which
were obtained early this year in the Patent Office, and carefully verified
by members of Congress from every portion of the farming regions.

Since 1795 there have been granted 6,700 patents for plows, but since 1870
there have been but three really valuable improvements. Farmers are
divided in opinion as to whether the riding plow reduces the labor cost.
The lister, recently patented, throws the earth into a ridge and enables
the farmer to plant without previously breaking the soil. It is valuable
in the dry regions of the West, but useless where the rainfall is great,
as the soil must there be broken up anyhow. There have been 920 corn
gatherers patented, of which only one is considered a success, and most
farmers reject it on account of the waste. The general verdict is that the
labor of producing corn has been reduced very little, if any. In the labor
of producing potatoes there has been no reduction whatever, nor in the
finer garden products, nor in fruits. It takes the same labor to produce a
fat hog or a fat ox, a sheep, horse, or mule, as in 1870. In wool growing
many patents have been taken out for shearers, and three of them are said
to be savers of labor, provided the wool grower is so situated that he can
attach the shearer to a horse or steam power.

There have been since the opening of the Office 6,620 patents for
harvesters, of which the only great improvement since 1870 is the twine
binder, for which over 900 patents have been taken out. The beheader is
used in California, as it was before 1870, and in the prairie regions the
sheaf-carrier has recently been introduced, holding the sheaves until
enough are collected to make a shock. Counting the labor of the men who
did the binding after the original McCormick reaper at $2 per day, the
total saving by all these improvements since 1870 is estimated at 6 cents
per bushel for wheat, rye, and oats. Much of this saving in labor is
neutralized by cost of machines, interest, and repairs. There have been
nearly 3,000 patents in fences, over 5,000 in the making of boots and
shoes, and in stoves and heaters 8,240, none affecting farm labor except
the first. In cotton growing exactly the same processes are used, from
planting to picking, as in 1850; but out of many hundred attempts to
invent a cotton picker it is now claimed that one is a success, though it
has not yet got into use. The cost of ginning the cotton has been reduced
about two-fifths of a cent per