Mechanical
hayloaders have greatly reduced the amount of human labor. The
hay-press makes storage and transportation easier and cheaper.
There are binders which cut and bind corn. An addition shocks the
corn and deposits it upon the ground. The shredder and husker
removes the ears, husks them, and shreds shucks, stalks, and
fodder. Power shellers separate grain and cobs more than a
hundred times as rapidly as a pair of human hands could do. One
student of agriculture has estimated that it would require the
whole agricultural population of the United States one hundred
days to shell the average corn crop by hand, but this is an
exaggeration.
The list of labor-saving machinery in agriculture is by no means
exhausted. There are clover hullers, bean and pea threshers,
ensilage cutters, manure spreaders, and dozens of others. On the
dairy farm the cream separator both increases the quantity and
improves the quality of the butter and saves time. Power also
drives the churns. On many farms cows are milked and sheep are
sheared by machines and eggs are hatched without hens.
There are, of course, thousands of farms in the country where
machinery cannot be used to advantage and where the work is still
done entirely or in part in the old ways.
Historians once were fond of marking off the story of the earth
and of men upon the earth into distinct periods fixed by definite
dates.
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