he had reaped six acres, which was a remarkable performance[246] when we consider that a single acre was considered a day’s work for one man. McCormick’s machine had a reel above the cutter to hold the grain against the knife and as the grain was cut it dropped upon a platform. A man walked alongside the machine and removed the grain with a rake. And so the reaper with two men to operate it did the work that had formerly required twelve men with the cradle.
The next important improvement was to provide a seat at one side of the reaper so that the man with the rake could ride. While this reduced the labor of the man it did not materially increase the efficiency of the machine. The next step, however, was of material importance. In place of raking off the hay by hand an automatic rake was furnished and the services of the extra man were dispensed with. One man could then do the work of twelve. McCormick had had difficulty in introducing his machine into public use, but now its superiority over hand labor was so marked that reapers came to be extensively employed on American farms. The reaper had reached this stage of its development when the World’s Fair of 1851 was held in London and McCormick’s machine was sent across the Atlantic to be displayed at the exhibition. At the same time Hussey sent over one of his machines which had reached the same stage of development. There was a British machine also on exhibition based on the invention of Rev. Patrick Bell of Scotland in 1826, but in a competition with the American machines it could not begin to compare in efficiency. The work of the American machines was a revelation to the British farmers. The prize was carried off by McCormick’s machine, which was declared by the judges[247] to be worth the whole cost of the exposition. Unfortunately Hussey was not on hand to direct the operation of his machine, which may have had something to do with its failure, for in another test the Hussey reaper was found superior to the McCormick.
The excellence of American reapers was now well established and their fame spread throughout Europe. In a competitive test held near Paris in 1855, America won the highest honors by cutting an acre of oats in twenty-two minutes as against sixty-six minutes for a British machine and seventy-two for an Algerian machine. In 1878 McCormick was made a member of the French Academy of Sciences in honor of his achievements.

TYING KNOTS BY MACHINE

After the self-raker was introduced the next important improvement was in the binding of the grain. At first the cut grain was raked into a receptacle which was dumped by the driver of the machine when enough had accumulated to form a bundle and the bundles were bound by men following the machine. As in the evolution of the raker, the next step was to provide a platform for these men on the machine so that they could ride as they bound the grain and finally in 1873 a self-binding attachment was invented which increased the efficiency of the machine manifold. This self-binder, however, called for the use of wire which did not meet with favor as a binding material because of the difficulty of cutting it without a special tool. Efforts were therefore made to introduce twine instead. But twine cannot be fastened by mere twisting; it has to be tied and a mechanical means of tying a knot was far from an easy problem to[248] solve. While it is true that the human body is a machine and every movement of which it is capable may be reproduced by mechanical means, the difficulty is to copy many operations without involving such complexity of members as to make the mechanism wholly impracticable. The human hand is really a very intricate piece of mechanism which by long generations of evolution and development has become wonderfully deft. It exhibits this deftness and complexity of movement in tying knots and the very intricacy of this operation was enough to baffle the majority of inventors. There was one inventor, however, who was not to be thwarted even by so formidable an obstacle as this. In 1864 Jacob Behel secured a patent on an attachment for binders which would actually tie a knot. The mechanism passed the twine around the gavel of grain, formed a loop in the two ends, and tied a simple overhand knot in much the same way that the hand ties this knot. Ten years later Marquis L. Gorham improved the mechanism and built a successful twine binder. Finally in 1879 John F. Appleby perfected the binding mechanism, completing the last stage in the development of the modern automatic self-binding reaper.
To keep pace with the reaper, other agricultural machines had to be invented and developed. The vast quantity of grain harvested could not be threshed by hand and the old-fashioned flail had to give way to the steam-driven threshing machine. Finally to meet the requirements of the vast western wheat fields, the combined harvester and thresher was developed which, with a crew of four men, will reap, thresh, and bag between two and three thousand bushels per day. According to statistics[249] of the U. S. Department of Agriculture it took a man three hours and a half to produce a bushel of wheat in 1830 as against ten minutes in 1896. Surely the world owes a tremendous debt to Hussey and particularly to McCormick for introducing machinery into agriculture and starting the train of inventions which in the space of two-thirds of a century have led up to the present remarkable era of machine farming.
There still remains one task of the farmer that has not yet been accomplished with unqualified success by machine. The harvesting of the corn crop is a tedious and disagreeable task and one which the farmer would only too gladly turn over to the machine. To be sure, many corn-harvesting machines have been built and put into service with more or less success, but none has reached the perfection of other classes of agricultural machinery. The difficulty lies not in the machine, but in the fact that corn is so easily beaten down by storms that at harvest time the machine seldom finds the stalks all standing up in nice straight rows. Machines must therefore be provided with means for lifting up the fallen stalks to vertical position. The stalks are cut and bound into bundles and stood up in shocks.
Even more difficult than cutting and binding is the task of husking the corn. This work was always dreaded by farm hands, but now machines are provided to husk the ears and shred the stalks for fodder. Thus the farm is being relieved of its drudgery. Unfortunately it is only the large western farms that can afford to avail themselves of the latest agricultural machinery. On small eastern farms it does not pay to purchase a machine which can be used for only a few weeks in the year and then must[250] be stored away until the next season, but small farmers are now cooperating and clubbing together to buy the less frequently used machines and so even the small farm is being relieved of its drudgery, and the arduous burdens which have always had a tendency to drive young men away from the farm are now being assumed by the unfeeling machine.

 by A. Russell Bond