In the early days of the Howe sewing machine it was denounced as a menace to the occupations of the thousands of men and women who worked in the clothing shops, and the struggles of the inventor against this opposition and discouragement form an interesting page of history. But it had come to stay and to grow. Some 7,000 United States patents attest the interest and ingenuity in this field, in the neighborhood of 100,000 persons make a living from the manufacture and sale of the machine, millions find profitable employment in its use, and from 700,000 to 800,000 machines are annually manufactured in the United States. The output of all countries is estimated to be from 1,200,000 to 1,300,000 annually.
The sewing machine has for its objective result only the simple and insignificant function of fastening one piece of fabric to another, but its influence upon civilization in ministering to the wants of the race has been so great as to cause it to be numbered with the epoch-making inventions of the age. It has created new industries. It has given useful employment to capital, has extended the lists of the wage earner, and increased his daily pay. It has clothed the naked, fed the hungry, and warded off the ravages of cold and death; but, best of all its tuneful accompaniment has lightened the heart and smoothed the pathway of life for Hood’s weary working woman, to whose tired fingers and aching eyes it has brought the balm of much-needed rest.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
The Reaper.
[Early English Machines]—[Machine of Patrick Bell]—[The Hussey Reaper]—[McCormick’s Reaper and Its Great Success]—[Rivalry Between the Two American Reapers]—[Self Rakers]—[Automatic Binders]—[Combined Steam Reaper and Threshing Machine]—[Great Wheat Fields of the West]—[Statistics].
In the harvest scenes upon the tombs of ancient Thebes the thirsty reaper is depicted, with curved sickle in hand, alternately bending his back to the grain and refreshing himself at the skin bottle. For more than thirty centuries did man thus continue to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Even to the present time the scythe, with its cradle of wooden fingers, is occasionally met with, and it is to the older generation a familiar suggestion of the sweat, toil, bustle and excitement of the old harvest time. But all this has been changed by the advent of the reaper, and ere long the grain cradle will hang on the walls of the museum as an ethnological specimen only.
The first reaper of which we find historical evidence is that described by Pliny in the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 70). He says: “The mode of getting in the harvest varies considerably. In the vast domains of the province of Gaul a large hollow frame, armed with comb-like teeth, and supported on two wheels, is driven through the standing grain, the beasts being yoked behind it (in contrarium juncto), the result being that the ears are torn off and fall within the frame.”
This crude machine has in late years been many times re-invented, and it finds a special application to-day for the gathering of clover seeds, and is called a “header.”
The first attempt of modern times to devise a reaper was the English machine of Pitt, in 1786, which followed the principle of the old Gallic implement, in that it stripped the heads from the standing grain. The Pitt machine, however, had a revolving cylinder on which were rows of comb teeth, which tore off the heads of grain and discharged them into a receptacle. In 1799 Boyce, of England, invented the vertical shaft, with horizontally rotating cutters. In 1800 Mears devised a machine employing shears. In 1806 Gladstone devised a front-draft, side-cut machine, in which a curved segment-bar with fingers gathered the grain and held it while a horizontally revolving knife cut the same. In 1811 Cumming introduced the reel, and in 1814 Dobbs described a wheelbarrow arrangement of reaper in which he used the divider. In 1822 the important improvement of the reciprocating knife bar was made by Ogle, which became a characteristic feature of all subsequent successful reapers. It was drawn by horses in front. The cutter bar projected at the side. It had a reel to gather the grain to the cutter, and the grain platform was tilted to drop the gavel. In 1826 Rev. Patrick Bell, of Scotland, devised a reaper that had a movable vibrating cutter working like a series of shears, a reel, and a traveling apron, which carried off the grain to one side. This machine was pushed from behind, and, with a swath of five feet, cut an acre in an hour. It was, however, for some reason laid aside till 1851, when it was reorganized and put in service at the World’s Fair in London in competition with the American machines. All the earlier experiments in the development of the reaper were made in England. Grain raising was in its infancy in the United States, and near the end of the Eighteenth Century the Royal Agricultural Society of England had stimulated its own inventors by offering a prize for the production of a successful reaper, and continued thus to offer it for many years. There is no evidence, however, that the preceding machines attained any practical results, and it remained for the fertility of American genius to invent a practical reaper which satisfactorily performed its work, and continued to do so. Quite a number of patents for reapers were granted to American inventors in the early part of the century, among which may be mentioned that to Manning, of Plainfield, N. J., May 3, 1831, which embodied finger bars to hold the grain and a reciprocating cutter bar with spear-shaped blades.