Farm Machines and Progress 



By J. E. Buck 



Of the I H C Service Bureau 



The Staff of Life— The origin of wheat 

 is unknown. It is at least as old as civil- 

 ization, and was probably used as food by 

 our primitive ancestors long before they 

 emerged from the obscurity of the ages. 

 For more than forty centuries the golden 

 cereal has been the staff of life of civil- 

 ^^^ ized nations. In the advancement of 

 ^^^^ .^^H human welfare, no cereal has been more 

 jfljjri^^LI^^^^^H instrumental than wheat. It has de- 

 ■HBfl^fl^HBI veloped the mechanical ingenuity and 

 other intellectual faculties of man. 

 Without wheat, farms would be abandoned, cities would crumble 

 into ruin, and civilization would perish. 



From a bulletin compiled by Miss Helen W. Atwater for the 

 Department of Agriculture, we learn that probably no food, un- 

 less it is milk, is more generally used than bread, nor is there 

 any food that constitutes a larger part of the diet of the average 

 person. In the earliest historical records it is spoken of, and 

 wild tribes which today inhabit South Africa know something 

 of its use. Of course, the bread made by the Kafir to-day, or by 

 the American Indian three hundred years ago, is very different 

 from that with which we are familiar. The Kafir simply grinds 

 his grain between two stones, makes a paste of this meal and 

 water, and bakes it in the ashes of his camp fire. Israel, in 

 Egypt, ate leavened bread ; the ancient Greeks cultivated the 

 yeast plant; in Pompeii an oven was found containing loaves of 

 bread not unlike that of the present day; many European peas- 

 ants still bake their weekly loaves in the village oven, and so 

 on, to the mammoth bakeries and innumerable fancy breads of 

 modern times. The reason for this importance of bread is very 

 simple. Ever since the far-off days when the wild cereals were 

 first found or cultivated, men have known that food prepared 



*Maps Nos. 1 and 2 show the value of agricultural machines in use in 1360 and 

 in 1900, and maps Nos. 3 to 9 inclusive show the production of wheat in the United 

 States by decades, beginning with 1840. 



The number of farms increased from 1,500,000 in 1850, to 6,000,000 in 1909. and the 

 total area under culti\iation increased during the same period from 293.000,000 

 acres to 700,000,000 acres. The population of the United States has increased 

 from 4,000,000 in 1790, to 90,000,000 in 1910. 



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