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
lon