Democratic Northwest and Henry County news. [volume] (Napoleon, O. [Ohio]) 1894-1905, 1894-06-07
The FARMER AND MACHINERY.
IMPLEMENTS OF TODAY UN-
HEARD OF TWENTY YEARS
AGO.
Machinery has Taken the Place OF
Men, Women and Children.

|
walls of catacombs in Egypt. 1t SEEM
strange that this Ii tie crooked instrumen
should have lived so long and be the emblem
of industry and tbs implement by whicl
nearly all the food of the world was harvested
down to the beginning of the nineteenth
century.
Many can remember with what iuteres
people went to see the first field of wheat Oh
rye that was cut with cradle, The mar
who was able to swing the cradle; take tn,
broad swath; lay down the grain straight il
rows ready for binding, was considered to bt
wonder of the day. A single lifetime hai
binder, the header and the field thresher goes
over the fields of Califiorni cuts the grain
threshes it, delivers in bags and on wagons
ready for the market. Think for an instant
of the army of men and women with sickles
in their hands that would be required to cut
the amount of grain that is produced to day,
1t is probable that not enough men and wo
men could be commanded during the har-
vest time to cut one-half the grain that is
produced. From the picture of single man
or woman cutting grain with sickle, lifting
it up under the arm and laying it down on
the ground then paint the picture of the
horses, cutting and threshng as it moves on
and cutting up the product of the field like
mighty leviathan of the prairie. The man
with the sickle would cut perhaps half an acre
of wheat in day. The man on the header
cuts twenty-five acres. Theman on the header
does the work of at least eighty men in day,
because he cuts the grain. saves the necessity
of binding, of loading it upon the wagon,
car ying 1t to the stack and of threshipg il
and storing away the straw. Perhaps this
picture tells too much. 1t asks very stubborn
questions. What has become of the men
and women who used to do this work? What
effect has this great monster machine and
other machines on the laboring men?
Many man now living has plowed in his
boyhood and his early manhood with the
old-fashioned wooden plow-the moll board
c)yered with straps of irop-can rememt or
the coming of the cast iron plow, then of the
chilled mold board, then of the steel plow
and now the gang plow with three or four
shares. The new sulky plows permit man
to sit and ride and control the plows and thus
do the work of three or four men without the
physical labor of walking between the ham
dies of the plow in the furrow all day long.
In the olden days of New England, when
the most rigid economy prevailed, farmers
used oxen instead of horses, for when the OF
the horse, it was thought, would be dead
loss. In that rigid old puritanical aga men
thought that all they got out of themselves
was clear gain and so they worked early and
late and studied how to save and to make the
most out of the land and everything else
connected with it.
To-day the size of harrows is perhaps three
times what they used to be, so that one man
will do in this branch of work three times as
much as he used to do. 1t is true that more
horse power is required, but that only leads
on to another question. What is all this do
ing to man? Is this one of the reasons why
80 meny are driven away from the farms in
to the cities? Is it because men are not
needed on the farm? Ia it because machine.
ry and horse power have taken their place 81
We can all remember when the farmer
walked across his field carrying the seed and
sowing it broadcast just as the Egyptian pic.
lures paint him doing it 6,000 years ago,
But now the farmer sits upon the seed drill,
which seeds the land far more evenly and
more scientifically than ever could have been
done by hand, skillful as some men used to
be. One man now sits upon the twelve inch
drill and rides from morn to noon, from
noon to dewy eve, watching his team and
il beautifully. few years ago the bundles
of grain were hauled to the stack or the barn
The threshing machine run by horse power
came around in due time. These hurdles
were taken by men and we're laid upon g
table of the thresher and the bands were cut
That was when the tanning mill was run by
hand, and then the straw WAS pitched back
by men and put upon stack. Now there Is
a machine that carries the bundles to the
thresher, cuts the twine on the way an6
delivers the bundles head first to the thresh
er. This saves the labor of for men. The
straw is run out on the stack; a man spread:
| it and shapes the stack.
A retrospect will show that large proper
tion of the farmers now living can recall thu
day when all grass was cut with the scytht
and raked with common hand rake. Nov
horse power takes the place of man powel
and the moving mackine, with its iron fin
gers and saw-toothed knife, f.es over thu
farm and in a few days the haying is done
not only because of the machinery but be
cause of the horse rake and the horse pitch
fork.
The inexorable law of the survival Of tn
fiittest is applied to farming. The man o
intelligence is the man who is going to sue
ceed in the future in farming. To run tina
amount of machinery that is now require,
on wellor dered farm requires very hig
order of intelligence and executive ability
1t is more difficult to get one such man to
day than 1000 common laborers as farm
hands. Agricultural colleges, the technics
schools of the country and The experiments
stations are bringing forward supply TO
the increasing demand for this class of mer
The fact is that to succeed on farm to.da
man must be good machinist, carpenter
blacksmith, engineer, as well as good judg
OF soil, stock, fertilizers and the relation @
the crops to the soil. The introduction Q
machinery is giving the farmers time t
trink. 1t is not the old drudgery of the olde
days. Intelligence applied to farming, pre-
duces more and hence the increased produG
tion OF cereals and all other crops. The da
was when the largest of the working men o
the farm was called into use. When the fal
mers made Ak handles, fails, built their ow
horses an had little money with which
ouy ABROAD, their wits were sharpened an
mechanical skill was brought out. In thos
Gays there was the loom and the spinnin
wheel and all the clothing worn was made
nome. Each farm was place where pei
sonar Independence was studied ard every
tnnR was produced by hand that was poss
PIE: gut of that kink of life the grandet
lnaiYlouality our country has ever know
In those days many farmer and his boy
read py the glare of the pitch knot, while tn
mother and daughters carded the wool
spun the linea out of which the clothing wt
MADE. Now all is changed. Machinery h,
taKen the place of men. The products OF II
1arm buy the clothing, -four and sugar an
pay The blacksmith for machine made shot
lhat are fastened upon the horse with mi
chlne made nails. 1t is indeed the age
machinery and exchange. That the commo
: Iaoorer is being driven from the farms
machinery there is no doubt. what klno
men and women the new farm life is to pr
duce is the problem of the age, for up to Il
Present generation the sterling men, the re
, Pope of the nation, | ave been the product
farm life.