xii INTRODUCTION. 



use was an infringement of their rights to labor. Its palpable advantages has disarmed the traditionary 

 prejudice of the husbandman himself, who is fast becoming as progressive as his neighbor. It has 

 lifted much of the drudgery from the shoulders of the country-bred youth, who no longer loses his 

 elastic step and suppleness of limb in the moil of the farm, which he once instinctively shunned as 

 degrading, while he sought the lighter and more or less intellectual pursuits of the city. It has thus 

 tended to elevate the pursuit of agriculture to its proper position in the social scale, as one of dignity 

 and independence, and not one of mere physical toil, to be shared in common with the brute. 



It is in the United States especially, where vast areas of improvable and fertile lauds invite the 

 labor of a sparse population, that agricultural machinery is capable of effecting its greatest triumphs. 

 Far back in our colonial days the stream of emigration bore the young and adventurous of the Atlantic 

 settlements toward the richer bottoms and prairies of the west. A gradual deterioration of the fertility 

 of Ihe soil of the older States from constant cropping, and the consequent increased labor required 

 with the imperfect implements formerly in use, were sufficient to maintain the yearly exodus. Columns 

 of hardy laborers from Europe have annually sought our shores, and for the most part have as promptly 

 filed off in the same direction in quest of cheap farms, or in the more alluring search for the precious 

 metals. As a consequence, civilization smiles upon the shores of either ocean, and looks down from 

 the mountain summits which separate them. A prosperous and expanding agriculture, with most of 

 the arts which it demands and fosters, has been rapidly extended over a territory of enormous breadth 

 and fertility, which lacks only the labor of adequate cultivation to develope its vast resources in a wealth 

 of cereal production as yet scarcely imagined. The very causes, however, which have opened up this 

 territory to agriculture and the arts have produced and maintained a continued scarcity of labor, and 

 kept its wages at a permanently high price. It is this enormous area of farm lands, and this great 

 dearth of manual labor throughout the Union, that our inventors and mechanics have from an early 

 period been invited to supply with labor-saving contrivances. 



Fortunately the people of this country have not been slow to adopt the most efficient substitutes 

 for animal power, and the inventive talent of the nation has found an ample and remunerating tield for 

 its exercise in originating and perfecting instruments adapted to all the wants of the fanner and planter. 

 The great staple products of cotton, grain, and hay, have especially demanded the substitution of 

 mechanical for muscular labor, and some of the happiest products of American skill have been the 

 result. 



Scarcely less valuable in the aggregate, however, are the numerous minor inventions whereby the 

 labors of the farm and the household have been saved. Implements of this kind make up a large 

 portion of the stock in trade of the makers and venders of agricultural wares. This successful 

 application of the mechanics of agriculture has happily supplemented the rapid displacement of a 

 large amount of rural labor called off by the war, manufactures, and the mines, and has itself in turn 

 been stimulated by the high prices of produce consequent upon. increased demand both for home and 

 foreign consumption. 



Evidence that this scarcity of labor in the United States has been a principal incitement to the 

 invention and manufacture of agricultural implements is found in a late report of the Commissioner of 

 Patents, who states that &quot; the most striking fact connected with this class is the rapid increase of 

 applications filed. Notwithstanding half a million of our agriculturists have been withdrawn from the 

 farm to engage in military service, still the number of applications for patents on agricultural imple 

 ments, (exclusive of reapers, bee-hives, horse hay-forks, and horse hay-rakes,) has increased from three 

 hundred and fifty in 1861, to five hundred and two in 1863.&quot;* The number of patented inventions 

 belonging to the class of agriculture, previous to 1848, was 2,043, since which time the number has 

 been vastly augmented. In the United States, as in Europe, the principal improvements in agricul 

 tural and horticultural implements have been made within the present century. As a branch of 

 manufacture, this class of machinery has been wonderfully extended within tlie last ten or fifteen 



Introductory report of Commissioner of Patents for 18GJ, pivg 



