872 



GLEAillNGS IN BEE CULTURE 



exactly as I wanted it to. When I got to be 

 a little older, and got hold of the proper 

 books on electricity, I ran my sawmill bj' 

 electric power in place of the babbling 

 brook; and this last sawmill was fjortable. 

 I have told you how I took it around to 

 schoolhouses and gave " lectures." About 

 the same time, I constructed a windmill 

 with cloth sails as before; but I put it on 

 top of a pole and made it pump water from 

 our well, and churned the butter for my 

 good mother. With seven children to look 

 after she was very glad to be relieved of 

 any part of her household duties. At the 

 time I made my first windmill there was 

 scarcely a windmill to be seen in the whole 

 State of Ohio. I think there were a few in 

 the far West on the big cattle-ranches for 

 pumping water for the stock. My home- 

 made windmill worked all right and at- 

 tracted much attention far and wide because 

 of its novelty until a heavy wind blew it 

 down. I do not know but I shed some tears 

 again, even if I was a pretty good-sized 

 boy. But my attention was turned to some- 

 thing else until I got hold of bee culture, as 

 I have been telling you of recently. Durmg 

 all the years, however, between my experi- 

 ments with wind, and up to the time I had 

 a printing-press for printing Gleanings, I 

 was interested in windmills. I looked at 

 the pictures in the agricultural papers with 

 which I have always been in touch more or 

 less, and sent for price lists and circulars. 

 I have always had a great fondness for 

 automatic machines, or things that would go 

 of themselves. My grandfather on my 

 mother's side worked for years on the prob- 

 lem of perpetual motion ; and I used to 

 stand for hours by his side and listen to his 

 theories about making a machine that would 

 go itself when once started. 



The first two or three issues of Glean- 

 ings were printed at our Medina printing- 

 office — a rather small affair at that time ; 

 but it did not suit me. I ached to get hold 

 of the type and the paper, and make it just 

 as I wanted it. I scraped up money enough 

 to buy a second-hand foot-power press, and 

 hired a printer to give me instructions. We 

 got on nicely until the subscriptions began 

 to come up, as I have explained ; and when 

 I was admonished that I needed some kind 

 of power, my mind reverted to windmills. 

 Little gasoline-engines were unknown be- 

 fore the j^ear 1875. I got hold of an ad- 

 vertisement of a windmill made, I think, 

 somewhere in New York. I believe it was 

 called the Halliday. The building I owned 

 was a three-story brick; and with the wind- 

 mill on top of the building I thought I 

 could get a pretty good wind. Sometimes 



it was a little too good, as you will notice 

 later. Well, when we got it all rigged up 

 it worked tiptop except that the press had 

 a very irregular speed. Sometimes it was 

 v'ery slow work feeding the sheets of paper; 

 but before we knew it we would just have 

 to hustle to get the sheets fed in properly. 

 Then if the wind stopped blowing for an 

 interval the pressman had to stand still 

 and wait. To obviate this trouble I had a 

 device so I could run it by foot power when 

 the wind did not blew, and a sort of ratch- 

 et-wheel so when the wind came up it would 

 take the machine out of your hand, or 

 perhaps, better, out of your foot which 

 might be getting tired. Well, I greatly 

 enjoyed this until our subscription got up 

 to such a point that the press had to be run, 

 wind or no wind, to get the journal off on 

 time, and I was always a gi'eat friend of 

 I^unctuality. And this reminds me that just 

 a few days ago T happened to go through 

 the pressroom where the girls were folding 

 up journals over a week after the date they 

 should have been mailed. For a little while 

 there was a stir in camp in the way of in- 

 vestigation. But the men in the different 

 departments notified me that several obsta- 

 cles stood in the way of my hobby for 

 having the journal out " on time." We can 

 not run nights the way we used to do, be- 

 cause there is a law in Ohio making it 

 unlawful for women in this State to work 

 over nine hours a day; and they could not 

 put in green hands, because it is something 

 of a trade to wrap up journals as we do 

 now, without rolling them up. 



Well, after I sat up nights to get the 

 journal off on time when the wind did not 

 happen to blow, a steam-engine seemed to 

 be the only thing that would let us out.* 

 Besides the printing-press we were begin- 

 ning to have orders for hives and frames; 

 and a Bookwalter engine was installed in 

 the basement. Tnat moved the pi'inting- 



* Perhaps I should here remark that, besides 

 pumpina: water, there is one other place where a 

 windmill does very well — grinding grain. After I 

 got the machine in operation I was so anxious to 

 have it doing something nights and Sundays that I 

 put up a little building near by for grinding grain; 

 •and with a machine made specially for the purpose 

 I actually succeeded in having it do quite a little 

 useful work during windy days. It made very fair 

 cracked wheat and corn meal and various kinds of 

 ground feed for horses and cattle. As there was no 

 gristmill in Medina at that early date, the farmers 

 soon began to bring in their grain. But right here 

 is where trouble came. Of course every customer 

 wanted to know when he should come after his 

 "grist;" and I set the day far enough ahead so, 

 as I thought, to be sure; but when my "little mill got 

 piled full of grain, and the " wind didji't blow." 

 the farmers became disgusted and hauled their grain 

 somewhere else. The arrangement does very well 

 for a farmer to do his own grinding, but he can 

 not do much custom work. Since gasoline has be- 

 come so safe, cheap, and reliable as a means of 

 power, windmills for such work are practically ruled 

 out. 



