286 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



shovels made iu Bridgewater, Massachusetts, gaiued the credit of being 

 superior iu Morkmanshi]) to the best imported shovels of that day, and 

 they undersold them at the same time. A large shovcl-factoiy was 

 established at Easton, Massachusetts, about seventy years ago, and as 

 early as 1822 it was making about 30,000 shovels a year. By iraprove- 

 meuts iu the process of manufacture, the patents fof which were issued 

 iu 1827, the proprietor gaiued so high a reputation and such an increase 

 of busiuess, that by 1835 he was making about forty dozen shovels and 

 spades per day, each shovel, in the systematic division of labor, passing 

 through the hands of no less than twenty different workmen. The same 

 establishment can now produce over two hundred and fifty dozen a day. 

 Cast-steel shovels were first patented in 1828, but cast-steel hoes were 

 made by two different establishments iu Philadelphia as early as 1823. 

 Shovels and hoes were made at Pittsburgh, Penusylvauia, in considerable 

 quantities previous to the year 1803, and by the year 1831 steel hoes were 

 made there so as to be sold at the rate of $1.50 a dozen, only half the 

 price of the iron hoe ten years earlier. Two factories in that city, in 

 1836, were able to make steel hoes at the rate of 1,600 dozen, besides 

 8,000 dozen shovels and spades a year, in addition to a large quantity of 

 other tools ; while, iu 1857, four large establishments there made 32,000 

 dozen hoes and 11,000 dozen planters' hoes, a half million dollars' worth 

 of axes, and large quantities of picks, mattocks, saws, &c. These facts 

 are alluded to simply to show how this industry has become concen- 

 trated in large establishments, where perfection can be attained by the 

 division of labor. There are many similar establishments in various 

 parts of the country. 



But, perhaps, the most important of modern agricultural inventions 

 are the grain-harvesters, the reapers, the mowers, the thrashers, and the 

 horse-rakes. The sickle, which was iu almost universal use till within 

 a very recent date, is undoubtedly one of the most ancient of all our 

 farming implements, lleapiug by the use of it was always slow and 

 laborious, while from the fact that many of our grains would ripen at the 

 same time, there was a liability to loss before they could be gathered, 

 and practicall}- there was a vastly greater loss from this cause than there 

 is at the present time. It is not, therefore, too much to say that the 

 successful introduction of the reaper into the grain-fi'elds of this coun- 

 try has added many millions of dollars to the value of our annual har- 

 vests, by enabling us to secure the whole product, and by making it 

 possible for the farmer to increase the area of his wheat-fields, with a 

 certainty of being able to gather the crop. Nothing was more surpris- 

 ing to the mercantile community of Europe than the fact that we could 

 continue to export such vast quantities of wheat and other breadstuff's 

 through the midst of the late rebellion, with a million or two of able- 

 bodied men iu arms. The secret of it was the general use of farm-ma- 

 chinery. The number of two-horse reapers iu operation throughout the 

 country, in the harvest of 1861, performed an amount of Avork equal to 

 about a million of men. The result was that our capacity for farm pro- 

 <i action was not materially disturbed. 



The credit of the practical application of the principles iuvohed iu 

 this class of machines undoubtedly belongs to our own ingenious me- 

 chanics; for though somewhat similar machines were invented in Eng- 

 land and Scotland many years ago, they had never been proved to be 

 efiicieut on the field, and had never gained the confidence of the farmers, 

 even in their neighborhood; while the patent issued to Obed Hussey, of 

 Cincinnati, in 1833, and another issued to McCormick, of Virginia, in 

 1831, not only succeeded in the trials to which they were subjected, but 



