Semi-weekly south Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1883-1889, 1885-01-20
CLUB LIST.
A Dangerous Machine
IPeck's SUM-

and kill people, has led many good
people to advocate the supervision of
steam thrashers by government
inspectors. In that case only COM
petent engineers could be placed in
charge of the boilers, and they wonld
have to be tested, as are the boilers
of steam vessels. AS il is now farm
ers buy steam thrashers, and they
think anybody who can drive team.
or milk a COW, can run steam
engine. Often the bigheaded farmer
himself puts his hat on one side, as
he would if he was going to break
colt, or wean a calf and teach it to
drink out of pail, and proceeds to
get up steam. Take a farmer who
thinks he knows about everything,
and there are a great many such
farmers, and .he will ask no odds of
any man on running steam thrash
er. lie wants TO show the neighbors
that he is no ordinary kind of a
farmer, and the result is he gets the
whole neighborhood around him to
look at the new steam thrasher; he
gets UP steam, and he don't know a
steam guage from side of bacon,
and when the audience and the la
borers are in a good position, the
steam gets low, the farmer lets in
some'cold water with knowing
look, and the air is full of smart
Aleck farmer, thrashing machine
hands and neighbors who have called
around to see what great improve
ment steam is over horse power ON a |
farm, stacks take fire and burn, and
barns and houses follow unless the
wind blows the other way, half a
dozen funerals take place the follow
ing Sunday, and the explosion of the
steam thrasher. is the talk of the
county for month, and after that
horse power is good enough in that
locality. In many cases some young
fellow who has been away from the
farm for year or two, breaking on
freight train, or driving baggage
wagon for a circus, who says he
wishes he had as many dollars as he
knows how to run steam engine,
and who looks mysterious, and turns
the water guages as though he had
worked q steamer all his life, is given
the job, and he ties white handker-
chief around his neck, and is the
center of admiration ON the part of
country girls and bows for week,
until some day he goes on an ex-
cursion skyward with the smoke
stack and the flues, and is cooked
when he comes down. They inves-
tigate and find that all he ever knew
about steam he learned while carry
ing in coal at a gas house, and the
verdict of the coroner's jury censures
the engineer for being incompetent.
Farmers are peculiar about buying
machinery, and often that which is
most complicated, and which needs
an expert and repair shop, isboughl
by them most eagerly, and they grow
gray in trying to master its compli-
cations. However, the steam thrash
er stands at the head of foolish cx-
travagance and dangerous expert
ments on the part of the farmer
They may buy mowers that will only
NOW in the winter, under shed, and
they may buy seeders that will not
seed unless man stands ready at all
times to shake them up, and they
may buy cultivators that will not
cultivate, unless they can get tooth
into a row of corn and rip it out, and
nobody will complain except the
man they buy such machinery Of
and he will not complain unless they
fail to pay. They may buy horse
hay rakes that only rake judiciously
when two men go behind with hand
rakes. They may buy patent pitch
forks for unloading hay, that take
more men TO work them then would
be necessary to carry the hay under
their arms. They may buy sulky ,
plows OH which man can ride and i
chew tobacco, but by which he can =
not pillow furrow to save him, and +
it is nobody's business. They may :
purchase patent churns warranted a
to do twice the work of a hired girl a
in half the time it would take the =
girl to churn in the old-fashioned =
way, but which will not churn until !
the girl understands the combination, ;
and then it don't give half as much |;
as the old-fashioned churn a
and nobody can say word. They >
may purchase patent reapers and :
binders that fail to reap and refuse !
to bind anything except the fingers
Of the men who monkey with it and
i. is none of the affair of the public.
They may buy tanning mills that
will draw all of the chess and bird
seed for block around and mix it I
with the wheat, and it is all right. Il
They may buy lightning rods that II
will crawl under the fence and curl
up when a thunder storm approach
,s, and couldn't stand off stroke of
lightning half as well as a sunflower
stalk, and 1t is the farmers business |
md nobody else's. But when the u
farmer buys steam thrashing t
that he does not know is il
oaded, and does not know how to v
Dad it, and places it in charge of a v
leck hand whose experience has v
always been in cow yard, and 8
he farmer GEES ready to blow up the a
whole neighborhood, it is time the t
aw should step in and regulate that q
armer, and tell him that he doesn't I
,now half as much as he thinks he s
loes. 1t has got so that when a !
team thrasher is advertised to show J
n any given locality, sensible people y
70 into the next town on visit, and !.
when it is necessary to drive along =
he road where a steam thrasher :
s at work, it is the safest way to hide -
inder the wagon seat and let your !
horse run away with you, for if you =
ire killed in runaway your n
friends don't have to wait for the :
remains to come down, and they :
lon't have to depend upon stray n
'reckle gathered up in hand basket, d
II "a hornbutton blown through your s
liver to recognize your remains.
The steam thrasher should go. c