American Agriculture [pp. 249-264]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIE W.
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, altho 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 largeestates under favorable conditions.
But more, even, than the ingenuity of inventors and manufacturers has been required to give to agricultural machinery
the wide introduction and the marvellously successful applications it has had in the cultivation of our staple crops east and
west. "Experienced mechanicians," says Prof. Hearn, "assert
that, notwithstanding the progress of machinery in agriculture,
there is probably as much sound practical, labor-saving inven
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