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Steam In Agriculture


As yet, the great body of our farmers have been slow in availing

themselves of the natural forces in operation around them. Vainly for

them does the wind blow across their fields and over their hill-tops.

It neither thrashes nor grinds their grain; it has ceased even to

separate it from the chaff. The brook brawls and foams idly adown the

precipice or hillside: the farmer grinds his grain, churns his cream,

and turns h
s grindstone, just as though falling water did not embody

power. He draws his Logs to one mill, and his Wheat, Corn, or Rye to

another, and returns in due season with his boards or his meal; but the

lesson which the mill so plainly teaches remains, by him unread. Where

running or leaping water is not, there brisk breezes and fiercer gales

are apt to be. But the average farmer ignores the mechanical use of

stream and breeze alike, taxing his own muscle to achieve that which the

blind forces of Nature stand ready to do at his command. It may not, and

I think it will not, be always thus.



Steam, as a cheap source of practically limitless power, is hardly a

century old; yet it has already revolutionized the mechanical and

manufacturing industry of Christendom. It weaves the far greater part of

all the Textile Fabrics that clothe and shelter and beautify the human

family. It fashions every bar and every rail of Iron or of Steel; it

impels the machinery of nearly every manufactory of wares or of

implements; and it is very rapidly supplanting wind in the propulsion of

vessels on the high seas, as it has already done on rivers and on most

inland waters.



Water is, however, still employed as a power in certain cases, but

mainly because its adaptation to this end has cost many thousands of

dollars which its disuse would render worthless.



I am quite within bounds in estimating that nine-tenths of all the

material force employed by man in Manufactures, Mechanics, and

Navigation, is supplied by Steam, and that this disproportion will be

increased to ninety-nine hundredths before the close of this century.



For Agriculture, Steam has done very much, in the transportation of

crops and of fertilizers, but very little in the preparation or

cultivation of the soil. Of steam-wagons for roads or fields,

steam-plows for pulverizing and deepening the soil, and

steam-cultivators for keeping weeds down and rendering tillage more

efficient, we have had many heralded in sanguine bulletins throughout

the last forty years, but I am not aware that one of them has fulfilled

the sanguine hopes of its author. Though a dozen Steam-Plows have been

invented in this country, and several imported from Europe, I doubt that

a single square mile of our country's surface has been plowed wholly by

steam down to this hour. If it has, Louisiana--a State which one would

not naturally expect to find in the van of industrial progress--has

enjoyed the benefit and earned the credit of the achievement.



Of what Steam has yet accomplished in direct aid of Agriculture, I have

little to say, though in Great Britain quite a number of steam-plows are

actually at work in the fields, and (I am assured), with fair success.

Until something breaks or gives out, one of these plows does its

appointed work better and cheaper than such work is or can be done by

animal power; but all the steam-plows whereof I have any knowledge seem

too bulky, too complicated, too costly, ever to win their way into

general use. I value them only as hints and incitements toward something

better suited to the purpose.



What our farmers need is not a steam-plow as a specialty, but a

locomotive that can travel with facility, not only on common

wagon-roads, but across even freshly-plowed fields, without

embarrassment, and prove as docile to its manager's touch as an average

span of horses. Such a locomotive should not cost more then $500, nor

weigh more than a tun when laden with fuel and water for a half-hour's

steady work. It should be so contrived that it may be hitched in a

minute to a plow, a harrow, a wagon, or cart, a saw or grist-mill, a

mower or reaper, a thresher or stalk-cutter, a stump or rock-puller, and

made useful in pumping and draining operations, digging a cellar or

laying up a wall, as also in ditching or trenching. We may have to wait

some years yet for a servant so dexterous and docile, yet I feel

confident that our children will enjoy and appreciate his handiwork.



The farmer often needs far more power at one season than at another, and

is compelled to retain and subsist working animals at high cost through

months in which he has no use for them, because he must have them when

those months have transpired. If he could replace those animals by a

machine which, when its season of usefulness was over, could be cleaned,

oiled, and put away under a tight roof until next seeding-time, the

saving alike of cost and trouble would be very considerable.



When our American reapers first challenged attention in Great Britain,

the general skepticism as to their efficiency was counteracted by the

suggestion that, even though reaping by machinery should prove more

expensive than reaping by hand, the ability to cut and save the

grain-crop more rapidly than hitherto would over-balance that

enhancement of cost. In the British Isles, day after day of chilling

wind and rain is often encountered in harvest-time: the standing Wheat

or Oats or Barley becoming draggled, or lodged, or beaten out, while the

owner impatiently awaits the recurrence of sunny days. When these at

length arrive, he is anxious to harvest many acres at once, since his

Grain is wasting and he knows not how soon cloud and tempest may again

be his portion. But all his neighbors are in like predicament with

himself, and all equally intent on hurrying the harvest; so that little

extra help is attainable. If now the aid of a machine may be commanded,

which will cut 15 or 20 acres per day, he cares less how much that work

will cost than how soon it can be effected. Hence, even though cutting

by horse-power had proved more costly than cutting by hand, it would

still have been welcome.



So it is with Plowing, here and almost everywhere. Our farmers have this

year been unable to begin Plowing for Winter Grain so early as they

desired, by reason of the intense heat and drouth, whereby their fields

were baked to the consistency of half-burned brick. Much seed will in

consequence have been sown too late, while much seeding will have been

precluded altogether, by inability to prepare the ground in due season.

If a machine had been at hand whereby 15 or 20 acres per day could have

been plowed and harrowed, thousands would have invoked its aid to enable

them to sow their Grain in tolerable season, even though the cost had

been essentially heavier than that of old-fashioned plowing. I traversed

Illinois on the 13th and 14th of May, 1859, when its entire soil seemed

soaked and sodden with incessant rains, which had not yet ceased

pouring. Inevitably, there had been little or no plowing yet for the

vast Corn-crop of that State; yet barely two weeks would intervene

before the close of the proper season for Corn-planting. Even if these

should be wholly favorable, the plowing could not be effected in season,

and much ground must be planted too late or not planted at all. In every

such case, a machine that would plow six or eight furrows as fast as a

man ought to walk, would add immensely to the year's harvest, and be

hailed as a general blessing.



I recollect that a German observer of Western cultivation--a man of

decided perspicacity and wide observation--recommended that each farmer

who had not the requisite time or team for getting in his Corn-crop in

due season should plow single furrows through his field at intervals of

3 to 3-1/2 feet, plant his Corn on the earth thus turned, and proceed,

so soon as his planting was finished, to plow out the spaces as yet

undisturbed between the springing rows of Corn. I do not know that this

recommendation was ever widely followed; but I judge that, under certain

circumstances, it might be, to decided advantage and profit.



I have not attempted to indicate all the benefits which Steam is to

confer directly on Agriculture, within the next half-century. That

Irrigation must become general, I confidently believe; and I anticipate

a very extensive sinking of wells, at favorable points, in order that

water shall be drawn therefrom by wind or steam to moisten and enrich

the slopes and plains around them. Such a locomotive as I have

foreshadowed might be taken from well to well, pumping from each in an

hour or two sufficient water to irrigate several of the adjacent acres;

thus starting a second crop of Hay on fields whence the first had been

taken, and renewing verdure and growth where we now see vegetation

suspended for weeks, if not months. I feel sure that the mass of our

farmers have not yet realized the importance and beneficence of

Irrigation, nor the facility wherewith its advantages may be secured.



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