HIS LIFE AND WORK 



last year's hay crop in Vermont. It was desper- 

 ately poor, with its people housed for the most 

 part in log cabins, clothed in homespun, and fed 

 every winter on food that would cause a riot in 

 any modern penitentiary. 



There was no such thing known, except in 

 dreams, as the use of machinery in the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil. The average farmer, in all 

 civilized countries, believed that an iron plow 

 would poison the soil. He planted his grain by 

 the phases of the moon; kept his cows outside in 

 winter; and was unaware that glanders was con- 

 tagious. Joseph Jenks, of Lynn, had invented 

 the scythe in 1655, "for the more speedy cutting 

 of grasse"; and a Scotchman had improved it 

 into the grain cradle. But the greater part of 

 the grain in all countries was, a century ago, 

 being cut by the same little hand sickle that the 

 Egyptians had used on the banks of the Nile 

 and the Babylonians in the valley of the Eu- 

 phrates. 



The wise public men of that day knew how 

 urgent was the need of better methods in farm- 

 ing. Fifteen years before, George Washington 



[5] 



