ENGLISH AND AMERICAN FARM MANUFACTORY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 410, 10 March 1880, Page 2

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN FARM MANUFACTORY.

- ■— r —* r—(Scribner's Monthly.) American manufacturers of farm tools shape them in such a-way as to do M woi-k with the least physical labor, fhe English manufacturer* on the other hand, has a pride in making everything substantial, heavy, and solid, without any regard to the weight or strength needed. Why, there is more wood and iron in an English farm cart than would make two American carts, and yet, with their superb roads, they load theirs no heavier than ours. An English mauure fork is. qf the same size and pattern it was half a century ago—a square, rough tine, shpuldered near the point-calling for the .greatest,amount'of force in loading or unloading. The American fork is a round polished tine, tapering gradually from the point to.thd base, and calling forth*

■"'• least power. The weight of an English •" --plough is at least three times that of "ins, ■ mi its length about twice, and ■ y«t it takes neither wider nov deeper, f. limv slices than our best ploughs, -In fact, one pair of horses attached to one of <w host ■ pattern ploughs will do from a third hi r half more work: in the iame number of hours than in English farmer, with his % long-unwieldy pattern,'that; is oiitj-of all. ' proportion,-both' in length and: weight, to' the.work'iV is intended foiv. The same is true of English-harrows, cultivators, aud of all the implements I found in usifor turning- or'cultivating- the soil.. "fine ordinary-wooden rake is-a clumsy, 1 heavy thing, having from n third to a TL half more wood than is actually necessary. iHun many' instances, in going through I have counted eight or ten hands gathering hay. into windrows with thesehand-rakes,an operation very seldom • • if ever seen it; the United States- now. In many of the agricultural districts which I visited, farmers cultivating from forty ' to a hundred acres of land still continue . to cut their grain crop 3 with the reaping hook and cradle. The English cradle has a scythe blade of- ordinary size and length, with two short wooden fingers. The man cutting with this cradle throws the cut grain around against the uncut standing grain. Another man follows the cradler.equipped with a piecu of stick about three feet in length, with an iron hook on the end of it, and gathers .the cut grain- into sheafs, and places them on the stubble before the next swath can be cut. The American, or what is coniv monly known as the ■■'■' Yankee" cradle, . has a wide scythe-blade, similar in size and length to the English,.but instead of two short fingers it has four long ones, and the operator cuts down the grain, ' which falls down on the fingers,- and

which is thrown into a sheaf on a stubble, entirely out of tho way of. the cradler who follows, leaving the cut grain ready to be bound, one man with.us doing the work of two in England. ,-In talking on the subject with an intelligent farmer in Essex County, England, I had a difficulty in convincing liiin that the long fingers of the'" Yankee'.', cradle.could not, or would not get tangled up in the straw, nor could I induce him to get an American cradle, although he. was complaining of the high price of farm labor, as compared with the low price of farm produce.