During the colonial period the work of experiment had so far advanced that every crop but one (sorghum) now recognized in the official agricultural statistics of the country was cultivated in the region east of the Alleghenies. In the long course of experiment which had resulted in the naturalization of the crops now so well known in New England, the following had, according to Professor Brewer, been tried and rejected from our agriculture, viz. hemp, indigo, rice, cotton, madder, millet, spelt, lentils, and lucern.

But while so much of the adaptations of our general climate to agriculture, had been thus easily mastered, much in the way of studying the agricultural capabilities of the infinite varieties of soil subject to this climate remained to be done within the region then occupied; while with every successive extension of the frontier of settlement the same work has had to be done for the new fields brought under cultivation. To say with what quick-wittedness and openness of vision, what intellectual audacity yet strong common sense, what variety of resource and facility of expedients, what persistency yet pliancy, the American farmer has met this demand of the situation would sound like extravagant panegyric. No other agricultural population of the globe could have encountered such emergencies without suffering tenfold the degree of failure, loss, and distress which has attended the westward movement of our population during the past one hundred years.

Fourth. In asking what has been done biologically to promote American agriculture, we have reference to the application of the laws of vegetable and animal reproduction, as discovered by study and experiment, to the development of new varieties of plants and of animals, or to the perfection of individuals of existing varieties. In this department of effort the success of the American farmer has been truly wonderful, and our agriculture has profited by it in a degree which it would be difficult to overestimate. A few examples will suffice for our present occasion. Receiving the running horse from England, we have so improved the strain that for the two years past, notwithstanding the unlimited expenditure upon racing studs in England,

notwithstanding that English national pride is so much bound up in racing successes, and notwithstanding the grave disadvantages which attend the exportation of costly animals and their trial under the conditions of a strange climate, the honors of the British turf have been gathered, in a degree almost unknown in the history of British racing, by three American horses; and while Iroquois was last summer winning his unprecedented series of victories, two if not three American three-year-olds, generally believed to be better than Iroquois, were contesting the primacy at home.

The trotting horse we have created, certainly the most useful variety of the equine species, and we have improved that variety in a degree unprecedented, I believe, in natural history. Two generations ago the trotting of a mile in 2 m. 40 sec. was so rare as to give rise to a proverbial phrase indicating something extraordinary; it is now a common occurrence. "But a few years ago," wrote Professor Brewer in 1876, "the speed of a mile in 2.30 was unheard of; now perhaps five or six hundred horses are known to have trotted a mile in that time." The number is to-day perhaps nearer one thousand than five hundred. Steadily onward have American horse raisers pressed the limit of mile speed, till, within the last three seasons, the amazing figures 2.10 have been reached by one trotter and closely approached by another.

Take an even more surprising instance. About 1800 we began to import in considerable numbers the favorite English cattle, the shorthorn. The first American shorthorn herdbook was published in 1846. In 1873 a sale of shorthorn cattle took place in western New York, at which a herd of 109 head were sold for a total sum of $382,000, one animal, a cow, bringing $40,600 another, a calf, five months old, $27,000, both for the English market. To-day Devons and shorthorns are freely exported from Boston and New York to England to improve the native stock.

In 1793 the first merino sheep, three in number, were introduced into this country, though, unfortunately, the gentleman to whom they were consigned, not appreciating their peculiar

excellencies, had them converted into mutton. Since that time American wool has become celebrated both for fineness of fiber and for weight of fleece. The finest fiber, by microscopic test, ever anywhere obtained, was clipped about 1850 from sheep bred in western Pennsylvania. More recently the attention of our woolgrowers has been especially directed to increasing the quantity rather than to improving the quality of the wool.

Illustrations of the success of American agriculture, biologically, might be drawn from the vegetable kingdom, did space permit.

Fifth. To ask what has been done mechanically to promote our agriculture is to challenge a recital of the better half of the history of American invention. Remarkable as have been the mechanical achievements of our people in the department of manufacturing industry, they have been exceeded in the production of agricultural implements and machinery, inasmuch as, in this branch of invention, a problem has been solved that does not present itself for solution, or only in a much easier shape, in those branches which relate to manufactures; the problem, namely, of combining strength and capability of endurance with great lightness of parts.

In no other important class of commercial products, except the American street carriage or field wagon, are these desired qualities so wonderfully joined as in the American agricultural machines, while the special difficulty arising from the necessity of repairs on the farm, far from shops where the services of skilled mechanics could be obtained, has been met by the extension to this branch of manufacture of the principle of interchangeable parts, a principle purely American in its origin. Through the adoption of this principle by the makers of agricultural machines, a farmer in the Willamette valley of Oregon is enabled to write to the manufacturer of his mower or reaper or thresher, naming the part that has been lost or become broken or otherwise useless, and to receive by return mail, third class, for which the government rate will be only two or three shillings, the lacking part, which, with a wrench and a screw-driver, he can fit into its proper place in fifteen minutes.

All the agricultural machines of to-day are not originally of American invention, although most of them are, in every patentable feature; but I am not aware that there is at present in extensive use one which does not owe it to American ingenuity that it can be extensively used. Without the improvements it has received here, the best of foreign inventions in this department of machinery would have remained toys for exhibition at agricultural fairs, or machines only to be employed on large estates under favorable conditions.1

1 In the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1899 Mr. George K. Holmes presents, among others, the following facts concerning the use of agricultural machinery :

CORN CULTIVATION AND HARVESTING

Between 1855 and 1894 the following changes took place in the cultivation of corn. The time of human labor required to produce one bushel of corn on an average declined from 4 hours and 34 minutes to 41 minutes, and the cost of the human labor to produce this bushel declined from 35 cents to 10 cents.

In the earlier years the plow and harrow of that period were used; the check rows were marked with the shovel plow; the seed was dropped by hand from a bucket or pouch carried by the farmer, and covered with a hoe; the cultivating was done with a shovel plow; knives were used for cutting the stalks from the ground by hand; husking pegs were worn on the hand in husking; the stalks, husks, and blades were cut into fodder with an old-time machine turned by hand, and the corn was shelled by hand, either on a frying-pan handle or on a shovel or by rubbing the cob against the unshelled ears.

A radical change had taken place in 1894. The earth was loosened with a gang plow, and a disk harrow very thoroughly pulverized it. A corn planter drawn by a horse planted the corn, and the top soil was pulverized afterwards with a four-section harrow.

When it came to harvesting the corn, a self-binder drawn by horses cut the stalks and bound them, and the shocks of stalks were then hauled to a machine which removed the husks from the ears, and in the same process cut the husks and the stalks and the blades into fodder, the power of the machine being supplied by a steam engine.

Then came the shelling of the corn, which is one of the marvels of the changes that have been wrought by machines. In this case the machine operated by steam shelled 1 bushel of corn per minute, while in the old way the labor of one man was required for 100 minutes to do the same work.

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SAVING IN THE COST OF PRODUCING CROPS

The potential saving in the cost of human labor on account of improved implements, machines, and processes at the rate per bushel or ton, as the case may be, has been computed for seven of the principal crops of 1899; the comparison is

But more, even, than the ingenuity of inventors and manufacturers has been required to give to agricultural machinery the wide introduction and the marvelously successful applications it has had in the cultivation of our staple crops east and west. "Experienced mechanicians," says Professor Hearn, "assert that, notwithstanding the progress of machinery in agriculture, there is probably as much sound, practical, labor-saving invention and machinery unused as there is used; and that it is unused solely in consequence of the ignorance and incompetency of the work people." This remark, which is perfectly true of England, and the force of which would have to be multiplied fourfold in application to the peasantry of France or Austria, utterly fails of significance if applied to the United States. It is because mechanical insight and aptitude, in the degree respecting which the term "mechanical genius" may properly be used, are found throughout the mass of the American people, that these products of invention and skill have been made of service on petty farms all over our land, and in the most remote districts wherever the divine rage of the peddler has carried him. Lack of mechanical insight and aptitude, in the full degree requisite for the economical use and care of delicate and complicated

between the old-time methods of production, in which hand labor was assisted only by the comparatively rude and inefficient implements of the day, and those of the present time, when hand labor has not only the assistance of highly efficient and perfected implements and machines, but has been considerably displaced by them. The saving in the cost of human labor in cents, per unit of product, permits a very forcible statement of its equivalent in money by means of a computation consisting of the multiplication of the saving per unit into the crop of 1899. The result expresses the potential labor saving in the production of seven crops of that year, and is not an aggregate of the saving of human labor in the cost of producing the crops for all of the years between the earlier and the later ones, during which time this economizing and displacement of human labor has taken place. In the case of the crop of corn, the money measure of the saving of human labor required to produce it in 1899 in the most available economic manner, as compared with its production in the old-time manner, was $523,276,642; wheat, $79,194,867; oats, $52,866,200; rye, $1,408,950; barley, $7,323,480; white potatoes, $7,366,820; hay, $10,034,868.

The total potential saving in the cost of human labor for these seven crops of 1899, owing to the possible utilization of the implements, machines, and methods of the present time, in place of the old-time manner of production, reaches the stupendous amount of $681,471,827 for this one year. - ED.