SOME LINES OF PROGRESS
Progress.—The period covering the last sixty or seventy-five years has seen greater progress in all material lines than any other equal period of the world's history. Indeed, it is doubtful if a similar period of invention and progress will ever recur. It has been one of industrial revolution in all lines of activity.
In Reaping Machines.—Let us for a few moments trace this development and progress in some specific fields. Within the memory of many men now living the hand sickle was in common use in the cutting of grain. In the fifties and sixties the cradle was the usual implement for harvesting wheat, oats, and similar grains. One man did the cradling and another the gathering and the binding into sheaves. Then came rapid development of the reaping machine.
The "Dropper."—The most important step was probably the invention of the sickle-bar, a slender steel bar having V-shaped sections attached, to cut the grass and grain; this was pushed and pulled between what are called guards, by means of a rod called the "Pitman rod," attached to a small revolving wheel run by the gearing of the machine. This was a wonderful invention and its principle has been extensively applied. The first reaping machine using the sickle and guard device was known as the "dropper." A reel, worked by machinery, revolved at a short distance above the sickle, beating the wheat backward upon a small platform of slats. This platform could be raised and lowered by the foot, by means of a treadle. When there was sufficient grain on this slat-platform it was lowered and the wheat was left lying in short rows on the ground, behind the machine. The bundles had to be bound by hand and removed before the machine could make the next round. This machine, though simple, was the forerunner of other important inventions.
The Hand Rake.—The next type of machine was the one in which the platform of slats was replaced by a stationary platform having a smooth board floor. A man sat at the side of the machine, near the rear, and raked the bundles off sidewise with a hand rake. A boy drove the team and the man raked off the grain in sufficient quantities to make bundles. These were thrown by the rake a sufficient distance from the standing grain to allow the machine to proceed round and round the field, even if these bundles of grain, so raked off, were not yet bound into sheaves.
The Self Rake.—The next advance consisted in what is known as the "self rake." This machine had a series of slats or wings which did both the work of the reel in the earlier machine and also that of the man who raked the wheat off the later machine. This saved the labor of one man.
The Harvester.—The next improvement in the evolution of the reaping machine—if indeed an improvement it could be called—was what is known as the "harvester." In this there was a canvas elevator upon which the grain was thrown by the reel, and which brought the grain up to the platform on which two men stood for the purpose of binding it. Each man took his share, binding alternate bundles and throwing them, when bound, down on the ground. Such work was certainly one of the repellent factors in driving men and boys from the country to the city.
The Wire Binder.—Another step in advance was the invention of the wire binder. Everything was now done by machinery: the cutting, the elevating, the binding, and even the carrying of the sheaves into piles or windrows. There was an attachment upon the machine by which the bundles were carried along and deposited in bunches to make the "shocking" easier.
The Twine Binder.—But the wire was found to be an obstruction both in threshing and in the use of straw for fodder; and, as necessity is the mother of invention, the so-called twine "knotter" soon came into existence and with it the full-fledged twine binder with all its varied improvements as we have it to-day.
Threshing Machine.—The development of the perfected threshing machine was very similar. Fifty years ago, the flail was an implement of common use upon the barn floor. Then came the invention called the "cylinder"; this was systematically studded with "teeth" and these, in the rapid revolutions of the cylinder, passed between corresponding teeth systematically set in what is known as "concaves." This tooth arrangement in revolving cylinder and in concave was as epochal in the line of progress in threshing machines as the sickle, with its "sections" passing or being drawn through guards, was in reaping machines.