WL: >>Then how come horses did not change the social organization of labor in agriculture in the time frame indicated? It was the tractor that was the impetus behind the destruction of the sharecropping system in America rather than the horse. <<
I wasn't arguing this point exactly. I was pointing out that the mechanization of farming involved the use of draft horses and mules combined with industrially produced agricultural implements that better enabled tasks like plowing, planting, threshing, harvesting, and milling. I would bet what transformed US agriculture was (1) the opening up of huge amounts of land to agriculture (such as California becoming a major wheat producing state by 1880), (2) railroads and rail heads for transport, (3) grain elevators for storage, (4) steam-powered, mechanized milling using steel not stone, (5) better machines like plows and threshers that could be drawn by horses and mules. Read, for example, Frank Norris's epic, The Octopus. Ploughing takes the most power. Harvesting the most labor (and the planting of some crops, like corn and tobacco took a lot of labor, but wheat and rice were 'broadcast' planted). Gigantic harvesting machines for wheat growing did take hold in the period between WW I and II. But a lot of wheat was harvested by enormous teams of mules and horses and men. Ammonia-based fertilizers were invented in 1909. Self-propelled tractors didn't really take off as something a farm would own until the 1940s and universal adoption took two decades. The mass use of fertilizers most likely came with the widespread use of the self-propelled tractor on small farming operations because acres were freed up to produce other crops and more of them since farms didn't have to raise food for their draft animals, but if they had no draft animals they also had less manure. Perhaps a dairy farm in the MidAtlantic or Kentucky would still grow a lot of corn just for animals, but that would be for animal husbandry, like dairy farming or pigs. MW farms tended to devote themselves to one crop, with corn becoming the 'king of crops'. Expanded acreage and larger holdings in the 19th century made it possible to keep more horses and mules in the first place. You had to grow enough food for them. Note the description here that compares and contrasts farming in the early 19th and then early 20th centuries, a century apart: http://www.loudounhistory.org/history/agriculture-mills-and-wheat.htm Early 19th-Century Wheat Farming Near Waterford Top of page John Jay Janney, a distant cousin of Waterford founder Amos Janney, was born in 1812 near the Quaker settlement of Goose Creek, about 10 miles south of Waterford. Ninety-five years later, in Ohio in 1907, Janney penned his memories of his childhood. In addition to writing about all facets of life in Loudoun County in the 1820s, he outlined the farmer's duties regarding his crops for an entire year. The portions concerning wheat are excerpted here and describe farming activities similar to those around Waterford. After [corn] harvesting was over [in the autumn], we plowed for next year's wheat crop, and when the ground was ready for sowing we hauled all the manure from the barn yard and the hog pen, usually a good supply and scattered it over the poorest part of the field.... We had not yet heard of "wheat drills" but sowed our grain "broadcast." We would take a bag and tie the string to one corner so we could hang it about the neck...and carry...about a bushel of wheat in it. We would catch up handfuls and sow them broadcast having first marked out the field into "lands" of a proper width. A little practice enabled one to sow very evenly. We then dragged a heavy harrow over it. Now [in 1907] a man will do the same work in a better manner sitting in a pleasant seat driving two horses.... After mowing [the following summer] the wheat...was bound into sheaves and put in shocks of a dozen sheaves each. The children were nearly all, boys and girls, kept home from school to carry sheaves for shocking.....All the mechanics in the neighborhood worked in the harvest fields. The rule was, to pay them wages per day what wheat sold for per bushel. If wheat was worth a dollar per bushel, they got a dollar a day.... See also this description of wheat production in the NW US: http://columbia.washingtonhistory.org/magazine/articles/1992/0292/0292-a1.aspx In the frontier era extensive grain growing occurred on both sides of the Cascade Range. By the late 1800s, though, its main focus had shifted eastward to the Columbia Plateau where growing conditions were excellent. In fact, prime wheat land in the Palouse Hills along the Washing- ton/Idaho border would prove to have a higher per acre yield than acreage in any other major grain-growing region in the nation. Wheat production, in its many facets, profoundly affected the landscape, city and town development, and the very economic and social fabric of the Columbia Plateau. Settlement of the Columbia Plateau came in a century of "agricultural revolution," when great changes in farming techniques swept through the world's vast grain belts. Homesteaders in the mid 19th century plowed with single-bladed "foot burners," hand-broadcast seed during planting, and harvested with cradle scythes. In the 1870s and 1880s elaborate horse- and mule-powered machines of amazing complexity and diversity replaced the simpler tools and implements. These newer machines could only be operated by large crews. Iron-clad steam tractors, looking somewhat like off-track locomotives, appeared in the last quarter of the 19th century. The heyday of animal-powered technology, however, was yet to come in the 1910s and 1920s, when teams of as many as 33 horses or mules pulled great combines over the steep hills. Gasoline- and diesel-engine tractors and caterpillars took hold in the late 1930s, replacing the dutiful draft animals. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
