ry than fifty
years before.[16]

The tendency of farm machinery to throw men out of employment and send
many to the city is shown by these facts from the thirteenth annual report
of the U. S. Commissioner of Labor. The sowing of small grains is
accomplished nowadays by machine methods in from one-fifth to one-fourth
the time formerly required for hand-sowing. One man with a modern
harvester can now do the work of eight men using the old methods, while
the modern threshing machine has displaced fourteen to twenty-nine farm
laborers. Machinery displaces the labor or increases the crop, according
to circumstances; but usually both. It has greatly increased the output of
farm products, sometimes reduced prices, and vastly increased the
efficiency of the workers. Of nine of the more important crops, the
average increase in labor efficiency in the past two generations has been
500%, while in the case of barley it was over 2,200%, and nearly the same
for wheat.[17]

_The Evolution of Farm Machinery_

The great incentive in America for our astonishing development of farm
machinery has been our cheap lands and our relatively high wages. But the
noble desire to rise above the slavery of drudgery has constantly had its
influence. American ambition has combined with Yankee ingenuity to produce
this wonderful story. The plow, that greatest of all implements, has
passed through constant changes, from the crude simplicity of early days
to the giant steam gang-plow of the present.

The first steel plow was made in 1837 from an old saw blade! The first
mowing machine was patented in 1831. Imperfect reapers appeared two years
later and were made practicable by 1840, one of the triumphs of modern
industry. Meanwhile threshing machines began to come into use and
separaters were combined with them by 1850. The first steam thresher
appeared in 1860.

It was a dramatic moment in history when at the Paris Exhibition of '55 a
hopeless contest was waged between six sturdy workmen with the old hand
flail, and threshing machines from four different countries. In the
half-day test the six men threshed out by hand sixty liters of wheat;
while a single American with his machine threshed 740 liters and easily
beat all contestants.

By the time of the civil war great saving of labor had been effected by
the invention of the corn planter and the two-horse cultivator. By 1865,
about 250,000 reaping machines were in use and by 1880 our country ha