on thousands
of farms a tractor pulling six, eight, ten, or more ploughs, doing the
work better than it could be done by an individual ploughman. On the
"Bonanza" farms of the West a fifty horsepower engine draws sixteen
ploughs, followed by harrows and a grain drill, and performs the three
operations of ploughing, harrowing, and planting at the same time and
covers fifty acres or more in a day.

The basic ideas in drills for small grains were successfully developed
in Great Britain, and many British drills were sold in the United States
before one was manufactured here. American manufacture of these drills
began about 1840. Planters for corn came somewhat later. Machines to
plant wheat successfully were unsuited to corn, which must be planted
less profusely than wheat.

The American pioneers had only a sickle or a scythe with which to cut
their grain. The addition to the scythe of wooden fingers, against which
the grain might lie until the end of the swing, was a natural step, and
seems to have been taken quite independently in several places, perhaps
as early as 1803. Grain cradles are still used in hilly regions and in
those parts of the country where little grain is grown.

The first attempts to build a machine to cut grain were made in England
and Scotland, several of them in the eighteenth century; and in 1822
Henry Ogle, a schoolmaster in Rennington, made a mechanical reaper,
but the opposition of the laborers of the vicinity, who feared loss
of employment, prevented further development. In 1826, Patrick Bell, a
young Scotch student, afterward a Presbyterian minister, who had
been moved by the fatigue of the harvesters upon his father's farm in
Argyllshire, made an attempt to lighten their labor. His reaper was
pushed by horses; a reel brought the grain against blades which opened
and closed like scissors, and a traveling canvas apron deposited the
grain at one side. The inventor received a prize from the Highland and
Agricultural Society of Edinburgh, and pictures and full descriptions of
his invention were published. Several models of this reaper were built
in Great Britain, and it is said that four came to the United States;
however this may be, Bell's machine was never generally adopted.

Soon afterward three men patented reapers in the United States: William
Manning, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1831; Obed Hussey, Cincinnati, Ohio,
1833; and Cyrus Hall McCormick, Staunton, Virginia, 1834. Just how much
they