[CHAPTER XXIV]
AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY
PLOUGHS — DRILLS AND SEEDERS — REAPING MACHINES — THRESHING MACHINES — PETROL-DRIVEN FIELD MACHINERY— ELECTRICAL FARMING MACHINERY
Agriculture is at once the oldest and most important of all national industries. Man being a graminivorous animal—witness his molar, or grinding, "double" teeth—has, since the earliest times, been obliged to observe the seasons, planting his crops when the ground is moist, and reaping them when the weather is warm and dry. Apart from the nomad races of the deserts and steppes, who find their chief subsistence in the products of the date-palm and of their flocks and herds, all nations cultivate a large portion of the country which they inhabit. Ancient monuments, the oldest inscriptions and writings, bear witness to the prime importance of the plough and reaping-hook; and it may be reasonably assumed that the progress of civilisation is proved by the increased use of cereal foods, and better methods of garnering and preparing them.
For thousands of years the sickle, which Greek and Roman artists placed in the hand of their Goddess of the Harvest, and the rude plough, consisting of, perhaps, only a crooked bough with a pointed end, were practically the only implements known to the husbandman besides his spade and mattock. Where labour is abundant and each householder has time to cultivate the little plot which suffices for the maintenance of his own family, and while there is little inducement to take part in other than agricultural industries—tedious and time-wasting methods have held their own. But in highly civilised communities carrying on manufactures of all sorts it is difficult for the farmer to secure an abundance of human help, and yet it is recognised that a speedy preparation and sowing of the land, and a prompt gathering and threshing of the harvest, is all in favour of producing a successful and well-conditioned crop.
In England, eighty years ago, three men lived in the country for every one who lived in the town. Now the proportion has been reversed; and that not in the British Isles alone. The world does not mean to starve; but civilisation demands that as few people as possible should be devoted to procuring the "staff of life" for both man and beast.
We should reasonably expect, therefore, that the immense advance made in mechanical science during the last century should have left a deep mark on agricultural appliances. Such an expectation is more than justified; for are there not many among us who have seen the sickle and the flail at work where now the "self-binder" and threshing machine perform the same duties in a fraction of the time formerly required? The ploughman, plodding sturdily down the furrow behind his clever team, is indeed still a common sight; but in the tilling season do we not hear the snort of the steam-engine, as its steel rope tears a six-furrow plough through the mellow earth? When the harvest comes we realise even more clearly how largely machinery has supplanted man; while in the processes of separating the grain from its straw the human element plays an even smaller part. It would not be too much to say that, were we to revert next year to the practices of our grandfathers, we should starve in the year following.
This chapter will be confined to a consideration of machinery operated by horse, steam, or other power, which falls under four main headings,—ploughs, drills, reapers, and threshers.
PLOUGHS
The firm of Messrs. John Fowler and Company, of Leeds, is most intimately connected with the introduction of the steam plough and cultivator. Their first type of outfit included one engine only, the traversing of the plough across the field being effected by means of cables passing round a pulley on a low, four-wheeled truck, moved along the opposite edge of the field by ropes dragging on an anchor. Another method was to have the engine stationary at one corner of the field, and an anchor at each of the three other corners, the two at the ends of the furrow being moved for every journey of the plough. In, or about, the year 1865 this arrangement succumbed to the simple and, as it now seems to us, obvious improvement of introducing a second engine to progress vis-à-vis with the first, and do its share of the pulling. The modern eight-furrow steam plough will turn ten acres a day quite easily, at a much lower cost than that of horse labour. For tearing up land after a crop "cultivators" are sometimes used. They have arrowhead-shaped coulters, which cut very deep and bring large quantities of fresh earth to the surface.