REAPING MACHINES,
on which a vast amount of ingenuity has been expended. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Royal Agricultural Society of Great Britain offered a prize for the introduction of a really useful machine which should replace the scythe and sickle. Several machines were brought out, but they did not prove practical enough to attract much attention. Cyrus H. McCormick invented in 1831 the reaper, which, with very many improvements added, is to-day employed in all parts of the world. The most noticeable point of this machine was the bar furnished with a row of triangular blades which passed very rapidly to and fro through slots in an equal number of sharp steel points, against which they cut the grain. The to-and-fro action of the cutter-blade was produced by a connecting-rod working on a crank rotated by the wheels carrying the machine.
A WHEAT-CUTTER
A "heading reaper" being pushed over a wheat crop by six mules. It cuts off the ears only, leaving the straw standing. The largest machines of this type used in California take swathes 50 feet broad.
The first McCormick reaper did wonders on a Virginian farm; other inventors were stimulated; and in 1833 there appeared the Hussey reaper, built on somewhat similar lines. For twelve years or so these two machines competed against one another all over the United States; and then McCormick added a raker attachment, which, when sufficient grain had accumulated on the platform, enabled a second man on the machine to sweep it off to be tied up into a sheaf. At the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851, the judges awarded a special medal to the inventor, reporting that the whole expense of the Exhibition would have been well recouped if only the reaper were introduced into England. From France McCormick received the decoration of the Legion of Honour "for having done more for the cause of agriculture than any man then living."
It would be reasonable to expect that, after this public recognition, the mechanical reaper would have been immediately valued at its true worth. "Yet no man had more difficulty in introducing his machines than that pioneer inventor of agricultural implements. Farmers everywhere were slow to accept it, and manufacturers were unwilling to undertake its manufacture. Even after the value of the machine had been demonstrated, everyone seemed to fear that it would break down on rocky and uneven fields; and the inventor had to demonstrate in person to the farmers the practicability of the reapers, and then even guarantee them before the money could be obtained. Through all these trying discouragements the persistent inventor passed before he saw any reward for the work that he had spent half a lifetime in perfecting. The ultimate triumph of the inventor may be sufficient reward for his labours and discouragements, but those who would begrudge him the wealth that he subsequently made from his invention should consider some of the difficulties and obstacles he had to overcome in the beginning."[24]
In 1858 an attachment was fitted to replace the second passenger on the machine. Four men followed behind to tie up the grain as it was shot off the machine.
Inventors tried to abolish the need for these extra hands by means of a self-binding device.
A practical method, employing wire, appeared in 1860; but so great was the trouble caused by stray pieces of the wire getting into threshing and other machinery through which the grain subsequently passed that farmers went back to hand work, until the Appleby patent of 1873 replaced wire by twine. Words alone would convey little idea of how the corn is collected and encircled with twine; how the knot is tied by an ingenious shuttle mechanism; and how it is thrown out into a set of arms which collect sufficient sheaves to form a "stook" before it lets them fall. So we would advise our readers to take the next chance of examining a modern self-binder, and to persuade the man in charge to give as lucid an explanation as he can of the way in which things are done.
Popular prejudice having once been conquered, the success of the reapers was assured. The year 1870 saw 60,000 in use; by 1885 the output had increased to 250,000; and to-day the manufacture of agricultural labour-saving machines gives employment to over 200,000 people; an equal number being occupied in their transport and sale in all parts of the globe.
In California, perhaps more than in any other country, "power" agricultural machinery is seen at its best. Great traction-engines here take the place of human labour to an extraordinary extent. The largest, of 50 h.p. and upwards, "with driving-wheels 60 inches in diameter and flanges of generous width, travel over the uneven surface of the grain fields, crossing ditches and low places, and ascending the sides of steep hills, with as much apparent ease as a locomotive rolls along its steel rails. Such powerful traction-engines, or 'automobiles' as they are commonly called by the American farmers, are capable of dragging behind them sixteen 10-inch ploughs, four 6-foot harrows, and a drill and seeder. The land is thus ploughed, drilled, and seeded all at one time. From fifty to seventy-five acres of virgin soil can thus be ploughed and planted in a single day. When the harvest comes the engines are again brought into service, and the fields that would ordinarily defy the best efforts of an army of workmen are garnered quickly and easily. The giant harvester is hitched to the traction-engine in place of the ploughs and harrows, and cuts, binds, and stacks the golden wheat from seventy-five acres in a single day. The cutters are 26 feet wide, and they make a clear swathe across the field. Some of them thresh, clean, and sack the wheat as fast as it is cut and bound. Other traction-engines follow to gather up the sacked wheat, and whole train-loads of it thus move across the field to the granaries or railways of the seaboard or interior."
For "dead ripe" crops the "header" is often used in California. Instead of being pulled it is pushed by mules, and merely cuts off the heads, leaving the straw to be trampled down by the animals since it has no value. Swathes as wide as 50 feet are thus treated, the grain being threshed out while the machine moves.
One of the most beautiful, and at the same time useful, crops in the world is that of maize, which feeds not only vast numbers of human beings, but also countless flocks and herds, the latter eating the green stalks as well as the ripened grain. The United States alone produced no less than 2,523,648,312 bushels of this cereal in 1902, as against 987,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 670,000,000 bushels of barley. Now, maize has a very tough stalk, often 10 feet high and an inch thick, which cannot be cut with the ease of wheat or barley. So a special machine has been devised to handle it. The row of corn is picked up, if fallen, by chains furnished with projecting spikes working at an angle to the perpendicular, so as to lift and simultaneously pull back the stalks, which pass into a horizontal V-shaped frame. This has a broad opening in front, but narrows towards its rear end, where stationary sickles fixed on either side give the stalk a drawing cut before it reaches the single knife moving to right and left in the angle of the V, which severs the stalk completely. The McCormick machine gathers the corn in vertical bundles, and ties them up ready for the "shockers."