1840. 1850. 1860. 1870. 1880.

Machines made 3 3,000 20,000 30,000 60,000 Immediately succeeding this period the automatic cord binder was put into use, and within five years the increase in output of reapers and mowers was very great. In 1885 more than 100,000 self-binding harvesters and 150,000 reapers and mowers were built and sold. In 1890 two manufacturing establishments in Chicago made more than 200,000 machines, half of which were self-binders and the other half reapers and mowers, and these two institutions alone employed in their various branches of manufacturing and selling 10,000 employees. In 1895 the output of the largest of these manufacturing establishments was 60,000 self-binding harvesters, fitted with bundle carriers and trucks, 61,000 mowers, 10,000 corn harvesters, and 5,000 reapers, making 136,000 machines in all. In 1898 the output of this one factory for the year was 74,000 self-binding harvesters, 107,000 mowers, 9,000 corn harvesters, and 10,000 reapers, amounting to 200,000 machines. This output, together with 75,000 horse rakes, also made, averaged a complete machine for every forty seconds in the year, working ten hours a day. The estimated annual production of all factories in this class of agricultural implements is 180,000 self-binding harvesters, 250,000 mowing machines, 18,000 corn harvesters, and 25,000 reapers. [Illustration: FIG. 157.--STEAM HARVESTER AND THRESHER. The wheat is headed, threshed, cleaned and sacked by this machine in one continuous operation.--Cutter, 26 feet wide; Capacity, 75 acres per day.] [Illustration: FIG. 158.--FIFTY HORSE POWER STEAM PLANTING COMBINATION. Traction engine pulling sixteen 10-inch plows, four 6-foot harrows, and a drill.] There were exported in the year 1880 about 800 self-binding harvesters, 2,000 reapers, and 1,000 mowers. In 1890 this was increased to 3,000 self-binding harvesters, 4,000 reapers, and 2,000 mowers. The total value of mowers and reapers exported in 1890 was $2,092,638. The growth subsequent to 1890 is well attested by the exports for 1899, which for mowers and reapers was $9,053,830, or more than four times what it was in 1890. These exported machines harvest the crops of the Argentine Republic, Paraguay, and Uruguay, of South America; carry their labor-saving values to Australia and New Zealand; traverse the wheat fields along the banks of the Red Sea and the Volga, and are used throughout all the continent of Europe. [Illustration: FIG. 159.--A WESTERN HARVEST SCENE (LEFT SECTION OF VIEW).] [Illustration: FIG. 159.--A WESTERN HARVEST SCENE (RIGHT SECTION OF VIEW).] With the self-binding harvester performing the work of twenty men, cutting and binding the grain, and arranging the bundles in windrows, it would seem that perfection in this art had been reached, but the tendency of the age is to do things on a constantly increasing scale, and so the latest developments in harvesters comprise a mammoth machine (Fig. 157) propelled across the grain fields by steam, and which by the same power cuts a swath from 26 to 28 feet wide, threshes it at once as it moves along, blows out the chaff, and puts the grain in bags at the rate of three bags per minute, each bag containing one hundred and fifteen pounds, and requiring two expert bag sewers to take the grain away from the spout, sew the bags, and dump them on the ground. Seventy-five acres a day is its task. A companion piece to this machine is illustrated in Fig. 158, which shows the same power utilized for planting. A powerful steam traction engine of fifty horse power hauls across the field a planting combination of sixteen ten-inch plows, four six-foot harrows and a seeding drill in the rear. Such great reaping machines only find useful application in the enormous wheat fields of California and the Pacific Coast States, where the dry climate permits the grain to ripen and dry sufficiently while standing in the field. Moreover, only the heads of the grain are cut, the straw being left standing. Some conception of the enormous scale upon which grain is raised in the Western States may be gotten from the dimensions of the farms. It is said that Dr. Glenn’s wheat farm comprises 45,000 acres; the Dalrymples’, in North Dakota, 70,000; and Mr. Mitchell, in the San Joaquin Valley, in California, has 90,000 acres. The Dalrymple farms in 1893 had 54,000 acres in wheat, and employed 283 self-binding reapers to harvest the crop. There is a single unbroken wheat field on the banks of the San Joaquin River, near the town of Clovis, in Madera County, California, which comprises 25,000 acres, or nearly forty square miles of wheat--a veritable sea of waving grain. The field is nearly square; each side is a little over six miles long. If its shape were changed to the width of one mile, the field would then be forty miles long. It has been said of the grain fields of the West, that the men and teams eat breakfast at one end of a furrow, take dinner in the middle of the row, and at night camp and sup at the end of the same row. With a field of such proportions it is not difficult to see how this may be true. The cultivation and garnering of crops from such vast areas can only be appreciated by comparisons. If it were one man’s work to plow such a field, even with a double gang plow, cutting a furrow twenty-four inches wide, he would travel 105,600 miles, which would be equivalent to going around the world four times. If he plowed twenty miles a day, it would take 5,280 days. To harrow would require as long, and to plant would take about the same time, or about forty-three years altogether. A full lifetime would be required to plant the crop, and a second generation would be required to reap it. But great results require great agencies, and so great labor-saving machines, operated by armies of men, are brought into requisition, and with these the crop is both planted and reaped. A long procession of self-binding harvesters, following close one behind the other, makes quick work of it, and before the weather changes this great field is mowed, its crop garnered, and bread supplied for the hungry of all lands. The exports of wheat to foreign lands in 1898 were 148,231,261 bushels, worth $145,684,659, and the exports of wheat flour for the same year were 15,349,943 barrels, worth $69,263,718. The total yield of wheat in the United States for 1898 was 675,148,705 bushels. With the fertile earth, and its prolific inventors, the United States has become the richest country in the world. What its future is to be no man may say, but its destiny is not yet fulfilled, and it is pregnant with potential possibilities.