IMPLEMENTS FOR HARVESTING.

George awoke the first morning at the farm to hear the roosters crowing, the cows mooing, the sheep bleating, and the men cheerily whistling as they hurried about the chores. No thought of turning over for another nap entered his head, but in quick time he was dressed and ready for the morning meal. Breakfast over, George hastened out of doors and was soon eagerly watching Tom, who had been directed to cut the grass around the edges of one of the fields which had been previously mowed. Here for the first time he saw a scythe and learned its use.

For a while George watched Tom's steady swing of the scythe as he slowly cut a swath the length of the field. Then he hastened to another field where the mowing machine was steadily moving across the lot. What an improvement! What a saving of labor! How easily those knives moved through the grass, laying every spire low as soon as it was touched! How much more even the cut, though Tom was skilled with the scythe! The horses drew the machine with ease and the driver had a comfortable seat. However, it was plain that he must keep his head clear and his eyes open, to properly attend to every part of the instrument.

When noon came George was tired and heated, and he gladly remained in the house after dinner. Here he found his favorite encyclopedia and was soon hunting up the history of the invention of the mower. He was surprised to learn how short a time it had been in use. From the beginning of history the crooked sickle and the straighter scythe had been almost the only tools used for cutting grass and grain. Not until about the middle of the present century had practical mowing machines come into use. But now, except on very small or rocky farms, the horse mower is an absolute necessity.

The next day George again visited the fields to see the next step in the process of making hay. First he found Tom, with a fork, turning over the grass which he had mowed the day before. Then he went to the other field, where he saw the same work being done by a machine. The mower had left the grass in heaps so that the sun could reach only the surface. It is necessary that hay should be thoroughly dried as quickly as possible. Across the field and back again went the hay tedder, its forks picking up the grass and tossing it in every direction. One horse only was needed, and the driver was a boy.

The third day George was again in the field. Once more the grass was turned. Then in the late afternoon it was prepared for the barn. Tom could only use the small hand rake, for his work was close to the fence; he was simply cleaning up what the machines had failed to reach. But in the field where George had watched the mower and the tedder, machinery and horse power were again in use. A horse went back and forth, drawing a horse rake behind him. Now and then, at regular intervals, up came the rake, a pile of hay was left, and on went the horse. Then a hay sweep passed along at right angles to the rake and soon the hay was in piles. As the field was very smooth and free from stones, a hay loader was used to place the hay upon the wagon. A boy drove the horses, two men laid the load, and soon the wagon was started for the barn. The old-fashioned, slow, hard work of lifting the hay by the forkful into the barn was no longer necessary. Hay forks, run by horse power, grappled the hay, and lifted the load. Conveyers carried the hay to the right point and dropped it in the mow.

Such was the work done during the first three days that George spent on the farm. He saw the old-fashioned hand work and the modern use of labor-saving machinery. Then he studied his books. In them he found that the hand labor of cutting, drying, and housing the hay used to cost about five dollars a ton, and that now, with the best of modern machines, it need cost not more than one dollar a ton. This machinery is of great value to the farmer and also to those who buy the hay; for the farmer can sell his hay at a lower price, since it costs him less to make it.

This was the last of the haying. For several weeks George watched the hoes and the harrows, as they kept the gardens and fields in good condition. Then came harvest-time. Potatoes were first in George's thoughts, and when he learned that they were to be dug on the morrow he was thoroughly aroused. But he met with a sore disappointment. The potatoes were not dug by machinery. The common hoe or the specially shaped potato hoe were the only tools. Then the back-aching work of picking up potatoes added to his disgust, and he declared that he never would raise many potatoes. He learned that plows sometimes help the hoes, but that potato-digging machines have never come into general use, though good ones have been invented.

At last grain harvest-time came. This was the time to which George had long looked forward. Now he could see the wheat cut and threshed. This he was sure was the best work of the farmer. But when he saw Tom take the short, crooked sickle, cut some grain with that, gather it in his arms, and tie a cord around it, he could scarcely control himself. "Is that the way grain is harvested?" he said. Then when he saw the grain laid on the barn floor and struck rapidly by flails in the hands of two men, he declared, "If that is what the farmer has to do to get a little grain, then I do not want to be a farmer."

"Well," said Mr. Miller, "that is just what all farmers had to do until within fifty years."

But George soon saw a different method. This first hand-work had been merely to harvest a small amount of early grain; a few days later the machines were brought out. Now George was happy. At last he saw a reaping machine and a combined reaper and binder. This interested him the most. He watched the machine as the horses drew it along the edge of the standing grain. He saw the grain cut and laid upon a platform, carried up into the machine, taken by two arms called packers, gathered by them into bundles, bound by cords and thrown to the ground. What more could be asked of any machine?

And yet there is a new type of harvester that has been used in San Joaquin valley, California. It cuts a swarth fifty-two feet in width. It not only cuts the grain but it threshes it as well. It makes the sacks and fills them as it travels over the field. It is said to cut an area of a hundred acres a day, and at the same time thresh the grain and fill fifteen hundred sacks.

Later in the autumn came the thresher. That belonging to Farmer Miller was run by horse power. Two horses stood upon a platform, constantly stepping forward but not moving from their position. Instead the platform moved backward and this turned the machinery. The men placed the grain stalks in the hopper and the threshed grain came out of the machine, flowing into sacks, which when filled were tied by the men and set aside ready for the market.

The reaper and the thresher seemed to George the greatest of inventions. He obtained a book on inventions, and for many days he was buried in it. He read of the Englishman, Henry Ogle, whose reaper, made in 1822, aroused the anger of the working people, who threatened to kill the manufacturers if they continued to make the machines; of Patrick Bell's invention, which, though successful, was forgotten for twenty or thirty years; of Cyrus H. McCormick, the American, whose reaper first obtained a lasting success.

Most of all he was interested in the account of the first trial of reapers in England, at the time of the world's fair in 1851. What a joke it was for the London Times to poke fun at the McCormick machine, as it was exhibited in the Crystal Palace! How the great newspaper did wish that it had kept quiet when a few days later it was compelled to report the complete success of the ridiculed reaper!

The trial took place in Essex, about forty-five miles from London. Two hundred farmers were present, ready to laugh at failure or to accept any successful machine. The wheat was not ripe; the crop was heavy; and the day was rainy. The Hussey reaper was first tried but was soon clogged by the green, wet grain. The judges proposed to discontinue the trial, as the conditions were so unfavorable. But the agent of the McCormick reaper protested. His machine would work under any conditions; he wished that the gentlemen who had taken the pains to come to the trial should have a chance to see the McCormick. Accordingly it was brought forward and, in spite of everything, it went steadily forward, cutting all before it. Success was evident, and the English farmers gave three hearty cheers for the American reaping-machine.

Another trial, at which the reaper was timed, showed that it could cut twenty acres a day with ease. Even the laboring men realized that the machine would come at once into use; one, who was among the interested spectators, took the sickle, which he happened to have with him, and broke it in two across his knee; he said that he would no longer need that.

Four years later a trial took place in France also. Here three American, two English, and two French machines were tested. McCormick's reaper easily came out ahead, with the other American machines close behind. At the same time four threshing machines were tested. Six men with their flails, working as hard as they could, obtained fifty-four quarts of wheat in half an hour; the American thresher gave out six hundred and seventy-three quarts in the same time!

We have spent much time on farming machinery. We must now leave George to a further study of farm life and farm work. So far he has only examined tools and machinery. He has learned from experience, however, that a modern farmer has much more than this to learn, and much work to do that cannot be done by machinery. He realizes that much study is needed to make a successful farmer. He finds that nearly every State in the Union has one or more agricultural colleges, and that the United States does its share in giving aid and information to farmers. He still desires to be a farmer, but he is glad that it is a modern farmer that he must be. He goes back to school, eager to prepare himself to enter the best agricultural college that he can find, in order that he may be ready for intelligent farming as soon as opportunity comes.