SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 87 



entire eastern third of the continent, and was beginning to settle 

 in the great natural meadows of the upper Mississippi Valley. In 

 this new region the settler was saved the enormous task of clear- 

 ing his land of timber. The abundance of this fertile land and 

 the ease with which it could be reduced to cultivation created 

 such an agricultural opportunity both for the landless man and 

 the capitalistic farmer as had never been found before and may 

 never be found again. 



Agricultural machinery. But the most important factor of 

 all was the series of inventions of agricultural machinery by 

 means of which horse power was substituted for human muscles 

 as a motor force. In 1831 William Manning of New Jersey 

 was granted a patent for a mowing machine. In 1833 and 1834 

 Obed Hussey of Baltimore and Cyrus McCormick were each 

 granted patents for reaping machines. After 1840, when these 

 machines had been improved and their practicability demon- 

 strated, they began to come into general use. About the same 

 time, the threshing machine began to be widely used, and very 

 soon displaced the old primitive methods. It was not, how- 

 ever, until about 1850 that the " thresher" and the "sepa- 

 rator," that is, the machine for beating out the grain and the 

 mac nine for separating it from the straw and chaff, were com- 

 bined. These machines were usually run by horse power, 

 though a steam thresher was beginning to be used before 

 1864. John Deere made his first steel plow from an old saw 

 blade in 1837. 



Scarcely less important than the mower, the reaper, and the 

 thresher were the corn planter and the two-horse cultivator, 

 which came into use during this period. By means of these the 

 fanner's ability to raise corn was greatly increased. Every part 

 of ihe work of growing corn, except that of husking the crop, 

 was done by horse power before 1 864, except in certain sections 

 where corn is a minor crop. In view of the fact that corn is and 



