Other Machines Follow.
The completion of the reaper set the wheels of farm invention spinning. It was the first great battle successfully won and gave a spirit of confidence and an irresistible spirit of victory to the men who were lifting the burdens off the bodies of men. After the reaper, the mowing machine came naturally. Following the binder in easy sequences came the corn binder, push binder, header and harvester thresher.
Every variety of haying machine, from side-delivery rake and tedder to sweep rake and loader, came eventually to make hay-making easy. The thresher, ensilage cutter, riding plow, disk harrow, cream separator, manure spreader and seeding machines succeeded in making the raising of the world’s food a profitable occupation; at the same time, they made it an easy one. Lately, the internal combustion engine, together with its application in the kerosene tractor, promises to make the farmer’s emancipation practically complete. If Herbert Casson could say “The United States owes more to the reaper than it does to the factory or the railroad or the Wall Street stock exchange,” what can be said of these myriad machines that now do the food-grower’s work for him?
Where formerly nearly all the people had to engage in food raising and even then went to bed hungry, now nearly half the people live away from the farm and there is a great abundance of bread and of food.