807] Historical Survey 9 



There, on the California and Oregon farms, may be 

 found fifty-horse-power traction engines in operation. 

 Each one dragging " sixteen ten-inch plows, four six- 

 feet harrows, and a press drill for planting seed-wheat. 

 In this way one such engine performs the triple work 

 of ploughing, harrowing, and planting, all in one opera- 

 tion. The saving of time is so great that one machine 

 can plant with wheat, from fifty to seventy-five acres in a 

 single day, mounting hilly and rough ground just as 

 easily as when passing across dead levels." When the 

 grain is ripe, a harvesting machine is, by the same 

 means, pulled across the field. " Its cutters are often 

 twenty to twenty-six feet wide .... When the 

 cutters have performed their work, automatic rakers 

 gather in the grain stalks and carry them to rows of 

 knives where they are at once headed. Then, in the 

 same operation, the wheat is threshed out, cleaned and 

 sacked, and behind the great combination harvester 

 there is left a trail of sacked wheat ready for the market. 

 Another traction engine with a train of a dozen cars 

 follows in the wake of the thresher and harvester, 

 gathering up the wheat and carting it to the granary. 

 In this manner fully seventy acres and more of wheat 

 land are harvested in one day." 1 With the aid of these 

 engines the work of " plowing, cultivating, seeding, and 

 harvesting on farms of a thousand acres in extent " may 

 be done by half a dozen men in " much less time than a 

 whole army of employees could do the work on a farm 

 of half the acreage." 2 For the profitable use of such 

 vast machine power, large fields are a self-evident neces- 

 sity. 



1 George E. Walsh, "Steam Power for Agricultural Purposes," in 

 Harpers Weekly, Vol. XLV, p. 567. 



2 Cassier's Magazine, Vol. XIX, p. 139, and Harper's Weekly, Vol. 

 XLV, p. 567- 



2 



