THE USE OF STEAM ON THE FARM. 267 



the steam-engine to the farm, or to devise such a modification 

 of our form of agriculture that it shall be adapted to the en- 

 gine, is the great want of modern times, the securing of which 

 demands study, skill and the highest intelligence. 



In a general way, and indirectly, agriculture has been bene- 

 fited by the steam-engine ; and it is important that we know 

 and appreciate those benefits, as well as what it has attempted 

 to perform, and in what direction its aid is now most impera- 

 tively needed. Just in proportion to the aggregate of its 

 marketable products, their need of quick and cheap transit in 

 proportion to its need of reaching distant markets, agriculture 

 has been equally benefited with other industries by the steam- 

 engine as a transporting agent, or if it has not, it is owing to 

 the supineness of those who pursue it. In the older and more 

 thickly-settled sections of our country, labor on the farm has 

 ceased to be simply an eflEbrt to produce directly from the soil, 

 and in kind, all the food and clothing of the farmer's family, 

 and has become the production of such articles as are required 

 by some definite market. The farmer should therefore have 

 the reliable, quick communication which steam alone can give, 

 and if he has proper foresight it is generally available. The 

 steam-engine has become so simple in its construction, so 

 easily managed, and withal so cheap in its first cost, that it is 

 unmistakably the best adapted to, and the most economical 

 stationary power to be found on the farm, for the purpose of 

 threshing, sawing wood, lifting and unloading farm products, 

 and pumping water, in connection with the use of the steam 

 in the preparing of food for various kinds of stock. On small 

 farms, where there is very little of this kind of work to 

 be performed, it cannot probably be used with profit ; on 

 large fiirms it can, though it is as yet but rarely employed. 

 With these two items, steam as a means of public conveyance, 

 and as a stationary power to do a very limited variety of farm 

 labor, we have called attention to all that it has really and 

 practically performed for agriculture. Most earnest thought 

 and study have been given to the subject, and many attempts 

 made to bring the power of steam to practical use in break- 

 ing up and tilling the soil ; but to-day there is not a steam- 

 plough in all New England, and probably not one in America, 

 which, if it can succeed at all, is available to our scale and 

 mode of farming. 



