BREAD PLANTS 



21 



of wheat a day. Then came a procession of im- 

 proved machinery aimed to replace human muscle 

 with some other power, used by a machine that 

 does its work quicker and better than the man 

 with the cradle. 



Headers pushed through the grain, stripping 

 the heads by means of a coarse comb set on the 

 edge of a cart, were used in Gaul at the beginning 

 of the Christian Era. The power was furnished 

 by an ox hitched between shafts at the back of the 

 cart. The driver raked the heads off of the knives 

 into the cart. This machine was in use for cen- 

 turies. Then it was abandoned and forgotten 

 for centuries more. 



The publishing of an account of this machine, 

 described by Pliny in 70 A. D., led to the inven- 

 tion of the reaper with revolving reel; and finally 

 came the combined reaper and harvester, based 

 on the principles first employed in the crude 

 Gallic header. Gradually the inventive genius 

 of this country has improved the machinery de- 

 vised in England until now the wheat on the great 

 farms is cut, threshed, and flung on the ground 

 in tiers of sacks, ready for shipment, the grain 

 not having been handled by men during the whole 

 process. 



One of these great "portable factories, " used 



