xiv INTRODUCTION. . 



meagre information respecting this branch of production. Several small manufactories of ploughs, 

 scythes, axes, shovels, hoes, &c., existed in different States, and one of patent steel pitchforks, in New 

 Haven, Connecticut, turned out about 85,000 worth annually. During the next thirty years the busi 

 ness increased more rapidly, the traditionary prejudices of farmers gradually giving way before the 

 established utility of labor-saving appliances in the cultivation of the vast domain of our national 

 agriculture. The form and finish of ordinary farm tools were much improved, and a few grand inven 

 tions were brought forward. In 1833 rice was successfully threshed out in the southern States by 

 animal and steam power. The harvesting of grain by machinery, which had been several times essayed 

 at an earlier period, was the same year attempted at Cincinnati, where the late Obcd Husscy cradled 

 wheat as fast as eight persons could bind it. 



State and county agricultural societies were, during the same time, organized in nearly every section 

 of the Union where they did not already exist. The system of annual fairs and exhibitions of farm 

 products and machinery instituted by them, and encouraged by public awards of premiums, powerfully 

 stimulated invention, and made our farmers familiar with the best forms of agricultural implements in 

 use at home or abroad. Of like influence, but wider scope, was the American Institute in New York, 

 which has made its influence felt in every department of industry. 



The exhibition of the industry of all nations held in London in the year 1851 exerted a vast 

 influence upon the progress of ideas on the subject of mechanical agriculture, as it did upon all other 

 branches of art. The contrasts there presented between the highest results of modern skill and 

 ingenuity exercised upon the implements of husbandry, and the rude models of the plough and other 

 tools to be seen in the Indian department, little improved since the clays of the Hebrew prophets, 

 forcibly illustrated the agency of the mechanic and the engineer in the art of subduing nature to the 

 will and service of mankind. 



Although the number of implements of each kind exhibited by the United States on that occasion 

 was small, the variety shown was considerable. The general excellence of American ploughs, reapers, 

 churns, scythes, axes, forks and other implements, was acknowledged by the public admission of 

 disinterested judges from all parts of the world, and the particular merits of many by the medals 

 awarded, and by the number of orders received at the time by the manufacturers. The triumph of 

 the American reapers marked a new era in agriculture, and gave a strong impulse to the inventive 

 genius of Europe and America. The emulation awakened among manufacturers by the London 

 exhibition was still further stimulated by the Crystal Palace exhibition, which took place in New York 

 in 1853- 4, when more than one hundred American manufacturers competed for honorable distinction 

 in this department of mechanics. 



The influence of these exhibitions of the collective ingenuity of the world upon our own country 

 men, in furnishing our mechanics with a standard of comparison by which to measure their own 

 contributions to the world s progress with the most improved implements of the civilized world, and 

 our agriculturists already familiar with American instruments through our State and local fairs with 

 a view of the appliances of agriculture in other lands, can scarcely be overrated. 



Some of the results are to be seen in the tables before us. 



Credit is also due to the United States Agricultural Society for instituting a great national field 

 trial of reapers, mowers, and other implements, held at Syracuse, New York, in 1857, for the purpose 

 of testing practically the relative merits of different machines and rewarding special excellence. 



The magnitude of the interests involved in the successful production of a new labor-saving imple 

 ment for husbandry should alone prove a sufficient spur to inventors and manufacturers. A slight 

 improvement in straw-cutters has enabled its inventor in a western tour of eight months with a model 

 to realize forty thousand dollars. Another has been known to sell a machine to thresh and clean grain, 

 after fifteen months use, for sixty thousand dollars. The McCormick reaper is believed to have yielded 

 its inventor annually a princely income. A single manufacturer has paid the legal representatives of a 



