96 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



Aside from these inventions which center about the small 

 grain, the most important inventions were the steel plow, 

 the corn planter, the corn cultivator, the mower, the rake, and 

 the horse hay fork. These inventions eliminated a great share 

 of the labor involved in growing the staple crops of the 

 North. By the use of machinery the effectiveness of human 

 labor in the production of northern field crops was more than 

 doubled. 



This development of machinery seems to have been the result 

 of a scarcity of labor at a time when railway transportation made 

 the fertile prairies of the north central states accessible to the 

 eastern markets, making commercial grain growing profitable. 

 The invention of machinery has reduced the part played by 

 human brawn and increased the part played by human brain, 

 and by mechanical and animal equipment. The main tendency 

 has been to increase the amount of land one man can operate. 

 What the effect will be when population increases more rapidly 

 than the land, and the desire is to get larger amounts of product 

 per acre instead of farming more acres, is a question worthy of 

 attention. Every effort has been devoted to increasing the 

 capacity of machinery with respect to land and the efficiency of 

 machinery with respect to man. The future need will be in the 

 direction of greater efficiency of machinery, when measured in 

 terms of product per unit of land. 



The invention of the cotton gin in the previous century 

 stamped upon the South a type of farming making large demands 

 for hand labor in the field in hoeing and picking cotton. Little 

 progress has been made in the use of labor-saving devices for 

 the picking of cotton and the husking of corn. 



The improvements in the live stock have been in the direc- 

 tion of greater productivity. The tendency has been to secure 

 a hog which can be prepared for the market in from 6 to 9 

 months instead of from 12 to 15 months. The tendency has 

 been to develop a cow which will yield a large amount of butter 

 fat without careful records to show whether this is the result 

 of large product per unit of feed or simply large product without 

 regard to feed consumed. With high feed costs more atten- 



