In 1831, there was no means of making a seam except by the laborious process of the hand needle. In 1846, Eldred Walker patented a machine for parsing the basting thread through the gores of umbrellas, a machine that was very ingenious and very simple, but was utterly unlike the present sewing machine, with its eye-pointed needle, using sometimes two threads (the second being put in by a shuttle or by another needle), and making stitches at twenty-fold the rapidity with which the most expert needlewoman could work. By means of the sewing machine not only are all textile fabrics operated upon, but even the thickest leather is dealt with, and as a tour de force, but as a matter of fact, sheet-iron plates themselves have been pierced, and have been united by a seam no boilermaker ever contemplated, the piercing and the seam being produced by a Blake sewing machine. I believe all in this section will agree that the use of the sewing machine has been unattended by loss to those who earn their living by the needle; in fact, it would not be too much to say that there has been a positive improvement in their wages.
The next matter I have to touch upon is
AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY.
In 1831, we had thrashing machines and double plows, and even multiple plows had been proposed, tried, and abandoned. Reaping machines had been experimented with and abandoned; sowing machines were in use, but not many of them; clod crushers and horse rakes were also in use; but as a fact plowing was done by horse power with a single furrow at a time, mowing and reaping were done by the scythe or the sickle, sheaves were bound by hand, hay was tedded by hand-rakes, while all materials and produce were moved about in carts and in wagons drawn by horses. At the present time we have multiple plows, making five or six furrows at a time, these and cultivators also, driven by steam, commonly from two engines on the head lands, the plow being in between, and worked by a rope from each engine, or if by one engine, a capstan on the other head land, with a return rope working the plow backward and forward; or by what is known as the roundabout system, where the engine is fixed and the rope carried round about the field; or else plows and cultivators are worked by ropes from two capstans placed on the two head lands, and driven by means of a quick-going rope, actuated by an engine, the position of which is not changed. And then we have reaping machines, driven at present by horses; but how long it will be before the energy residing in a battery, or that in a reservoir of compressed air, will supersede horse power to drive the reaping machine, I don't know, but I don't suppose it will be very long. The mowing and reaping machines not only cut the crop and distribute it in swaths, or, in the case of the reaping machine, in bundles, but now, in the instance of these latter machines, are competent to bind it into sheaves. In lieu of hand tedding, haymaking machines are employed, tossing the grass into the air, so as to thoroughly aerate it, taking advantage of every brief interval of fine weather; and seed and manure are distributed by machine with unfailing accuracy. The soil is drained by the aid of properly constructed plows for preparing the trenches; roots are steamed and sliced as food for cattle; and the thrashing machine no longer merely beats out the grain, but it screens it, separates it, and elevates the straw, so as to mechanically build it up into a stack. I do not know a better class of machine than the agricultural portable engine. Every part of it is perfectly proportioned and made; it is usually of the locomotive type, and the economy of fuel in its use is extremely great. I cannot help thinking that the improvement in this respect which has taken place in these engines, and the improvement of agricultural machinery generally, is very largely due to the Royal Agricultural Society, one of the most enterprising bodies in England.
I now come to the very last subject I propose to speak upon, and that is
PRINTING MACHINERY,
and especially as applied to the printing of newspapers. In 1831, we had the steam press sending out a few hundred copies in an hour, and doing that upon detached sheets, and thus many hours were required for an edition of some thousands. The only way of expediting the matter would have been to have recomposed the paper, involving, however, double labor to the compositors, and a double chance of error. At the present day, we have, by the Walter press, the paper printed on a continuous sheet at a rate per hour at least three times as great as that of the presses of 1831, and, by the aid of papier máché moulds, within five minutes from the starting of the first press, a second press can be got to work from the stereotype plates, and a third one in the next five minutes; and thus the wisdom of our senators, which has been delivered as late as three o'clock in the morning, is able to be transmitted by the newspaper train leaving Euston at 5:15 A.M.
This is the last matter with which I shall trouble the Section. I have purposely omitted telegraphy; I have purposely omitted artillery, textile fabrics, and the milling and preparation of grain. These and other matters I have omitted for several reasons. Some I have omitted because I was incompetent to speak upon them, others because of the want of time, and others because they more properly belong to Section A.
I hope, sir, although your address, dealing with the future, was undoubtedly the right address for a president to deliver, and although it is equally right that we should not content ourselves with merely looking back in a "rest and be thankful" spirit at the various progress which this paper records, it may nevertheless be thought well that there should have been brought before the section, in however cursory a manner, some notice of mechanical development during the past fifty years.