The Wonder Book Of Knowledge Part 67

[Ill.u.s.tration: 4-8-2 TYPE Pa.s.sENGER LOCOMOTIVE--CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND & PACIFIC R. R.

Built by American Locomotive Company.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MACHINE SHOP

Schenectady, N. Y., Works, American Locomotive Company.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MIKADO TYPE FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE--DELAWARE, LACKAWANNA & WESTERN R. R.

Built by American Locomotive Company.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROD SHOP

Schenectady, N. Y., Works, American Locomotive Company.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MALLET TYPE FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE--BALTIMORE & OHIO R. R.

Built by American Locomotive Company.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CYLINDER SHOP

Schenectady, N. Y., Works, American Locomotive Company.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 2-10-2 TYPE FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE--NEW YORK, ONTARIO & WESTERN R. R.

Built by American Locomotive Company.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ERECTING SHOP

Schenectady, N. Y., Works, American Locomotive Company.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW YORK CENTRAL ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE[66]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE[67]

Two of the best known types of electric locomotive. The New York Central type is 43 feet long, 14 feet 9-1/2 inches high, and weighs 230,000 pounds. It is equipped with four 550-horse-power motors and has a maximum speed of 60 miles per hour. The Pennsylvania type is the latest development. It is built in two halves for flexibility and either half may be replaced during repairs. The complete unit weighs 157 tons, is 64 feet 11 inches long, and the motors have combined horse-power of 4,000, giving a draw-bar pull of 79,200 pounds, and a speed of 60 miles per hour.]

The Story of an Up-to-Date Farm[68]

A man who had been tied in a great city all his life made his first visit the other day to an up-to-date farm. He was so surprised at what he saw that he wrote a letter describing his emotions. Some of it is worth quoting because it shows a picture of the modern farm as it was cast upon the eye of a man who had never seen it before.

"I was whisked from the railway station in a big touring car, through beautiful country. Then we turned up a flower and shrub lined concrete driveway, and stopped by a home, capacious and modern. Inside I found electric lights, electric iron and bathroom with running water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WOMAN ON THE FARM AT LAST ENJOYING THE BENEFIT OF LABOR-SAVING MACHINES

This small mounted kerosene engine runs the washing machine, pump, cream separator and churn. It is easily drawn about from place to place by hand where its energy is needed to lighten the housework.]

"I found that the good man of the house had his own electric light and water plant, run by kerosene engines, that his cows were milked automatically, that he pulled his plows, harrows, drills, manure spreader and binder with a kerosene tractor, that his hired men went about the farm doing everything as they rode on some machine, that he went to church and town in an automobile, and that he delivered the products of his farm to market with a motor truck. Everything was managed like a factory. Things went forward with order and with a.s.surance. Everyone was busy and happy."

This is an optimistic picture of one of our best farms, but compare it with the best that could be found only a few hundred years ago. The best farmer of those days held all the land for miles around and lived in a castle in the middle of it. The castle was dark and cold and was made of rough stones fitted together. The poor farmers were serfs and came two or three days out of a week to their master's house to work.

Those were the great days of their lives, for then they ate of the master's food.

Food--that was the problem of those long tired years which dragged through the ages, when nearly everyone was a farmer, and a farmer with crude tools held in his hands. Time was when practically the whole world went to bed hungry and rose again in the morning craving food, just as half the millions of India do today because they do with their hands what a machine should do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MOTOR TRUCK MAY BE USED BY THE FARMER EVEN IN HILLY AND MOUNTAINOUS PLACES

This photograph was taken near the summit of Pike's Peak.]

People in the hungry, unfed ages grew so used to privation that even the philosophers accepted sorrow and woe as a matter of course and dilated upon their virtues for chastening the human soul. "It is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of mirth," said one of the prophets, and such words brought comfort to the hungry, miserable millions who had to mourn and go hungry whether it was to their advantage or not.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE REAPING HOOK WAS THE FIRST IMPLEMENT USED FOR HARVESTING GRAIN OF WHICH WE HAVE RECORD

This pictures the reaping hook as still used in India.]

Today the years glide by like pleasant pictures. We are fed, busy and happy. We almost let the dead bury their dead today while the living drive forward their tasks, achieving as much in a year as the old ages did in twenty. We have learned to feed ourselves and the food fills our bodies and brains with energy which must find expression in useful accomplishment. "Blessed is he who has found his work to do," we say nowadays, "but thrice blessed is he who has found a machine to do it for him."

Thread your way back through history to the time when the slender lives of men expanded into full and useful employment, and you will find that, so far as raising the world's food is concerned, it all began with the invention of the reaper in only the last century. It is interesting to know something of the precarious entry of this machine and something of the dark background from which it emerged.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SCYTHE IS A DEVELOPMENT OF THE REAPING HOOK

The blade was made larger and the handle longer so two hands could be used.]

The Reaping Hook or Sickle.

From the first pages of history we find that the reaping hook or sickle is the earliest tool for harvesting grain of which we have record.

Pliny, in describing the practice of reaping wheat says, "One method is by means of reaping hooks, by which the straws are cut off in the middle with sickles and the heads detached by a pair of shears." Primitive sickles or reaping hooks made of flint or bronze are found among the remains left by the older nations. Pictures made in 1400 or 1500 B. C.

upon the tombs at Thebes in Egypt, which are still legible, show slaves reaping with sickles. This crude tool, brought into use by ancient Egypt, remained almost stationary as to form and method of use until the middle of the last century.

The scythe, which is a development from the sickle, enables the operator to use both hands instead of one. The scythe is still a familiar tool on our farms, but it serves other purposes than that of being the sole means of harvesting grain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CRADLE WAS DEVELOPED IN AMERICA BETWEEN 1776 AND 1800 AND IS AN OUTGROWTH OF THE SCYTHE. IT IS STILL USED IN SOME PLACES]

The Cradle.

Gradually the blade of the scythe was made lighter, the handle was lengthened, and fingers added to collect the grain and carry it to the end of the stroke. With the cradle the cut swath could be laid down neatly for drying preparatory to being bound into bundles. This tool is distinctly an American development. The colonists, when they settled in this country, probably brought with them all the European types of sickles and scythes, and out of them evolved the cradle.

With the cradle in heavy grain an experienced man could cut about two acres a day, and another man could rake and bind it into sheaves, so that two men with the cradle could do the work of six or seven men with sickles.

The American cradle stands at the head of all hand tools devised for the harvesting of grain. When it was once perfected, it soon spread to all countries with very little change in form. Although it has been displaced almost entirely by the modern reaper, yet there are places in this country and abroad where conditions are such that reaping machines are impractical and where the cradle still has work to do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARVESTING IN THE WEST