Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1895-01-02
MODERN INVENTION.
Old Time Farms Compared With
the Present.
THE MOST INGENIOUS MACHINES
Demands of Modern Civilization initiate
Against the Simple Life of the
New England Farmer.

In modern life one of the most
striking features that has been and is
being developed more and more rapidly
is the interdependence of the members
of the human family. As the popula-
tion increases. the hermit or quasi
hermit life SO frequent years ago, when
the farmer for months in the winter
saw hardly any faces except those OF
his own family, and when he con-
Quoted his farming operations in almost
complete independence of the rest of the
world, is fast becoming an impossi-
bility. In old times the fam. was a
self-supporting world in itself. The
wells, springs and cisterns supplied
water; 1.-The domestic animals got all
their food from it. and it poduced its
own fetilizers. By rotation of crops.
by letting land lie fallow and by use
of fertilizing material produced on
the farm the land was kept fertile.
Rain descended from the clouds with
out any human agency.
Now the conditions are very differ
ent. The greater demands of modern
civilization initiate against the simple
life of the New England farmer of one
or two generations ago.
The farmers's children wish to com
pete with city children in education
and in general culture. But outside
of the personal aspect, Of which this
is but one element, modern conditions
affect his life in much broader sense.
The tendency now is to work the soil
in large areas devoted to a single crop,
and to use machinery in all farming
operations. For many years past the
American inventor has been busy in
venting most ingenious machines for
cultivating the ground, for sowing the
seed, and for harvesting the crops. On
account of the inventors work the
Western farms, with fields of wheat
reaching to the horizon, cultivated by
steam drawn plows, and whose crops
are harvested by great machines,
drawn by teams of many horses, have
become possibility. The great cereal
crop of the United States is due to the
mechanical inventor.
In the same order Of things is the
modern fertilizer. For different crops
different fertilizers are made in factor
les. AS the great natural sources of
phosphorio acid were overdrawn, the
European agriculturist has utilized the
finely ground Stag of the basic steel
process. The farmer depends no Longer
ON his barnyard. but purchases his
plant food in the most approved form,
made in factories from the most un-
promising sources of supply. The
Atlantic coast is patrolled by steamers
whose occupation is the catching of
menhaden or bony fish. After the oil
is extracted from these fish, the farmer
has claim on what is left as source
of nitrogen for his crops. South Amer
ican nitrate of soda is another source of
nitrogen. The German mines supply
him with his potash, and the blending
of all the elements is effected in the
fertilizer factories, whose processes are
guided by the most exact chemical an
alyses of their materials.
Even in the matter of local transpor-
tation the farmer is being taken care
of. The electric road, to whose opera
tions, needless of vested rights, so many
highways have been surrendered. bids
fair to revolutionize the aspects of
rural life. 1t is believed by many that
the electric road will eventually haul
the farmers products to the cities or
railroad stations. and the improvement
of country roads has actually been dis
couraged by those who believe in the
highest development of this form OF
traction.
Where the process of development of
modern life will end, it is hard to see.
The farmer, who would seem to be the
last to be subjected to modern scientific
advanoements, is really. speaking rela-
lively, the one most affected. Mechan-
ical, chemical, and electrical science
have changed his entire status. Among
inventors the farm is recognized as the
field for most useful work in invention.
Man may yet learn to dispense with
coal, and the steam engine may be rele-
gated to the past. The self-contained
energies of the cosmic system may yet
be used to replace the motor which dur
ing the last decades has replaced them.
Windmills and water wheels represent
the utilization of cosmic energy. and
mankind may yet be driven to more
extensive use of the mechanical powers
of nature. But for food production it
seems as if the soil for many years &c
come must be the only resource. Syn
thetic chemistry has to make enormous
advances before it can produce palata-
BILE food. Already it has done some
thing in producing glucose and sac
charine as sugar substitutes, but until
the synthesis ON the large scale of car
bon and hydrogen is effected. the syn
thetic chemistry will be inchoate.
In the modern march Of progress the
farmer will hold his own. The
I n