871] Machinery and Labor 73 



tion and use of machine power alone would, doubtless, 

 be to overstate the truth, and yet, even waiving the im- 

 practicability of providing the requisite food supply by 

 the earlier methods of culture, it is not at all clear that, 

 under those earlier methods of heavy and exhaustive 

 toil, men could be able effectively to interest them- 

 selves in affairs of government, social relations, and ed- 

 ucation in any degree comparable to that now common 

 among the farming classes in this country. 1 



Consider how much lighter farm work now is than 

 it was fifty years ago, before the introduction of 

 machinery. How infinitely easier it must be to ride in 

 the spring seat of a reaping machine, with no harder 

 task at hand than that of keeping the horses out of the 

 grain, than it would be to shuffle wearily along that 

 same way, with bended back and with the perspiration 

 springing from every pore, cutting an eight or ten foot 

 cradle swath. And how much preferable to pitch 

 sheaves to a threshing machine, or to work on the straw 

 stack for a day or two than to labor all through the 

 winter months flailing and winnowing grain.* It is 

 much more delightful to have a sulky plow, with the 

 option to walk or to ride, as inclination may direct, 

 than to be compelled to trudge all day over the yield- 

 ing soil, till your limbs grow heavy and you stumble at 



1 " The elimination of exhausting manual labor by the substitution 

 of powerful machinery for puny arms has emancipated labor in our 

 day from its hardest tasks, and has given to the worker both inclina- 

 tion and leisure for the development of his intellect in various ways 

 that were impossible under former conditions." A. E. Outerbridgc, 

 Jr. : "Machinery and the Man," in Scientific American Supp., Vol. 

 51, P- 21235. 



2 "Threshing was then, as it remained till our time, when it has 

 been almost superseded by machinery, the chief farm-work of the 

 winter." Rogers : History of Agriculture and Prices, Vol. I, p. 15. 



