. INTRODUCTION. xiii 



years, having received a great impetus from the exhibition in London in 1851 where our own pro 

 gress in this respect created so much surprise among foreigners and the several international fairs 

 which have taken place since that time. Throughout Europe and America, until a comparatively recent 

 date, the implements of the farm remained extremely rude, primitive, and inefficient in form. Atten 

 tion appears to have been first strongly awakened to the value of mechanical aids in farming about the 

 period of the first introduction of agricultural societies. 



The Royal Society, established in England in 1GGO, encouraged improvements in agriculture. 

 But in the transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, 

 instituted in London in 1753, we trace a still more liberal promotion, and a general interest in a r ricul- 

 tural progress. These societies prepared the way for the establishment of purely agricultural associa 

 tions. The first associated effort made in England to encourage agriculture by specific rewards was 

 in the premiums annually offered by the Society of Arts after the year 1758, for experiments in hus 

 bandry, and for improved implements of the farm. The first agricultural society in Great Britain, tin; 

 Society of Improvers in Scotland, established in 1723, encouraged improvements in tillage, and in 

 farm implements, with such effect that &quot; more corn was grown yearly where corn never grew before 

 than a sixth of all that the kingdom used to produce at any previous time.&quot;* About the same time 

 Jcthro Tull introduced along with his system of deep tillage and thorough pulverization of the soil 

 the use of the horse-hoe, the drill, and other improved utensils, and became the greatest practical 

 improver of agriculture in the last century. He even attempted an automatic threshing-machine, and 

 incurred the usual charge of being a visionary innovator. The profit of drill husbandry was also 

 demonstrated by John Wynn Baker, of Kildarc. in Ireland, who in 17GG commenced a scries of 

 experiments with a view of systematizing agricultural knowledge by establishing fixed principles of 

 rural economy, and showed by actual experiment that the saving effected by the drill and horse-hoe 

 amounted in fifteen years to the fee-simple of all the tillage lands of the kingdom. He established as 

 a part of his project a manufactory of farm implements, and issued a catalogue of seventy different 

 machines and tools, all new to the agriculturist at that time. Agricultural machines were thenceforth 

 made with more regard to scientific principles. 



The earliest agricultural associations in the United States were established in 1785, in South 

 Carolina and Pennsylvania In the first-mentioned State, indeed, nearly a century before, the assembly 

 passed &quot;an act for the better encouragement of the making of engines for the propagating the staples 

 of the colony,&quot; which was followed by legislative encouragement to various individuals who improved 

 the machines for pounding and cleaning rice. In 1784 the assembly enacted a regular patent and 

 copyright law, giving to the authors of books and the inventors of useful machinery the exclusive 

 benefit of their productions for fourteen years. The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, 

 established in March, 1785, and after a period of inaction revived and incorporated in 1801), through 

 the exertions of the Hon. Richard Peters, awakened much attention to the subject of improved imple 

 ments and machinery, by means of a judicious system of premiums, and of practical essays. In July, 

 1809, Mr. Peters proposed to the society &quot;a plan for establishing a manufactory of agricultural instru 

 ments, and a warehouse and repository for receiving and vending them.&quot; In that paper he states that 

 no manufactory of agricultural implements in general existed in the United States, although the demand 

 was prodigiously great. The proposed manufactory was to produce, under the patronage of tin; 

 society, every implement of husbandry, both common and extraordinary, in use at home or abroad, if 

 approved on trial ; none to be sold without inspection and the stamp of the society s agent. His plan 

 also embraced a collection of models in the manner of the Conservatory of Arts and Trades, established 

 at Paris a few years before. The Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture, incorporated in 

 1792, labored successfully to promote like improvements. The first statistics of the national industry 

 collected in the following year embraced one small manufactory of hand-rakes, in Berkshire county, 

 Massachusetts, which made annually 1,100 rakes, valued at $1,870. The census of 1820 gave very 



I hilpji History of Progress in Great lirituin. 



