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If primitive man were slow to learn the use of iron it was not because this metal was scarce, for iron is everywhere. "Wherever, as we go up and down, we see a red-colored surface, or a reddish tint upon the solid substances of the earth, we see iron--the bank of red clay, the red brick, the red paint upon the house wall, the complexion of rosy youth, or my lady's ribbon. Even the rosy apple derives its tint from iron which it contains." But although iron is so abundant it is seldom found in its pure or natural state. It is nearly always mixed with other substances, the mixture being known as iron ore. Primitive man could find copper and tin in their pure state but the only pure iron he could find was the little which fell from heaven in the form of meteors, and even this was not perfectly pure for meteoric iron is also mixed slightly with other metals.

With the invention of the forge the stone age gradually passed away and the iron age was ushered in. Tools and weapons could now be made of iron. And great was the difference between iron tools and stone tools. To cut down a tree with a flint hatchet required the labor of a man for a month, while to clear a forest with such an implement was an impossible task. But the forge gave to man iron for the sharp cutting tools, for the ax and knife and chisel and saw. With these he became the master of wood and he could now easily cut down trees and build houses and make furniture and wagons and boats.

As time went on and man advanced in civilization, iron was found to be the most useful of metals. Iron can be shaped into many forms. It can be drawn into wire of any desired length or fineness, it may be bent in any direction, it may be sharpened, or hardened, or softened, at pleasure. "Iron accommodates itself to all our wants and desires and even to our caprices. It is equally serviceable to the arts, the sciences, to agriculture and war; the same ore furnishes the sword, the plowshare, the scythe, the pruning-hook, the needle, the spring of a watch or of a carriage, the chisel, the chain, the anchor, the compass and the bomb. It is a medicine of much virtue and the only metal friendly to the human frame."

A metal that was so useful was needed in large quantities, yet the primitive forge could turn out only small quantities of iron. A day's labor at the bellows would produce a lump weighing only fifteen or twenty pounds. As a result of this slowness in manufacture there was always in primitive and ancient times a scarcity of iron. Indeed in some countries iron was a precious metal, almost as precious as silver or gold. In many countries, it is true, there were thousands of forges at work, but in no country was the supply of iron equal to the demand. The old forge could not supply the demand, yet centuries passed before any great improvement was made in the progress of iron making.

Now that steel could be made in great quantities and at a low cost it was put to uses never dreamed of in former times. Soon the railroad rail was made of steel , bridges were made of steel, ships of war were plated with steel. Then ocean grayhounds and battleships were made of steel, still later steel freight cars and steel passenger coaches were introduced, while in our own time we see vast quantities of steel used in the building of houses. So while the invention of Bessemer marked the last step in the history of the forge it also marked the ending of the Age of Iron and the beginning of the wonderful age in which we live--the Age of Steel.

FOOTNOTES:

J. R. Smith, "The Story of Iron and Steel," p. 3.

From "Five Black Arts," p. 311.

The old forge continued to be used by the side of the blast furnace for centuries, and of course where it was used it was still called a forge. Thus we are told that in Maryland in 1761, there were eight furnaces and ten forges. It is said that as late as twenty-five years ago in certain parts of the Appalachian regions the American mountaineer still worked the little primitive forge to make his iron.

THE STEAM-ENGINE

That steam has the power to move things must have been learned almost as soon as fire was used to boil water. Heat water until it boils and the steam that is formed is bound to move something unless it is allowed to escape freely. It will burst the vessel if an outlet is not provided. That is why a spout has been placed on the tea-kettle. Where there is cooking, steam is abundant and the first experiments in steam were doubtless made in the kitchen . It has been said that the idea of the steam-engine first occurred to Adam as he watched his wife's kettle boil.

Hero's engine was used only as a toy and it seems to represent all the ancients knew about the power of steam and all they did with it. It is not strange that they did not know more for there is no general rule by which discoveries are made. Sometimes even enlightened peoples have for centuries remained blind to the simplest principles of nature. The Greeks and Romans with all their culture and wisdom were ignorant of some of the plainest facts of science. It is a little strange, however, that after Hero's discovery was made known, men did not profit by it. It would seem that eager and persistent attempts would have been made at once to have steam do useful work, as well as furnish amusement. But such was not the case. Hero's countrymen paid but little attention to his invention and the steam-engine passed almost completely out of men's minds and did not again attract attention for nearly seventeen hundred years.

About the end of the fifteenth century Europe began to awaken from a long slumber and by the end of the sixteenth century its eyes were wide open. Everywhere men were now trying to learn all they could. The study of steam was taken up in earnest about the middle of the sixteenth century and by the middle of the next century quite a little had been learned of its nature and power. In 1629 an Italian, Branca by name, described in a book a steam-engine which would furnish power for pounding drugs in a mortar. There was no more need for such a machine then than there is now and of course the inventor aroused no interest in his engine. You can easily understand how Branca's engine works. The steam causes the wheels and the cylinder to revolve. As the cylinder revolves, a cleat on it catches a cleat on the pestle and lifts the pestle a short distance and then lets it fall. Here the pestle instead of being raised by a human hand is raised by the force of steam. This engine would be more interesting if an engine had actually been made, but there is no reason to believe that Branca ever made the engine he described. We owe much to him, nevertheless, for suggesting how steam might be put to doing useful work.

It was not very long before an Englishman put into practice what the Italian had only suggested. Edward Somerset, the Second Marquis of Worcester, in 1663 built a steam-engine that raised to the height of forty feet four large buckets of water in four minutes of time. This was the first useful work ever done by steam. Figure 4 shows the construction of Worcester's engine.

In this engine there was one improvement over former engines which was of the greatest importance: there was one vessel in which the steam was generated and another in which the steam did its work. The steam-engine now consisted of two great divisions, the boiler and the engine proper.

Worcester spent a large part of his fortune in trying to improve the steam-engine, yet he received neither profit nor honor as a reward. He died poor and his name was soon forgotten. His service to the world was nevertheless very great. In his time the mines of England had been sunk very deep into the earth; and the deeper they were sunk the greater was the difficulty of lifting the water out of them and keeping them dry. The water was lifted up from the mines by means of buckets drawn by horses or oxen . Sometimes it took several hundred horses to keep the water out of a single mine. It was Worcester's object to construct an engine that would do the work of the horses. The engine he built could not do this, yet it furnished the idea--and the idea is often the most important thing. It was not long before engines built upon Worcester's plan were doing useful work at the mines. At the opening of the eighteenth century the steam-engine had been put to work and was serving man in England and throughout the continent of Europe.

In Newcomen's engine the valves at first were opened and shut by an attendant, usually a boy. In 1713 a boy named Humphrey Potter, in order to get some time for play, by means of strings and latches, caused the beam in its motion to open and shut the valves without human aid. We must not despise Humphrey because his purpose was to gain time for play. The purpose of almost all inventions is to save human labor so that men may have more time for amusement and rest. Humphrey Potter ought to be remembered not as a lazy boy but as a great inventor. His strings and latches improved the engine wonderfully . Before his invention the piston made only six or eight strokes a minute; after the valves were made to open and shut by the motion of the beam, it made fifteen or sixteen strokes a minute and the engine did more than twice as much work.

Newcomen's engine as improved by Potter and others grew rapidly into favor. It was used most commonly to pump water out of the mines but it was put to other uses. In and about London it was used to supply water to large houses and in 1752 a flour mill near Bristol was driven by a steam-engine. In Holland Newcomen's engines were used to assist the wind-mills in draining lakes.

It cannot be said that Watt invented the steam-engine--no one can claim that honor--yet he did so much to make it better that he well deserves the epitaph which is inscribed on his monument in Westminster Abbey. This inscription is as follows:

THE PLOW

You have now learned the history of those inventions which enabled man to gain a mastery over fire and to use it for his comfort and convenience. We shall next learn the history of an invention which gave man the mastery of the soil and enabled him to take from the earth priceless treasures of fruit and grain. This invention was the plow.

In his earliest state man had no use for the plow because he did not look to the soil as a place from which he was to get his food. The first men were hunters and they relied upon the chase for their food. They roamed from place to place in pursuit of their prey--the birds and beasts of the forest and the fishes of the stream. They did not remain long enough in one spot to sow seed and to reap the harvest. Still in their wanderings they found wheat and barley growing wild and they ate of the seeds of these plants and learned that the little grains were good for food. They learned, too, that if the seeds were planted in a soil that was well stirred the plants would grow better than they would if the seeds were planted in hard ground. So by the time men had grown tired of wandering about and were ready to settle down and live in one spot they had learned two important facts: they knew they could add to their food supply by tilling the soil, and they knew that they could grow better crops if they would stir the soil before planting the seed.

An improvement upon the simple forked stick is seen in Figure 3, which is copied from an ancient monument in Syria . The old Syrian plow consists almost wholly of the natural crooks of a branch of a tree, the only artificial piece being the brace e which connects the share and the beam and holds them firm. In this crooked stick we have three of the main parts of the modern plow, the beam , the share and the handle . The plow in this form requires the services of two persons--one to draw the plow and one to guide it and keep it in the ground. It is said that it was with a plow of this kind that the servants of Job were plowing when they were driven from their fields by the Sabeans.

The first plows were drawn by the strength of the human body . Upon a very old monument of ancient Egypt, the country which seems to have been the first home of the plow, we have a plowing scene which shows a number of men dragging a plow by means of a rope. But primitive man was not at all fond of labor and in the course of time he tamed wild bulls and horses and made them draw the plows. So upon another Egyptian monument of a later date we have a picture of a plowing scene in which animals are drawing the plow . In this Egyptian plow we see improvements upon the crooked stick of the Syrians. The Egyptian plow, you observe, has a broader share. It will, therefore, make a wider furrow and will plow more ground. Moreover, it has two handles instead of one. Taking it altogether, the Egyptian plow was a fairly good implement.

But improvements in the plow during the dark ages came very slowly. At the time of the discovery of America the plow was still the clumsy wooden thing it was five hundred years before. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, when improvements were being made in so many things, it was natural that men should begin to think of trying to improve the plow. In an old book published in 1652 we read of a double plow--one which would plow two furrows at one time. A picture of the double plow is given in the book but there is no proof that such a plow was ever made or ever used. The world did not as yet need a double plow, although the time was to come when it would need one.

The Dutch plow was taken as a model for English plows and, in fact, for the plows of all nations. The mold-board grew rapidly into favor and by the end of the eighteenth century it was found on plows in all civilized nations. But the plow was still made mostly of wood and it was still an awkward and a poorly constructed affair. The method of making plows about the year 1800 has been described as follows: "A mold-board was hewed from a tree with the grain of the timber running as nearly along its shape as it could well be obtained. On to this mold-board, to prevent its wearing out too rapidly, were nailed the blade of an old hoe, thin strips of iron, or worn out horseshoes . The land side was of wood, its base and sides shod with thin plates of iron. The share was of iron with a hardened steel point. The coulter was tolerably well made of iron. The beam was usually a straight stick. The handles, like the mold-board, were split from the crooked trunk of a tree or as often cut from its branches. The beam was set at any pitch that fancy might dictate, with the handles fastened on almost at right angles with it, thus leaving the plowman little control over his implement, which did its work in a very slow and most imperfect manner."

About the time Jefferson was working upon the mold-board, Charles Newbold, a farmer of Burlington, New Jersey, was also doing great things for the improvement of the plow. We have seen that the plow of this time was a patch work of wood and iron. Newbold thought the plow ought to be made wholly of iron and about 1796 he made one of cast iron, the point, share, and mold-board all being cast in one piece. But the New Jersey farmers did not take kindly to the iron plow. They said that iron poisoned the crops and caused weeds to grow faster than ever. So Newbold could not sell his plows and he was compelled to give up the business in despair.

But soon the iron plow was to have its day. In 1819 Jethro Wood of Scipio, New York, took out a patent for a plow which was made of cast iron and which combined the best features of the plow as planned by Jefferson and by Newbold. In Wood's plow the several parts--the point, share and mold-board--were so fastened together that when one piece wore out it could easily be replaced by a new piece. In Newbold's plow when one part wore out the whole plow was rendered useless. Wood's plow became very popular and by 1825 it was rapidly driving out the half-wooden, half-iron plows of the olden time. Great improvements of course have been made upon the plow since 1819, but in the main features the best plows of to-day closely resemble the implement invented by Jethro Wood. Since our greatness as a nation is due largely to the plow all honor should be given to the memory of this inventor. "No citizen of the United States," said William H. Seward, "has conferred greater benefits on his country than Jethro Wood."

The great gang plow drawn by steam marked the last step in the development of the plow. The forked stick drawn by human hands and making its feeble scratch on the ground had grown until it had become a mighty machine drawn across the field by an unseen force and leaving in its wake a broad belt of deeply-plowed and well-broken soil.

FOOTNOTE:

Daniel Webster was another great statesman who turned his attention to the making of plows. He planned a plow and had it made in his workshop on his farm at Marshfield. When the plow was ready for use, Webster himself was the first man to take hold of the handles and try it. The plow worked well and the great man is said to have been as much delighted with his achievement as he was with any of his triumphs in public life at Washington.

THE REAPER

The first grain was doubtless cut with the rude straight knives used by primitive man. In time it was found that if the knife were bent it would cut the grain better. So the first form of the reaper was a curved or bent knife known as the sickle or reaping hook . The knife was fastened at one end to a stick which served as a handle. When using the sickle the harvester held the grain in one hand and cut it with the other. .

The first improvement upon the primitive sickle was made by the Romans. About the year 100 A. D. the Roman farmers, who were at the time the best farmers in the world, began to use a kind of scythe for cutting grass. The Roman scythe was simply an improved form of the sickle; it was a broad, heavy blade fastened on a long straight handle, resembling the pruning hook of to-day . The scythe was swung with both hands and it was used chiefly for cutting grass.

For more than a thousand years after the appearance of the Roman scythe agriculture in Europe was everywhere neglected and little or no improvement was made in farming implements. About the end of the Middle Ages, however, improvements in the form of the scythe began to appear. In Flanders farmers began to use an implement known as the Hainault scythe . This scythe had a fine broad blade and a curved handle. When reaping with this scythe the reaper with his left hand brought the stalks of grain together with a hook and with his right hand he swung the scythe and cut the grain. This scythe was an improvement upon the sickle but it was still a very awkward implement.

But even the excellent American cradle-scythe could not meet the needs of the American farmer. The cast iron plow which was brought into use in the early part of the nineteenth century made it possible to raise fields of wheat vastly larger than had ever been raised before. But it was of no use to raise great fields of grain unless the crop could be properly harvested. Wheat must be cut just when it is ripe and the harvest season lasts only a few days. If the broad American fields were to be plowed and planted there would have to be a reaping machine that would cut the grain faster than human hands could cut it with the scythe .

So about the year 1800 inventors in Europe and in America took up the task of inventing a new kind of reaper. The first attempts were made in England where population was increasing very fast and where large quantities of grain were needed to feed the people. The first hints for a reaper were from a machine which was used in Gaul nearly 2,000 years ago. Pliny, who described for us a wonderful plow used in his time , also describes this ancient reaper of the Gauls. It consisted of a large hollow frame mounted on two wheels . At the front of the frame there was a set of teeth which caught the heads of grain and tore them off. The heads were raked into the box by an attendant. The machine was pushed along by an ox. This kind of machine was doubtless used in Europe for a while but it was not a success. It passed out of use and for many centuries it was entirely forgotten. Still, the first English reaping machines were made after the plan of this interesting old reaper of ancient Gaul.

The most remarkable of the early reapers was one invented by Henry Ogle, a schoolmaster of Remington, England. In 1822 Ogle constructed a model for a reaper which was quite different from any that had appeared before and which bore a close resemblance to the improved reapers of a later date. In Ogle's reaper the horse walked ahead beside the standing grain, just as it does now, and the cutting apparatus was at the right, just as it is now. The cutter consisted of a frame at the front of which was a bar of iron armed with a row of teeth projecting forward. Directly under the teeth lay a long straight edged knife which was moved to and fro by means of a crank and which cut the grain as it came between the teeth. A reel pushed the grain toward the knife and there was a platform upon which the grain when cut might fall. Ogle's machine did not meet with much success yet it holds a very high place in the history of reaping machines, for it had nearly all the parts of a modern reaper.

English inventors did much to prepare the way for a good reaping machine but the first really successful reaper, the first reaper that actually reaped, was made in the United States. In the summer of 1831, Cyrus McCormick, a young blacksmith living in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, made a trial of a reaper which he and his father had invented--how much they had learned from Ogle we do not know--and the trial was successful . With two horses he cut six acres of oats in an afternoon. "Such a thing," says Mr. Casson in his life of McCormick, "at the time was incredible. It was equal to the work of six laborers with scythes or twenty-four peasants with sickles. It was as marvelous as though a man had walked down the street carrying a dray horse on his back."

Although McCormick had his reaper in successful operation by 1831 he did not take out a patent for the machine until 1834. One year before this Obed Hussey, a sailor living in Baltimore, took out a patent for a reaper that was successful and that was in many respects as famous a machine as McCormick's. So while McCormick was the first in the field with his invention, Hussey was the first to secure a patent. The machines of McCormick and Hussey were very much alike: both had the platform, the iron bar armed with guards and the long knife moving to and fro. The most remarkable feature of Hussey's machine was the knife which consisted of thin triangular plates of steel sharpened on two edges and riveted side by side upon a flat bar . The saw-like teeth of Hussey's knife caught the wheat between the guards and cut it better than any knife that had as yet appeared. Both the McCormick reapers and the Hussey reapers were practical and successful and each of these inventors performed a noble part in giving the world the reaper it needed.

The McCormick and the Hussey reapers gave new life to farming in the United States. Especially was the reaper a blessing to the Western farmers. In 1844 McCormick took a trip through the West, passing through Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa. As he passed through Illinois he saw how badly the reaper was needed. He saw great fields of ripe wheat thrown open to be devoured by hogs and cattle because there were not enough laborers to harvest the crops. The farmers had worked day and night and their wives and children had worked but they could not harvest the grain; they had raised more than the scythe and sickle could cut. McCormick saw that the West was the natural home for the reaper and in 1847 he moved to Chicago, built a factory, and began to make reapers. In less than a year he had orders for 500 machines and before ten years had passed he had sold nearly 25,000 reapers. It was these reapers that caused the frontier line to move westward at the rate of thirty miles a year.

FOOTNOTE:

To winnow grain is to separate it from the chaff by a fanning process.

THE MILL

The first mill was a hole made in a stationary rock . The grain was placed in the hole and crushed with a stone held in the hand. On Centre street in Trenton, New Jersey, not many years ago one of these primitive mills could still be seen and there are evidences that such mills once existed in all parts of the world. In those places where the earth did not supply the stationary rock, stones were brought from afar and hollowed out into cup-like form and in these the grinding was done.

The mill which consisted of a hole in a rock and a stone in the hands was followed by the "knocking-stane" and mallet . The "knocking-stane" was a mortar, or cup-shaped vessel made of stone; the mallet was usually made of wood. The grain was placed in the mortar and struck repeatedly with the mallet, the beating being kept up until a coarse flour was produced. This is an exceedingly rude method of crushing grain, yet this is the way the people in some parts of Scotland grind their barley at the present time.

At a very early date the "knocking-stane" was laid aside for the mortar and pestle almost everywhere. In this mill the grain instead of being struck with a hammer was pounded with a pestle. The bottom of the pestle was frequently covered with iron in which grooves were cut. As the man pounded he found that when he gave the pestle a twirling or rotary motion as it fell it ground the grain much faster. We may be sure that after this was learned the twirling motion was always given.

The mortar and pestle were followed by the slab-mill . Here the grain was ground by being rubbed between two stones. Dr. Livingstone, the great African explorer, gives the following description of a slab-mill which he saw in operation in South Africa. "The operator kneeling grasps the upper millstone with both hands and works it backwards and forwards in the hollow of the lower millstone, in the same way that a baker works his dough. The weight of the person is brought to bear on the movable stone and while it is pressed and pushed forward and backward one hand supplies every now and then a little grain to be bruised and ground."

As we have seen, the primitive miller gradually learned that the pestle did better work when it fell with a twirling motion. This little bit of experience led to important results in the development of the mill. If the grinding were done better with a twirling motion, why not have as much of the twirling motion as possible? Why not make the upper stone go round and round? This was what was done. The upper stone was caused to turn round and round. The wheel-mill, the mill of the upper and nether millstone , was invented. When and where it was invented we cannot tell for it was in use among all civilized peoples before history began to be written. There were many kinds of wheel-mills among the nations of antiquity and in principle they were all alike in construction. How they worked may be learned by studying Figure 5 which represents a mill used in ancient India. The upper stone is placed upon the pivot projecting from the center of the lower stone, and caused to revolve by means of the handle. The grain when placed in the hollow at the center of the upper stone works its way down between the stones and comes out at the circumference ground, bran and flour together. The mill was fed with grain by the operator. The first hopper was a human hand.

We have here several pictures of ancient mills. Figure 6 is an ancient Jewish mill. As we look at it we may recall the words, "Two women shall be grinding at a mill, the one shall be taken, and the other left." Figure 7 is an old Roman mill bearing a strong resemblance to the coffee mill that is used in our kitchens. Figure 8 is a Scottish quern, a mill that may still be found in use, it is said, in some parts of Scotland. Figure 9 is an old flour mill dug from the ruins of the city of Pompeii which was destroyed by an eruption in the year 79 A. D. Figure 10 shows the construction of this interesting mill. The upper stone is shaped like an hour-glass, the upper half of which serves as a hopper; the lower half turns upon the cone-shaped lower stone and does the grinding. The mill was operated by the projecting handles, the operators walking round and round the mill. Sometimes it was turned by human power, sometimes by horses or oxen.

The Pompeian mill shows that as early as the first century the Romans ground their grain by animal power. Indeed about this time a still greater change was made in the method of grinding grain. When Julius Caesar flourished men began to harness the power of running water and make it turn their mills . From Figure 12 we may easily learn how this was done. The running water turns the wheel and in doing so turns the upper millstone. A hopper is suspended from the roof by ropes. Through this the grain passes into the mill. Here was a great saving in human labor and a great advancement in mill making. A Roman writer of Caesar's time appreciating how great a blessing was the invention of the water-mill exclaimed:

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