THE USES OF WOOD 



153 



partments, and 

 drawers are es- 

 sential parts of 

 many machines in 

 the barn or gran- 

 ary , and the 

 woods of which 

 these are made 

 do not differ from 

 those for hoppers 

 and chutes. 



In a study of 

 the evolution of 

 farm tools and 

 machines, and 

 their stage of 

 manufacture at 

 the present time, 

 two outstanding 

 features claim at- 

 tention. The first 

 is, the extreme 

 slowness with which improvements were made in early 

 times compared with the rapidity with which invention 

 has followed invention during the past century. The other 

 remarkable fact is that wood has always held and still 

 holds a prominent place in such manufacture. Inven- 

 tions have not lessened the demand for wood, but have 

 augmented it. An increase in the use of iron has occurred 

 also, but it has not been more rapid than has been the 

 growth in the demand for wood in the agricultural im- 

 plement industry. America has led the world in the inven- 

 tion and manufacture of 

 appliances belonging in this 

 industry. Nearly all im- 

 provements have originated 

 here. Farm machines from 

 the United States are ship- 

 ped to all agricultural coun- 

 tries of the world. Two 



HOW THE APPLE CROP IS SAVED 



The clumsy, wasteful and uncleanly method of 

 making cider which was the only way known 

 on the farm a few generations ago has been 

 relegated to the past by a machine which grinds 

 and presses the fruit with little waste of time or 

 waste of apples. Such presses are now found on 

 most farms which have orchards of bearing apple 

 trees. 



CLEARING LAND BY MACHINERY 



Strictly speaking, the stump puller may not be a farm implement, but 

 few implements are more essential in a new country. The old way of 

 clearing land with ax and mattock is too slow, and powerful machines 

 are brought into use to put more speed into the operations. Clearing 

 cut-over land is a large business now. 



causes have been chiefly responsilbe for the growth of 

 the industry in this country, namely, cheap land and dear 

 labor. This is equivalent to opportunity and necessity, 

 or to a reason why it should be done, and the means of 

 doing it. 



Up to one hundred years ago in fact as late as 1845 

 America with all its fertile land, did not raise enough" 

 wheat to feed its own people. The cost of doing it 



was too high. 

 Hand labor pre- 

 vailed almost ex- 

 clusively, and a 

 large number of 

 farmers was nec- 

 essary to grow 

 and care for the 

 crops. Though a 

 much larger pro- 

 portion of the 

 people lived on 

 farms than at the 

 present time, only 

 four and a third 

 bushels of wheat 

 per capita were 

 produced in the 

 United States in 

 1845. Forty-five 

 years later, with 

 relatively fewer 

 persons on the 

 farms, the pro- 

 duction of wheat was ten bushels per capita. 



In 1830 the work of one man for three hours was 

 required to grow and harvest a bushel of wheat. Sixty 

 years later, a fraction of that labor sufficed to produce 

 the bushel. Again, machinery must have the credit, and 

 the efficiency of such machinery is so well understood 

 that American farmers now spend one hundred million 

 dollars a year for machinery. Wages are much higher 

 than they were seventy-five years ago, yet most farm 

 products are cheaper. It is because one man with suit- 

 able machines can produce more than a much larger num- 

 ber of men, working in the old way, could produce eight 

 or ten decades ago. It is claimed that one man with 

 machines can raise as much rice in Louisiana as four 

 hundred men with hand tools can raise in India. 



The need of inventions was felt before the inventions 

 came, otherwise, they would not have come. Yet it 

 seems strange that the need was not felt and that results 

 did not follow, hundreds of years earlier. Nearly two 

 thousand years ago a reaper, foreshadowing the present 

 one, was invented in France, but was forgotten. A cen- 

 tury ago most wheat fields contained less than five 

 acres each. That was true particularly when the farmer 

 depended upon his own and his family's labor. Wheat 

 must be harvested within a few days after it is ripe, or 

 it falls and is lost. Four or five acres were as many as 

 the average farmer could reap with a sickle. If he grew 



HANDPOWER CORN SHELLER 



This is not the largest or most powerful shelling 

 machine in use, but it is found on nearly all 

 farms where corn is grown. The sheller is of 

 wood, generally of maple and oak, except that 

 the throat and jaws are of steel, in the part of 

 the machine where the strain is severest. 



