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Cyrus Hall McCormick was born February 15, 1809, on the family farm. Walnut ... He had invented the reaper, and he also invented the means to make it.
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This material was originally prepared in 1931 for the use of editors, teachers and other persons interested in the Centennial of the Invention of the McCormick Reaper.
INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 180 NORTH MICHIGAN AVE. C H I C A G O. I L L I N O I S
The Invention of the Reaper
Just one hundred years ago a Virginia farm boy of twenty-two, after a few weeks of concentrated thought and toil, solved a problem that had baffled the minds of men and blocked the progress of civilization for nearly two thousand years—perhaps longer.
That midsummer day of 1831, when Cyrus Hall McCormick publicly proved the success of his reaper, marked the beginning of the new agriculture that was soon to change farming from the sheerest drudgery with the poorest of results into a business calling for mind as much as muscle and yielding substantial results for reasonable labor.
That day, too, marked the beginning of a new epoch in civilization, in which mankind was to be freed forever from the presence of hunger and the dread of famine; in which millions of men, emancipated from universal enslave- ment to the soil, could give their time and strength for the development of the industries, the arts, the sciences, the research, and the culture of modern life.
In this year of 1931, when the centenary of Cyrus Hall McCormick's invention is being observed around the world, it is of interest and importance to know something about the times, the environment, the racial and family inheritance, and the circumstances of the youth who achieved this triumph.
Cyrus Hall McCormick was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His blood was the same as that which dared to fight and suffer for the Scotch covenant of faith and which, transplanted to Ireland, made Ulster prosperous. When the British armies pursued the exiles to Ireland, a full half-million of them emigrated to America. One of those Scotch-Irish men was Thomas McCormick, who came to America in 1734. His son Robert moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia and fought in the war for independence. Robert's son, who was to become the father of Cyrus, was also named Robert. In 1808 he married Mary Ann Hall, a true daughter of the faith-spurred and battling Scotch-Irish strain.
The first Robert McCormick was a weaver as well as a farmer. Robert, the father of Cyrus, was an educated, prosperous land owner who, besides his farms, operated grist mills, sawmills, a smelter, and a blacksmith shop. He was a reader and a student, gentle but energetic, an active churchman, and was wide in his interests. His mechanical ingenuity, interest, and imagination made him an inventor of rare ability.
Cyrus inherited all these qualities from his ancestors, and to them he added an indomitable will that transcended the stubbornness of his race. Cyrus Hall McCormick was born February 15, 1809, on the family farm. Walnut Grove, in Rockbridge County, Virginia. As a boy, Cyrus went to the Old Field School. When he was fifteen, he found that his boyish physique was insuffi- cient to swing a heavy cradle in the harvest grain; so he made a smaller implement to suit his slight muscles. At eighteen he made himself some needed surveying instruments. Of greater importance was the invention of a hillside plow, which was his first major contribution to modern agriculture. It is also certain that he was in constant attendance on his father's labor in the farm blacksmith shop.
In 1816 Robert McCormick made the first of his several attempts to build a mechanical reaper. Like the devices of others who had interested
The historic little farm shop where young McCormick built the first successful reaper a hundred years ago is still standing today. It is a small, square log building on a high stone foundation. Inside is the forge, a littered workbench, the hammered section of a tree, and the old stone anvil. The walls and ceiling are black with the smoke of a thousand fires. Old walnut trees stand beside the shop and cast their shadows impartially over the past and into the future. Not far away is the homestead, a chaste brick building with the gentle, provincial lines of a sincere architecture. In the distance are the misty heights of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Whatever the present world has since added to the science of agricultural equipment, all modern grain-cutting machines contain the essential elements which Cyrus Hall McCormick put into his reaper. These essential principles were seven:
In 1831, and for several years thereafter, Cyrus had not the slightest idea that he was not the sole and original discoverer of each one of these cardinal elements. Actually he originated them all independently and alone; but in the case of six of them he was duplicating prior discoveries of other inventors. The main wheel only was original with him. Even so, he is honored as the first inventor of the reaper because an invention need actually be no more than a new combination of known features producing a novel result.
Cyrus Hall McCormick would have been the first to admit that the reaper of 1831 was no more than a beginning. Thus he was not even satisfied enough with his effort to patent it until 1834, nor did he begin to seek a market for it until 1840.
His experimentation continued during 1833. Cyrus built another larger reaper, and with it and the 1832 model he cut the Walnut Grove grain as well as the wheat of several neighbors.
The reaper was patented in 1834. Cyrus saw in a magazine the picture of a reaper patented the previous autumn by Obed Hussey. He did not
necessarily feel that his own machine was a finished product, but he felt the necessity of protecting his interests and so secured a patent of his own. In later years Hussey admitted the priority of McCormick's reaper.
In 1840 Cyrus made his first real reaper sales. He sold one reaper to a farmer who rode in from the northwestern part of the state, and one to a man from the James River district. These two machines did not work well; so he spent the harvest period of 1841 in private experimentation. By the next year he had so improved the cutting ability of the knife by changing the angle of the serrations that he was able to sell seven reapers in 1842. The volume of sales rose to twenty-nine in 1843 and to fifty in 1844. The price of the reaper was $100. All the early machines were made in the blacksmith shop on the Walnut Grove Farm. In 1844 he sold reapers in New York, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, as well as in his home country.
As soon as the Virginia harvest of that year was over, the inventor decided to investigate for himself the western states from which this unexpect- ed business was trickling in. He traveled to New York and then on through Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, into Missouri and back to Ohio. His imagination was challenged. He wrote to his family that reapers are luxuries in Virginia, but were necessities in Ohio, Illinois, and on the great plains of the West.
He began immediately to develop the thought of moving his entire business to some place in the West. In preparation for the ultimate move to Chicago, he went to Brockport, New York, on the Erie Canal, and sold a manufacturing license to Seymour & Morgan. He sent his brother, Leander, now a young man of twenty-eight and able to fit himself into the growing business, to Cincinnati after making a similar contract. He, himself, and such county agents as he had appointed sold 123 machines in 1845. The next year his sales mounted still further. In 1847 he moved to Chicago.
Among the several firms which McCormick had licensed to build reapers was Gray & Warner of Chicago, manufacturers of cradles. For a time Gray became his partner and together they built 500 machines for the harvest of 1848. Then Gray * * * sold out to William B. Ogden, the great pioneer of early Chicago, and W. E. Jones. The firm name was McCormick, Ogden & Company. By 1849 they agreed amicably to disagree, and McCormick bought the Ogden and Jones half of the business for $65,000. Fifteen hundred machines had been sold that year (and he had made enough money), enabling McCormick to pay so large a price. Already, at forty years of age, the Virginia farmer boy had become a captain of young industry.
If the 1831 reaper was but a crude affair compared with his later models, the first Chicago shop was no more than a bare foreshadowing of the factories he was later to organize. * » * the factory of 1848 was remarkable in the eyes of those who saw in it the beginning of Chicago's industry. * • * Growth began immediately. By the end of 1849 the main building had been extended to a length of 190 feet. One hundred and twenty men were at work. There were riverside docks for unloading materials from lake schooners and for shipping finished reapers.
In 1851 a fire destroyed a large part of the old main building, and a new four-story wing was erected. In 1856 it had a producing capacity of 40 reapers a day, and actually made 4,000 that year. In 1859, when it had passed its tenth birthday, there was a total floor area of 100,000 square feet and a working force of 300 men.
McCormick's interest and activity in improving his machine never waned. He secured two other patents in addition to his original patent of 1834—one in 1845 and one in 1847—and thus the original implement of the thirties became "Cyrus McCormick's Patent Virginia Reaper," a two-horse machine with a wider cut and a seat on the side whereon the raker sat as he worked. Before 1855 the weight of the machine had increased from 800 to 1200 pounds. The main wheel was enlarged; the reel was further improved; the wood platform was covered with sheet zinc to make it more durable and easier to rake clean; malleable iron guards were substituted for cast iron. Most important of all, the modern form of knife with riveted-on cutting sections was devised in 1851.
Many men had for a long time been trying to build a self-rake reaper, and invariably they tried to sell their ideas to him, but he was never satisfied. McCormick stood his ground and refused to desert his original type of reaper until something better appeared. His own self-rake machine was produced in 1862. This was the regular reaper equipped with a rake arm pivoting near the axis of the reel which swept grain off the platform and to the side of the machine. It eliminated the time and work of one man.
The Civil War furnished the supreme test of the worth of the reaper. The U. S. Commissioner of Agriculture said in 1862 that it would have been impossible to harvest the wheat crop if it had not been for the reapers in use in the West, each of which released five men for service in the army. The Scientific American declared that without "horse rakes, mowers, and reaping machines one-half the farmers' crops would have been left standing on the fields." Secretary of War Stanton said: "The reaper is to the North what slavery is to the South. By taking the place of regiments of young men in western harvest fields, it released them to do battle for the Union at the front and at the same time kept up the supply of bread for the nation and the nation's armies. Thus, without McCormick's invention I feel the North could not win and the Union would have been dismembered."
The next important forward step in grain-cutting machinery was the Marsh harvester, patented in 1858 but not in general use for some years after that. This machine raised the grain by means of continuous canvas aprons from the reaper platform over tlie top of the main wheel, where it fell neatly on a table. Two men rode the machine, standing before this table on a footboard. They bound the grain as fast as it fell over to them and then tossed the bundles to the ground. One by one the reaper manufacturers, including McCormick, began the manufacture of Marsh-type harvesters.
Then, in 1874, Charles B. Withington sought out McCormick and showed him a model of a wire binder. The reaper inventor immediately bought the Withington device, made a few machines experimentally, and in 1877 was ready to produce the wire binder in quantities. Fifty thousand of the new machines were sold during the next few years. Hand labor had now been practically eliminated from cutting and binding. A boy old enough to drive a team could reap and bind the crop.
William Deering entered the reaper business as a silent partner of E. H. Gammon in 1870. In 1879 Deering, then in sole control of the business, decided to move away from Piano and build a new factory in Chicago's northern suburbs. At the same time he bought shop rights under the patents of John F. Appleby and prepared himself to build a twine binder. In the first season, 1880, he made and sold 3,000 of the new machines. The wire binder's brief day
of supremacy was over. Appleby, one of the great names in the history of American invention, hit upon the combination of successful units that had barred the access of all other men to the secret of a successful twine binder.
Thus, fifty years after the test of his reaper at Steele's Tavern, McCormick found * * * his leadership challenged by competition far more serious than the Marsh harvester of a few years before. With lightning rapidity he adapted himself to the new circumstances, arranged for a license to manufacture Appleby binders, and entered the 1881 harvest ready to do battle as before.
Cyrus Hall McCormick's name figured prominently in the rebuilding of Chicago after the Chicago Fire of 1871. He was one of the group of leaders who had an aggressive confidence in the city's future.
A few days before the fire he had acquired a new factory site on the southwest side of the city, far away from the crowded center of Chicago. To insure plenty of room for growth, he bought a wide expanse of prairie where his vacant acres might serve first as testing fields and then for the expand- ing industry he foresaw. If it did nothing else, the Chicago fire hastened the construction of the new McCormick Works. It soon became and ever since has been the greatest farm implement factory in the world.
CYRUS HALL McCORMICK
1809-
1809—Born February 15 at Walnut Grove Farm, Rockbridge County, Virginia.
1824—Constructed a light cradle of his own design to enable him to compete with grown men in the harvest field.
1831—Patented, June 13, a hillside plow which he had invented a short time previous. In the latter part of May began work upon a reaper, and in July gave a successful public trial of his machine on a field near Steele's Tavern, Virginia, in the presence of a considerable number of people. In the fall went to Kentucky near Lexington attempting to introduce his father's hemp rake among the hemp growers of Kentucky.
1832—Made improvements on reaper and cut fifty acres of grain with it on the Walnut Grove Farm. During harvest gave a successful public trial of his reaper on the farms of John Ruff and Colonel William Taylor near Lexington, Virginia.
1833—September 14, 21, and 28 appeared the first published descriptions of McCormick's reaper in the "Union," Lexington, Virginia. November 19 patented a horizontal self-sharpening plow which he had invented a short time previous. During harvest gave successful public trials of his reaper on the farms of Archibald Walker, William Moore, Colonel James McDowell, and John Weir in Rockbridge County, Virginia.
Sold rights to manufacture reapers for the county of Washington, Mary- land, and a county in Michigan. Sold rights to manufacture reapers for Virginia south of the James River and the Blue Ridge Mountains to Colonel James Tutwiler, of Fluvanna County, Virginia.
1844—Manufactured reapers at Walnut Grove and sold fifty for the harvest of that year. Among the fifty reapers sold in that year, eight were ordered from and sent to New York, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, and Tennessee. Some of these were transported over the Blue Ridge Mountains to the James River Canal, shipped down the canal to Norfolk, Virginia, and from thence by boat to New Orleans, at which place they were transported by steamboat up the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati. Several of the eight machines arrived too late for harvest. After harvest in Virginia, made a trip through western New York, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio to ascertain possibilities for sale of reaper in these regions. Made contract with Backus Fitch & Company at Brockport, New York, to manufacture forty reapers for four counties in New York for the harvest of 1845. Cyrus was to receive a patent fee of $20 for each reaper sold. Contract not fulfilled. Made contract with A. C. Brown, of Cincinnati, Ohio, to manufacture reapers for the harvest of 1845. Contract not satisfactorily carried out.
1845 —Took out a patent January 31 for improvements incorporated in his reaper between 1839 and 1845. These included the reversed angle of the serrations on the knife, spear-shaped single fingers, a method for adjusting the height of cutting, and alterations in the reel post and the divider. During the spring of this year sold rights to A. C. Brown, of Cincinnati, Ohio, to supply sixteen of the best wheat counties in Ohio with the reaper for a period of four harvests. i.lade contract with A. Fitch & Company, of Brockport, New York, to manu- facture reapers for 1846. Contracts renewed until 1848. Contracted with Seymour & Morgan for manufacture of reaper at Brock- port, New York, for 1846. Contracts renewed until 1848. Manufactured and sold forty-eight machines at Walnut Grove. About seventy-five others were made and sold in the North and West. John B. McCormick, of Versailles, Kentucky, a cousin of Cyrus, appointed traveling agent for sale of reaper in the West. Traveled through the North and West arranging for manufacture and sale of reaper.
1846 —Robert McCormick, father of Cyrus, died July 4. Made a contract with A. C. Brown at Cincinnati, Ohio, to manufacture reapers. Sold 190 machines.
1847—Took out a patent October 23 for improvements incorporated in his reaper between 1845 and 1847. These included the placing of a raker seat on the machine. Entered a partnership with C. M. Gray, of Chicago, known as McCormick & Gray, for sale of reapers. Factory established in Chicago on the north bank of the Chicago River, near its mouth. Manufacture elsewhere discontinued as soon as contracts expired. Manufactured and sold 500 reapers.
1848—Application made for extension of original 1834 patent. Extension refused. Sold 800 machines.
1849—Seat for the driver placed on reaper. Sold 1,500 machines. Began experiments with mowing attachment for reaper.
1850—Sold 1,603 machines. Sued Seymour & Morgan, of Brockport, New York, for infringements of patents. Finally won suit in 1857. William H. Seward counsel for McCormick,
1851—Cyrus introduced his straight sickle formed of a row of obtuse angular plates with alternate serrations on cutting edges of plates. The plates were fastened to a cutter bar. This sickle operated in conjunction with a single spear-shaped finger. Sold 1,004 machines. Displayed a specially made reaper at the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in London. During harvest defeated Hussey in a public trial on the farm of J. J. Mechi, near London. Awarded Council Medal for reaper at the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations.
1852—Sold 1,011 machines,
1853—Manufactured and sold a combined reaping and mowing machine. This reaper, known as the "Old Blue Machine," sold by thousands between 1854 and 1865.
1854—Sold 1,558 machines. Sued John H. Manny and partners for infringements of patents. Lost suit. Abraham Lincoln, Reverdy Johnson, and Edwin M. Stanton, among counsel in this case.
1855—Sold 2,534 machines. Took first prize with reaper at the Paris Exposition. Introduced a double finger or guard with an opening underneath to allow chaff to escape.
1856—Sold 4,095 machines.
1857—Sold 4,091 machines.
1858—Sold 4,563 machines.
1859—Sold 4,119 machines. Endowed four professorships in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest. This institution, located at Chicago, after 1859 became one of the leading theological seminaries of the Northwest.
I860—Sold 4,076 machines. Established the Expositor, a religious periodical, at Chicago and published it until April, 1861, with a view to persuading the Presby- terian church to use its influence to prevent war between the North and the South. Bought the Chicago Times and published it until April, 1861, with a view
1879—Elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences "As having done more for agriculture than any other living man." Manufactured and sold the McCormick Iron Mower, a front-cut machine. This mower sold largely between 1879 and 1885.
1880—Manufactured and sold the McCormick Imperial Combined Reaper and Mower. This was a self-rake machine with a mowing attachment. It sold prin- cipally between 1880 and 1885. Manufactured and sold the McCormick Dropper, a front-cut machine. This mower sold principally between 1880 and 1885. President of the Virginia Society at Chicago.
1881—Manufactured and sold McCormick Harvester with twine-binding attachment of the John F. Appleby type. This machine, known as the "McCormick Twine Binder," sold very largely for many years.
1882—Sold 48,000 machines. Manufactured and sold the McCormick Daisy Reaper. This machine sold extensively for many years. It was a predecessor of the present Daisy Reaper,
1883—Manufactured and sold McCormick Center Draft Mower. This machine was only made from 1882 to 1885.
1884—Sold 54,841 machines. Began the manufacture and sale of the McCormick Steel Twine Binder m this year.
Died in Chicago at Rush Street residence on May 13. -
OPINION OF THE HON. JOSEPH HOLT, COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS, Given January 28, 1859, in the Matter of the Application of Cyrus H. McCormick for an Extension of His Patent of January 31, 1845, for an Improvement in Reaping Machines (Wash., 1859).
"No disposition has been felt to disparage the claims of the appli- cant as an inventor. He has, it is alleged, devoted twenty years of his life to perfecting his inventions and introducing them into public use. For his patience, zeal, and indomitable energy, in the midst of almost lifelong difficulties, and for the genius with which he has surmounted them, he has deserved, and is receiving, the warm commendation of the world... He has been so fortunate as to link his name indissolubly with a machine which, unless outstripped in the race of progress, may endure as a proud memorial, so long as the ripening grain shall wave over the boundless plains of the West, or the songs of the reaper shall be heard in its harvest fields."
OPINION OF HON. D. P. HOLLOWAY, COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS, on the Application of Cyrus H. McCormick for the Extension of His Ten Reaping Machine Patents (Wash., 1861).
"Cyrus H. McCormick is an inventor, whose fame... has spread throughout the world. His genius has done honor to his own country, and has
been the admiration of foreign nations, and he will live in the grateful recollection of mankind as long as the reaping machine is employed in gather- ing the harvest."
CYRUS HALL McCORMICK AND THE REAPER — By Reuben Gold Thwaites. Madison. 1909, P. 257.
"William H. Seward once claimed that the McCormick reaper had extended the American frontier at the rate of thirty miles each year—a sentiment practically identical with that uttered by Stanton, who in his previously-quoted address in 1861 showed upon a map how 'McCormick's invention in Virginia, thirty years before, had carried permanent civilization westward more than fifty miles a year'."
CYRUS HALL McCORMICK AND THE REAPER ~ By Reuben Gold Thwaites, Madison, 1909, P. 254.
"In 1859, Reverdy Johnson declared that the McCormick reaper 'had already contributed an annual income to the whole country of $55,000, at least'."
EDMUND BURKE, U. S. COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS, Letter to Stephen A, Douglas and James Shields, U. S. Senators, March 4, 1850.
"I do not hesitate to say that it is one of very great merit. In agriculture, it is in my view as important, as a labor-saving device, as the spinning-jenny and power-loom in manufactures. It is one of those great and valuable inventions which commence a new era in the progress of improvement, and whose beneficial influence is felt in all coming time."
(Cincinnati, 1859) PP. 153-154,
"Among the inventions of our countrymen, in aid of agriculture, the reaper of Cyrus H, McCormick stands at the head of the list, as a labor-saving machine, and as having brought honor to the American name, by the ingenuity displayed in its construction."
The Award of the COUNCIL MEDAL to CYRUS HALL McCORMICK at the Exhibition of the Industries of All Nations, London, England, 1851.
William T. Hutchinson, in his book "CYRUS HALL McCORMICK" (The Century Company), says of this important event:
Among this curious assortment of wares from America, Cyrus McCormick's Virginia Reaper had a conspicuous place. "A cross between a flying machine, a wheelbarrow and an Astley chariot," said the London Times of May 1, 1851. "An extravagant Yankee contrivance," ,.. "huge, unwieldy, unsightly and incomprehensible," concluded others.
Oxen provided much of the power for heavy farm work at this time. In the North horses were used for riding and light draft work, oxen for heavy draft work. The value of mules was little appreciated. In the South horses were generally used for racing, riding, and light draft work. Oxen did much of the heavy work. Following the war of 1812, mules were rapidly introduced and by 1831 were rivaling oxen in popular favor. Mules were particularly adapted for use in the South. They possessed great strength and endurance, ate less and coarser food than horses or oxen, and were impervious to heat. Equally important, they performed well under negro management.
In New York and Pennsylvania there seems to have been an increasing use of horses instead of oxen in farm work, especially after the introduction about 1820 of hay rakes, cultivators, and other horse-drawn tools. The New :j Englanders clung to their oxen, using them still in preference to horses for plowing and teaming. A single horse was kept by well-to-do farmers "to go to mill and to church" and for the convenience of the family. Occasionally a horse was hitched ahead of a yoke of oxen to add strength to the team.
Oxen did not appear to be losing in favor until the decade between 1850 and 1860. Even then the number increased during that decade in the country as a whole from 1,701,000 to 2,255,000; although in every northern state east of Indiana, except Connecticut and Maryland, oxen decreased. As late as 1850 the proportion of oxen to horses in New England was about 3 to 2. West of Ohio the proportion of oxen to horses was much less. Although the number of western oxen increased, the increase did not match the increase in the number of horses.
For working in the woods or for breaking up tough, new sod or for plowing fields filled with rocks and stumps, the ox was quite generally preferred to the more nervous and energetic horse. The price and cost of keeping an ox was less than that of a horse. The price of a yoke was less than that of a harness. The ox served the twofold purpose of working and providing beef. Oxen did not travel faster than 1 or 1-1/2 miles an hour, and a yoke of oxen did not plow more than 1-1/2 acres a day. For use with the cultivator, the horse rake, and other light machinery, the horse proved capable of much more work than the ox.
STATUS OF AGRICULTURAL KNOWLEDGE
The agriculture of 1831 was vastly different from that of today. Scientific knowledge was in its infancy. A few notable figures like John Taylor, of Caroline, Edmund Ruffin, and Jesse Buel were giving much attention to scientific farming, but as yet they were prophets in a wilderness. Little was known about fertilizing, rotation of crops, soil analysis, plant insects, plant diseases, and drainage. Storage, transportation, and marketing facili- ties were primitive. Weather reports were nonexistent. Hand labor was relied upon far more than machinery. Much of the livestock was of an inferioi* character, since few farmers at that time understood or appreciated scientific breeding. Agricultural organizations were few and these only patronized by a small minority of the farmers. The chief societies were those of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South Carolina. Several local societies, such as the Albemarle County (Virginia), Agricultural Society, were doing good work, but their influence beyond the locality was
small. Agricultural fairs were infrequent. Only a few agricultural periodi- cals of any note were in existence. The best known were the American Farmer, founded by John S. Skinner, at Baltimore in 1819; the New England Farmer, established by Thomas G. Fessenden, at Boston in 1822; the Southern Agriculturist, first published in Charleston in 1828; and the New York Farmer, started by S. Fleet in New York City in 1828. In 1831 the Genesee Farmer, now the Country Gentleman, made its appearance in Rochester, New York. Even these publications had a limited circulation. The farmer who wished to obtain authoritative general or special treatises upon agriculture found few American books available. It was true that an extensive English literature on the subject could be imported, but this was expensive, and the works were not adapted to American conditions. There were only two or three agricultural schools and few experimental farms in existence and their influence was limited. The national government gave no special aid to agriculture. Nevertheless, despite lack of agricultural knowledge, which we regard as commonplace today, the better farmers of 1831 managed to live in reasonable comfort and some of them made money.
In 1831 there were two general types of agricultural economy plainly discernible. One, the plantation system, prevalent in the South, involved the use of units of land of considerable size owned by individuals or companies and generally operated by slave labor. The other, the farm system, found chiefly in the North, made use of smaller units of land independently owned or leased and operated by free white labor. Exceptions to the plantation system in the South were the German and Scotch-Irish farmers of the Valley of Virginia, and residents of western Kentucky and Tennessee, and northern Alabama and Mississippi, who operated large units of land with both free and slave labor. As is true today, no class or type in 1831 had a monopoly on successful agricultural operations.
FIELD CROPS AND OTHER PRODUCTS
In the South the major field crops were wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton, rice, sugar cane, and hemp. Wheat and corn were raised chiefly in Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. Tobacco was mostly cultivated in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. Cotton was largely grown in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. Rice was produced principally in South Carolina and Louisiana. The sugar cane industry was centered in Louisiana. Kentucky had almost a monopoly on the hemp crop. Natural grazing lands existed in many places in the Piedmont and Highland sections and in North Central Kentucky, but hay was only a minor crop. Truck gardening and horticulture were little developed as yet, though some attention was being given to them near the larger cities. One main crop was the customary practice in most places. The draft animals in the South were mainly oxen and mules. Some progress had been made in breeding racing and riding horses, but the draft horse, of the type known today, had not yet been developed. Beef cattle were raised in considerable numbers in the Piedmont and Highland districts, but the stock was of poor quality. Dairi'ing had made but little progress. Sheep were raised where grazing was available, but the breeds, despite the infusion of Merino strain, were poor. Hogs were numerous but almost entirely of the razorback variety. The meat was used mostly for hams and bacon. Much of the pork, needed for feeding the slaves, had to be imported from the North.
piece of iron shaped a little like a sharp-pointed shovel. Two rough handles were nailed to the side of the beam. With such unwieldy instruments two men or a man and boy, using two or three horses or four or six oxen, could scratch over one or two acres a day.
Newbold's cast-iron plow, having a moldboard share and landside all in one casting, was patented in 1797 but was not adopted. Jethro Wood in 1814 and 1819 obtained patents differing from Newbold in that the plow- share was not cast in one piece but in several. Wood's plow was generally adopted in the North. Stephen McCormick's cast-iron plow patented in 1819 found much favor in the South, particularly in Virginia. The Davis plow was another implement used in the South. Many plow patents were taken out by 1830 so that by 1831 fairly good cast-iron moldboard plows had almost entirely replaced the earlier types of wooden plows. A single plowman and one yoke of oxen was the standard outfit.
HARROWING
The old triangular or "A" harrow was still in use in fields lit- tered with stumps and rocks. In some cases square harrows, either single or double, were used. The first harrows had wooden teeth, but later the wooden teeth were replaced by iron teeth.
CULTIVATING AND ROLLING
In 1831 a crude cultivator, which had been first introduced about 1820, was taking the place of the plow and the hand hoe in the East for plowing corn. These cultivators were made entirely of wood with iron points. In the West and South the shovel plow or one-horse plow were the implements commonly used for cultivating corn.
In addition to the plow and cultivator, the only other tillage tools the farmer had were the spade, the broad and narrow hoe, and the homemade land roller, usually a section of the trunk of a tree to which shafts for a horse were attached.
SEEDING
Although grain drills had been invented, they did not become prac- tical until after 1840. In 1831 grain was still sowed broadcast by hand, the sower either walking or riding. Some sowers used only one hand in broad- casting, covering a strip about 8 feet wide, thus seeding 10 or 11 acres a day. The more expert used the double broadcast; that is, with the seed bag hung directly in front and broadcasting with both hands. This method per- mitted covering a strip about 16 feet in width, or as much as 20 to 22 acres a day. The seed was customarily covered by harrowing in two directions.
CORN PLANTING
Methods of planting in 1831 show but little if any change from colonial methods. Corn was dropped by hand and covered with the hoe or the plow. Drills of various construction for both hand or horse operation were used to some extent in the East, principally for sowing turnips, beets, and other small seeds. No satisfactory corn planter appeared until the fifties.
One method was to plow the ground, furrow it both ways, 4 feet apart, and, where the furrows crossed, 4 or 5 kernels were dropped. Two men could plant 10 acres a day. Another and older way was to open the ground 3 or 4 inches after plowing with a broad hoe, drop in the corn, and cover it. After the corn was up, the ground was hilled around the stalk with a hoe.
Frequently when the corn had attained its growth it was topped; that is, the tops and strongest blades were cut off for fodder. Later the ears were pulled off and carried home. Another method was to cut the crop and stack the corn and later feed it to the stock in the field.
HARVESTING
The method employed and the implements used in harvesting, thresh- ing, and cleaning grain were but little advanced over those of the ancient Israelites. Wheat and sometimes other small grains were still reaped with a sickle on many farms. In early colonial days the sickle was often referred to as the reaping hook, which the colonists brought with them. With the sickle or reaping hook a man could reap from a half acre to an acre of wheat in a day. One writer, speaking of harvesting hemp in Kentucky as late as 1844, said that with a hemp hook a good hand could cut an average of a half acre a day.
In 1831 the cradle, which had been introduced before 1800 in the middle colonies, was the most effective harvesting implement. The cradle consisted of a broad scythe with a light frame and several wooden fingers attached, corresponding in shape and nearly of the same length. With this the grain could be cut and at the same time gathered, and by a dexterous turn to the left the reaper could throw it in a swath, ready to be raked and bound into sheaves.
In cradling grain, two acres was considered a day's work. In referring to the cradle, an early writer said that a man could cradle four times as much oats or barley as he could cut wheat with the sickle in a day. That cradling was considered an art is evident from the fact that cradlers received better pay than ordinary farm hands. In some communities cradling was almost a trade by itself, and a good cradler could demand and would receive two or three times as much pay as a common laborer. Sometimes grain was cut with a scythe but usually with the sickle or the cradle. Even as late as 1840 the sickle had not been entirely abandoned. Sometimes oats and barley were cut with the scythe, and three acres a day was considered a good day's work.
It is said that a man could hand-bind behind a cradler and keep up with him. That this is probably true is evident from a comparison of the reaper and cradle at the Geneva trial held by the New York State Agri- cultural Society in 1852. It was asserted by the committee in charge that the cradling and binding of a field of 15 acres of wheat in one day would require 14 or more men—about 7 cradlers, each cutting 2 acres, and 7 or 8 men at the most to rake and bind and shock the crop.
Hay was usually cut with a scythe, and estimates vary as to the amount of ground covered. Some writers insist that an acre a day in heavy green grass was a fair day's work. Others state that a man could mow as
