The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1916-07-01
The Remanse Of Harvesting.

more interesting than the tales Oh the
Arabian Nights, and more thrilling than
the Adventures of Sinbad, the Sailor
For 5000 years men saved the wheat
crops with the old hand-sickle. Every
bushel of wheat required three hours of
a mans life to produce it. The cradle
came and took the sickle's place, last
ing about seventy-f1ve years, to tighten
the burdens OF the grain growers. In
the year 18O9-that famous year in the
worlds history, Cyrus H. Mccormick
was born-the year Lincoln and Darwin
were born-two other Iiberators of the
race. He gave to the world the self
binding harvester. 1t reduced the time
to produce a bushel of wheat to ten
minutes. Men thought for years the
last thought had been given. 1t had
revolutionized small grain farming, and
made the United States the granary of
the world 1t may be hard for US TO
believe it, but the main object of man
for the last 1O, 600 years, had been to
get bread. Famine was always stalk
ing near the people in those days
/ Only kings and their retinues had
enough bread to eat. Tt is no exagger-
alton to say that the world was hungry
for countless centuries. Black bread
was food for the common man. Even
the nations that gave to the world
/ Galileo, Laplsce and Newton were al
ways seeing the ghosts of hunger until
Mccormick came. We had thought
that this man had ushered in the Millen-
lum of Prosperity. He had. He viii
live among the immortals of history.
But the last word was not said nor
the last basic notion had not been
thought by Mccormick, as most men
had supposed. About eight years ago
a Kansas boy dreamed that he could
construct q machine that would thresh
the grain while standing, leaving the
straw on the ground, eliminating the
header barge, the threshing machine
crew and all the burdens that needs
must fall upon the farmers wife and
daughters. On last Wednesday we
| witnessed the dream of eight years ago
in action. We saw the standing grain
thresher at work. We saw the call of
| the farmers answered. We saw the
work of Mccormick out distanced, and
what had revolut1onized harvesting of
the last half of the nineteenth century
and perfected in the first of the twen-
tieth century take its place along side
of the sickle, cradle, Marsh harvester,
and Osborne wire binder-I mean the
Mccormick twine binders and headers.
While we will not forget the benefac-
tors of the past, but let US not cling to
the traditions of ancient days, but take
hold of this new thought" that orig
mated in Kansas, press the opportunity
and gladly recognize the new inventor,
! Curtis C. Baldwin of Nickerson.
We went to the Experimental Station,
the largest one of its kind in the world,
to watch this machine make its show
ing. 1t was started in field of tough,
half ripe rye, much of it still in the
dough. Four mules were hitched to the
machine, the gasoline engine was
started, the wheels obeyed the applied
power, the cylinder speeded up to
about SOC revolutions and the thresheI
across one end of the field, and at least
three hundred men watched it work.
After reaching the south side of the
plot the machine stopped, men gather
ed around, making comments as to tbs
results, but one and all agreed it ''woulC
work" The machine may not be per
feet in its construction, but it does per
feet work.
We are free to say it is the most far
reaching, revolutionary piece of ma
chinery that has been given to the agri
cultural world in the last eighty years
Perhaps it will add more to the happi
ness of man, conserve the soil bette
and make it possible for more peopl,
: throughout the world to eat white brea,
than any invention that has been givel
t to man during the long roll of time.-A
: S. Hale.