92 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



and with a dozen wooden teeth. The virgin soil 

 did not need fining but smoothing, for it was mixed 

 with soft leaf mould. But as the stumps rotted 

 away the soil changed in character and the farmer 

 learned to construct iron-toothed harrows that 

 were more efficient. Let me remark here that 

 working farmers were the original inventors of 

 nearly every agricultural implement and of 

 most of the common tools used on the farm. 

 While the initial idea was often only partially and 

 crudely developed, the inventors should receive due 

 credit. The spade, the shovel, the hoe, the flail 

 and the fan were invented long before iron was 

 available. In like manner the sled, the wagon, the 

 harness, the thresher, the rake, the harvester 

 all were first invented by the farmer. Necessity 

 was indeed the parent of invention. 



GROWING UP 



I must now go back a little from the considera- 

 tion of the social and industrial conditions under 

 which I grew up, to certain apparently unimpor- 

 tant events which were later to shape my life quite 

 differently from the lives of my brothers. 



When I was about fifteen years old I went home 

 from school one evening with my cousins, the Bur- 

 roughs boys. In one part of my uncle's new and 



