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The Mechanization of Reaping and Mowing in American Agriculture, 1833–1870

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Alan L. Olmstead
Alan L. Olmstead
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Extract

The successful demonstration of reaping machines by Obed Hussey and Cyrus McCormick in 1833 and 1834 inaugurated long series of events that eventually revolutionized the harvesting of small grains and grasses, drastically altering the lives and productivity of grain farmers. Given the ultimate success and widespread impact of the reaping machine, historians have long pondered why almost twenty years elapsed between the date when Obed Hussey sold his first machine in 1833 and the first wave of popular acceptance in the mid-1850's. Why did it take twenty years for a significant number of farmers to begin to exchange their cradles and scythes for reapers and mowers? What important economic and technological factors governed the initial diffusion of this invention? These are important historical questions, the answers to which can significantly influence our broader perceptions of the problem of technological diffusion.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , June 1975 , pp. 327 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1975

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References

1 David, Paul A., “The Mechanization of Reaping in the Ante-Bellum Midwest,” in Rosovsky, Henry (ed.), Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966), pp. 3–39Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as David, “Midwest.”) Recently David has applied a similar, albeit far more sophisticated, model to explain the diffusion of reapers in Britain. David, Paul A., “The Landscape and the Machine: Technical Interrelatedness, Land Tenure and the Mechanization of the Corn Harvest in Victorian Britain,” in McCloskey, Donald N. (ed.), Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain after 1840 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 145–205Google Scholar, and “Discussion 5,” pp. 206–214. Hereafter cited as David, “Britain.”)

2 Hutchinson, William T., Cyrus Hall McCormick: Seed-Time, 1809–1856 (New York & London: The Century Co., 1930)Google Scholar, (hereafter cited as Hutchinson, Seed); Hutchinson, William T., Cyrus Hall McCormick Harvest, 1836–1884 (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1935)Google Scholar, (hereafter cited as Hutchinson, Harvest); Rogin, Leo, The Introduction of Farm Machinery in Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States During the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1931)Google Scholar; Ardrey, R. L., American Farm Implements: A Review of Invention and Development in the Agricultural Implement Industry of the United States (Chicago: by the author, 1894)Google Scholar.

3 Rosenberg, Nathan, Technology and American Economic Growth (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 132, fn. 26Google Scholar. Also see p. 169, fn. 74, and Fogel, Robert William, “The New Economic History: Its Findings and Methods,” The Economic History Review, XIX (December 1966), 649Google Scholar.

4 David, “Midwest,” p. 33.

5 Hutchinson, Seed, pp. 73, 311, 471, and 365.

6 Rogin, Farm Machinery, p. 95 and fn. 145.

7 Danhof, Clarence H., Changes in Agriculture: the Northern United States, 1820–1870 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 235Google Scholar. Danhof cites the Rural New Yorker, XII (1861), p. 382Google Scholar; XIII (1862), p. 390.

8 Illinois State Agricultural Society, Transactions for 1856–57, II (Springfield: Lanphier and Walker, 1857), p. 120Google Scholar. On pages 21 and 22 the committee again assumes a five-year lifespan.

9 “Trial of Mowers and Reapers [at Auburn],” in New York State Agricultural Society, Transactions for 1866, XXVI (Albany: Van Benthuysen & Sons, 1867), p. 342Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as: “Auburn.”)

10 The Journal of the New-York State Agricultural Society, XVI, August 1866, p. 67Google Scholar.

11 For example see Walter A. Wood Mowing and Reaping Machinery Co., Circular For the Year 1870 (New York City: Benjamin D. Brown, 1870), p. 53Google Scholar. Similar estimates are found in earlier circulars.

12 David, “Midwest,” p. 33.

13 See Hutchinson, Seed, pp. 362–63, p. 337, fn. 31, and p. 369; Harvest, pp. 71–75.

14 An 1849 advertisement similar to others found in the early 1850's is reproduced in Hutchinson, Seed, opposite p. 330.

15 For example, in 1860 Manny listed the f.o.b. cash price as $135 or terms of $50 cash (which is assumed to be paid on July 1), $50 on November 1 and $45 on January 1. These terms imply an interest rate of 29 percent. The Northwestern Farmer, V (June 1860), p. 238Google Scholar.

16 This is the figure cited in Hutchinson, Harvest, p. 74. We do not know how it was calculated, and the true rate may have been substantially higher.

17 Robert Ankli has convincingly raised such reservations about the wage rate and the labor saving (or productivity) or the machine. See Robert Ankli, “The Coming of the Reaper,” unpublished manuscript, Department of Economics, University of Guelph. Ankli has independently developed many of the ideas explored in this paper.

18 It is difficult to make precise statements of these revised thresholds since using the higher interest rate requires a reduction in the initial price. Since the prices used by David included an unknown proportion of both cash and credit sales, it is impossible to determine how much of an adjustment is needed. In any case, the threshold calculations are not very sensitive to small changes in machine prices.

19 There are numerous accounts suggesting this latter line of causality. For example, “They [mowers and reapers] have placed the farmer above the contingency of finding extra hands for securing his crops at a critical juncture, and on this account can extend his breadth of sowing with the confidence of being able to secure what he raises.” Thomas, J. J., “Farm Implements and Machinery,” in Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1862 (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1863), p. 421Google Scholar; see also Hutchinson, Harvest, p. 76.

20 For an excellent discussion of the importance of the size distribution of farms in telling the story of reaper adoption in Canada see Richard Pomfret, “The Introduction of the Mechanical Reaper in Ontario, 1850–70,” mimeographed paper delivered at the Cliometrics Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, April 1974.

21 David, “Midwest,” p. 16.

22 Ibid., pp. 16–17, fn. 27.

23 Davis, Lance E., “‘And It Will Never Be Literature’: The New Economic History: A Critique,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd series, VI (Fall 1968), 87–88Google Scholar.

24 David, “Britain,” pp. 214–15.

25 The following discussion is based on data found in McCormick Company ledgers entitled “Reaper Sales,” for the years 1854, 1858, 1859, the McCormick Collection in the Wisconsin State Historical Society Library. A random sample shows that 24 percent in 1854 and 23 percent in 1859 of the reapers were jointly purchased. Cases where one of the individuals was identified as a financial backer securing the note of the other were tabulated as single rather than joint purchases.

26 Ross, Earle D. (ed.), Diary of Benjamin F. Gue in Rural New York and Pioneer Iowa; 1847–1856 (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1962), p. 128Google Scholar.

27 See Loehr, Rodney C. (ed.), Minnesota Farmers' Diaries: William R. Brown 1845–46; Mitchell Y. Jackson, 1852–63 (St. Paul: The Minnesota Historical Society, 1939), pp. 183–84, 194, 203–205Google Scholar.

28 Marsh, Charles W., Recollections 1837–1910 (Chicago: Farm Implement News Company, 1910), p. 80Google Scholar.

29 Drury, Marion R., Reminiscences of Early Days in Iowa (Toledo, Iowa: Toledo Chronicle Press, 1931), p. 21Google Scholar.

30 Loehr, Rodney C., “Some Sources for Northwest History; Minnesota Farmers' Diaries,” Minnesota History, XVIII (September 1937), 290Google Scholar.

31 Loehr, Brown and Jackson, p. 17. Earle Ross makes a similar observation refering to Iowa in the 1850's. See Ross, Earle D., Iowa Agriculture: An Historical Survey (Iowa City: The State Historical Society of Iowa, 1951), p. 44Google Scholar.

32 The following examples represent only a small sampling of the statements found in advertisements and catalogues. An 1849 McCormick advertisement states: “Many farmers who have purchased one have earned its cost in one year in harvesting for their neighbors …,” The Wisconsin Farmer and Northwestern Cultivator, I (June 1, 1849), 144bGoogle Scholar. A similar claim is found in an advertisement reproduced in Hutchinson, Seed, opposite p. 330. An 1853 Ketchum advertisement quotes D. W. Schoonmaker of Seneca, New York: “I go round mowing; there has not been a day since I commenced mowing but I have from five to ten persons after me to mow. I have mowed in four towns …,” Ruggles, Nourse, Mason, & Co.: Catalog for 1853 (Worcester, Mass., 1853), p. 80Google Scholar. In an 1861 Manny circular Whiting, R. W. notes that “I had the pleasure of using one of your Manny Machines last year upon my own and on some fifteen other farms in this town …,” Alzirus Brown, Manny's Patent Combined Mower and Reaper (Worcester, Mass., catalog for 1861), p. 11Google Scholar.

33 The Illinois Central Railroad Company, Farming and Wood Lands … (New York: John W. Amerman, 1856), p. 16Google Scholar. Bidwell and Falconer cite 62 1/2 cents per acre as the cost of hiring a mower in 1858. See Bidwell, Percy W. and Falconer, John I., History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620–1860 (Washington: Carnegie Institute, 1925), p. 296Google Scholar.

34 “Farm Implements: Reports of the Committee on Mowing Machines,” in Flint, Charles L. (ed.), Abstracts of Returns of the Agricultural Societies of Massachusetts, 1855 (Boston: William White, 1856), pp. 125–176Google Scholar, esp. pp. 156–157. Within these pages are also several related county society reports on mowers.

Although this paper only touches on British sources there is at least some evidence of similar sharing behavior there. “A considerable number of these machines [reapers] have been worked on large farms, their price and bulk. rendering them comparatively inapplicable to smaller farms. This objection is, however, obviated … by persons letting them out to hire, the farmer supplying the horses to work the machines, and the owner sending a man to attend to it whilst working. On some estates the landlords have purchased them, to afford their tenantry an opportunity of hiring.” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, XX (1861), 127Google Scholar.

35 If individual fanners in fact faced an upward sloping supply curve for labor then we must abandon the assumption that there were no diseconomies of scale to harvesting by cradle.

36 David, “Midwest,” pp. 8, 9.

37 Ibid., p. 22.

38 David, “Britain,” p. 186.

39 David, “Midwest,” p. 13; also see p. 11.

40 Hutchinson, Seed, p. 325; also see p. 324.

41 The early attempts threw the machines off balance and the seats had to be removed. Rogin, Farm Machinery, pp. 88–89. Also see Steward, John F., The Reaper: History of the Efforts of Those Who Justly May Be Said To Have Made Bread Cheap (New York: Greenberg, Inc., 1931), p. 198Google Scholar.

42 Rogin, Farm Machinery, pp. 87–90; Steward, The Reaper, p. 201.

43 Rogin, Farm Machinery, p. 91. Ardrey presents arguments similar to those offered by Hutckinson and Rogin; see Ardrey, Farm Implements, pp. 47, 153, 229.

44 Ketchum, the first producer to specialize in mowers, sold nine machines in 1849. The estimate of mower sales is based on figures found in Hutchinson and in company circulars and advertisements. These data indicate about 20,000 mowers were sold between 1850 and 1858.

45 Hutchinson, Seed, p. 323.

46 This would have exceeded McCormick's sales by about 1,000 machines. The Northwestern Farmer, II (February 1857), 84. Also see Hutchinson, Seed, p. 326 for 1854 sales.

47 Ardrey, Farm Implements, p. 229.

48 Hutchinson, Harvest, p. 393. David apparently errs in claiming that “McCormick did not manufacture a self-rake model until the introduction of the ‘Advance’ in the post Civil War period,” for Hutchinson notes that McCormick made his first self-rakers in 1861 and by 1864 two-thirds of his entire output were self-rakers. David, “Midwest,” pp. 21–22; also see p. 34; Hutchinson, Harvest, p. 96.

49 As reported in Danhof, Changes in Agriculture, p. 234; also see Fifth Annual Report of the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan for the Year 1866, V (Lansing: John A. Kerr & Co., 1866), p. 261Google Scholar.

50 “Report of the Committee on Trial of Impliments at Geneva, July, 1852,” in New York State Agricultural Society, Transactions for 1852, XII, 104–112. (Hereafter cited as “Geneva.”)

51 For a discussion of reapers requiring an increase in horses see Colman, Gould P., “Innovation and Diffusion in Agriculture,” Agricultural History, XLII (July 1968), 177–78Google Scholar. Danhof asserts that “The need for several teams militated against the machine in the eyes of countless farmers who possessed only one team, or perhaps a lone horse.” See Danhof, Changes in Agriculture, p. 232. Numerous design changes increased reaper versatility. Besides the reduction in draft discussed above, the Kirby machines marketed in the last half of the 1850's introduced independently suspended finger-bars. “This independent action and flexibility of the finger-bar, lessens the liability to breakage when in contact with obstructions.” The finger bar could also be easily set at any desired height. Poore, Ben[jamin] Perdey (ed.), Field Trial of Reapers, Mowers, and Harvest Impliments, By the United States Agricultural Society at Syracuse, N.Y. July 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 20th, 1857 (Boston: Bazin & Chandler, 1858), p. 47Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as: Syracuse.)

52 “Auburn,” p. 349.

53 See the discussion of Walter A. Wood's mowers and reapers in Syracuse, pp. 40–41.

54 Rosenberg, Nathan, “Factors Affecting the Diffusion of Technology,” Explorations in Economic History, X (Fall 1972), 8Google Scholar.

55 David, Paul A., “The Use and Abuse of Prior Information in Econometric History: A Rejoinder to Professor Williamson on the Antebellum Cotton Textile Industry,” The Journal of Economic History, XXXII (September 1972), 725Google Scholar.