PART I 

 HISTORICAL SURVEY 



History tells of no time when farming was not a recog- 

 nized occupation, when men have not toiled and sweated 

 to wring from the soil their chief sustenance, and yet, it is 

 only within the past hundred years that any considerable 

 progress has been made in the invention of farm labor- 

 saving machinery. There are scattered mentionings of 

 earlier attempts to improve the means of doing farm 

 work ; as, for example, a passage in the writings Pliny 

 the elder, in which he describes a machine propelled by 

 oxen and used by the Gauls for cutting grain. 1 But 

 such notices are rare, and whatever the merits of the 

 various inventions, they seem not to have been perfected 

 or at any rate not to have come into common use. The 

 Independence of America found the farmers of Europe, 

 as well as of this country, cultivating and caring for 

 their crops by pretty much the same rude means and 

 methods as were practiced by the Egyptians and Israel- 

 ites three thousand years before. 



As to just when the modern machine methods came 

 into general use authorities differ and will, doubtless, 

 continue to differ. The census statistician for agri- 

 culture makes the statement that " The year 1850 prac- 

 tically marks the close of the period in which the only 

 farm implements and machinery, other than the wagon, 

 cart, and cotton gin, were those which, for want of a 



141 In the vast domains of the provinces of Gaul a large, hollow 

 frame, armed with teeth and supported on two wheels, is driven 

 through the standing corn, the beasts being yoked behind it ; the re- 

 sult being that the ears are torn off and fall within the frame." 

 Pliny's Natural History ; Bohn's Classical Library, Vol. IV, p. 103. 



