AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. 



a year in the cost of teams and wages, thus increasing the 

 aggregate of production, and of consequent exhaustion, by 

 millions of bushels. Not only have improved plows, har 

 rows, and cultivators led to this, but also threshers, mowers, 

 reapers and headers, saving waste in harvesting, until we feel 

 that only the more economical use of the steam plow is needed, 

 to diminish the amount of manual labor to its minimum quan 

 tity. At the international exhibition, at Paris, in 1855, Amer 

 ican machines, though comparatively imperfect at that time, 

 were brought into competition with the world. The trial was 

 made about forty miles from Paris, on a level piece of oats, 

 with machines which cut and reaped at the same time. The 

 American machines were successful; the judges could hardly 

 restrain their enthusiasm, but cried: &quot;Good! good!&quot; &quot;&quot;Well 

 done;&quot; while the excitable people shouted for the American 

 Reaper: &quot; That s the machine!&quot; The report said: &quot;All the 

 laurels have been gloriously won by Americans; and this 

 achievement cannot be looked upon with indifference, as it 

 plainly foreshadows the ultimate destiny of the New World. 7 



Three States, lying in the heart of the continent, rich in 

 forests, in mineral wealth, and in navigable streams, seem to 

 have been designed by nature for the most successful and 

 varied industrial development. Missouri, Kentucky, and Ten 

 nessee, have a climate which enables them to grow fruits and 

 vines, as well as cotton and corn, fine horses and mules. Their 

 best lands are yet unwasted and unworn; the energies of the 

 people, paralyzed during the civil war, are now bent toward 

 improvements in agriculture and in education. 



To the Catholic missionaries, who, from the spacious harbor 

 of San Diego to Mendocino Bay, prospected the grandest field 

 for a successful agriculture to be found on the surface of our 

 planet, belongs the credit of being the pioneer agriculturists of 

 the Pacific Coast. It must also be confessed that they were 

 the first labor monopolists; the whole race of aborigines were 

 compelled to work without recompense, for the benefit of the 

 Church, though the Fathers exacted no more than they cheerfully 

 rendered in their own persons. All the improvements, the vine 

 yards and orchards,, the countless herds and flocks added noth 

 ing to the wealth of the ignorant natives who produced them. 

 The missions were the centers of a stock-raising experiment on 

 a vast scale, without which the subsequent history of Califor- 



