CORN-HARVESTING MACHINERY. 



INTRODUCTION 



Corn was the earliest as it is the most important cultivated crop on 

 the American farm. ^Mien the first colonists settled on American 

 soil they found the Indians producing corn, and also preparing 

 various foods from it. The first corn grown by white men was that 

 of the' Virginia Colony, at Jamestown, in 160S, and it is claimed that 

 two Indians taught them how to plant and cultivate the crop. The 

 product of this harvest served almost as the sole food supply of the 

 colony. The early Massachusetts colonists, too, received their first 

 lessons in corn cultivation from the Indians. The first fields culti- 

 vated by the settlers there were those which had been left vacant by 

 the Indians. 



The Ignited States census of 1840 gives the corn yield for that year 

 as 377,518,875 bushels. The following census (1850) places the 5^eld 

 at 592,000,000 bushels, with a corn acreage of 31,000,000. During 

 the civil war little advance was made in the production of corn. In 

 the year 1900 the United States alone produced 2,105,102,516 bushels, 

 of about 75 per cent of the total crop of the world. . In 1904 the yield 

 of corn reached 2,467,480,934 bushels, and the acreage 92,231,581. « 



It is only when compared with the production of other cereals that 

 the importance of this crop is fully appreciated. At the present time 

 one-fifth of the area in improved land in the United States, one-third 

 the area in crops of all kinds except pasture, and one-half the area in 

 cereal crops is devoted to corn. In 1899, while 35 per cent of the 

 farmers of the United States raised wheat, 82 per cent raised corn. 

 The total combined yield of wheat, oats, barley, rye, and buckwheat 

 in the United States amounted in 1904 to 1,673,995,336 bushels, and 

 the acreage was 79,649,720 — these figures equaling two-thirds of the 

 yield and four-fifths of the acreage of the corn crop. The farm value 

 of. the corn crop for 1904 was $1,087,461,440, wlide ths combined 

 value of the other crops mentioned for the same year was $877,120,785 

 or only 80 per cent of the value of the com crop.'* In 1905 the 



a U. S. Dept . Agr. Yearbook 1904, p. 628. & Ibid., p. 629. 



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