106 now TO MAKE THE FARM PAY. 



established fact, since their ultimate success and practibility 

 was acknowledged. 



The number of mowing machines made, and in use previous 

 to 1850, was probably less than five thousand. Ketchum'a 

 mower, and Hussey's reaper, were the pioneers, the machines 

 tliat did more to make it certain that grass and grain would 

 Unally be harvested by machinery, than any former patents, 

 and yet when the former was tried at the show of the New 

 York Society at Buffalo, in 1848, the large body of farmers who 

 witnessed the trial were not prepared to admit that the work 

 accomplished was good enough to be even tolerated in com- 

 parison with the hand scythes. Some thought it might work 

 in straight coarse grass, but in finer grass it was sure to clog. 



At a subsequent trial of reapers and mowers, instituted by 

 the New York State Agricultural Society at Geneva, in 1852, 

 seven machines competed as mowers, and nine as reapers, but 

 not more than two or three of the former were capable of 

 equalling the common scythe in the quality of work performed, 

 and not one among them all, when brought to a stand in the 

 graSvS, could start again without backing to get up speed. All the 

 machines had a heavy side draught, some of them to such an 

 extent as to wear seriously on the team. None of them could 

 turn readily in any reasonable space, and all were liable to tear 

 up the sward in the operation. The old Manning and the 

 Ketchum machines, were the only ones, as mowers, that were 

 capable of doing satisfactory work. 



One or two of the reapers, like the Burrall, the Manning, and 

 the Seymour & Morgan machines, did fair work, and the judges 

 decided that, in comparison with the hand-cradle, they showed 

 a saving of eighty-eight and three quarter cents per acre. 

 Here was some gain ; a positive advance. But still most of the 

 reapers as Avell as the mowers, did very inferior w^ork; the 



