MA CHINER T IN A GRICULTURE. 27 



but now a corn husker is used. A machine drawn by 

 two horses will do the work of eight men ; it will 

 take one row at a time and husk, gather, and elevate 

 the corn into a wagon as fast as the team will walk 

 through the field. It will gather all the ears, whether 

 the stalks stand up or are bent down. It leaves all 

 the husks on the stalk, and it does not pull up, or 

 cut up, or break down the stalks. 



After the corn was harvested our fathers would turn 

 a shovel upside down over a box, sit on it, and draw- 

 ing the ears with force and vigor across its edge, would 

 shell at most twenty bushels in a long day ; but far 

 more commonly not more than five, and hard work it 

 was. Now two men will take the ordinary improved 

 corn sheller and shell 24 bushels in an hour, or 240 

 bushels in a short day. Leaving out of the account 

 the difference in the length of the days worked, this 

 shows that six times as much is now done with this 

 machine as our fathers could do by the old methods. 

 With the three classes of horse power machines four 

 men will shell 1,500, 2,000, and 3,000 bushels respec- 

 tively per day of ten hours ; one man and machine 

 now doing the work of 75, 100, and 150 men, respec- 

 tively, when without machinery. 



Our fathers, when they wanted their wheat con- 

 verted into flour or their corn into meal, would take 

 it to the neighboring mill, generally having one run 

 of stones, rarely more than two, where everything was 

 handled and moved by muscular force, requiring from 

 one to three men in each mill, and turning out what 

 might amount to from ten to thirty barrels of flour 

 a day, paying for the service rendered in a toll of 



