TILLING THE SOIL

Evening Star, Issue 22638, 3 May 1937, Page 12

TILLING THE SOIL

GREAT VICTORIES GAINED FIRST REAPING MACHINE The soldiers, sailors, politicians, and courtiers cannot complain of neglect by the writers of books—but the men of tho countryside, the farmers, have received scant consideration. Professor J. A. Scott Watson and Mary Elliot Hobbs make some amends in their book, ‘ Great Farmers.’ They tell the story of men who have gained victories over the soil, who have bred fine cattle. Agricultural inventions, too, are included, as tho following story proves:— “ The year 1828 saw the first notice of the first successful reaping machine, the invention of Patrick Bell. Bell was one of the large family of an Angus farmer who had worked his way as a student of divinity at St. Andrews, eking out his resources by teaching and by farm work; he later became minister of tho small parish of Carmyllie in his- native county. As a lad he had a turn for mechanics.. ; “ It was in 1826, while walking in his father’s garden, that a pair of garden shears sticking in the hedge gave him his idea —the idea that mechanical scissors rather than mechanical scythes might bo made the basis of a reaper. He set to work making wooden patterns, and had them copied in iron by the local blacksmith | he tried and rejected, and tried again. “ His cutting machine, when finally made, was tested in an old bam, with an artificial crop of oats planted stalk by stalk in soil brought in from the fields. The next step was to add a travelling canvas to deliver the cut stalks in a swathe alongside the machine, and a reel to hold the waving crop against the cutting mechanism. The next trial of 1828 may be described in Bell’s own words:— “ ‘ Before the corn was perfectly ripe (I had not the patience to wait for that) my brother . . . and I resolved to have a quiet and unobserved start by ourselves. That could not be got while the sun was in the heavens, nor for a considerable time after he was set; and accordingly, about 11 o’clock at night, in a darkish autumn evening, when every man, woman, and child were in their beds, the machine was quietly taken from its quarters, the good horse Jock was yoked to it, and we trio wended our way across a field of lea to one of standing wheat beyond it—my brother and 1 speaking the meanwhile to one and other in whispers. , . . The machine moved forward. ._ . . The wheat was lying by the side of the machine as prettily as any that has ever been cut by it since. After this we. took it back again to the end of the ridge, and made it cut with the open edge to ascertain how the swathes would lie upon the stubble, with which being well pleased we, after some pardonable congratulations, moved the machine back to its old quarters as quickly as possible.’ “ A contemporary writer, computing the financial benefits of a reaping machine to the agricultural industry, arrived at the conclusion that over the whole of the Great Britain a saving of £1,000,000 per year was possible, and that a premium of £20,000 or even £30,000 would not be too high an encouragement for such an object. Patrick Bel!, however, reaped no pecuniary reward. A sum of £SO awarded to him by the Highland in 1828 met, in part, the expenses he incurred in obtaining a copy of the original machine.

“ The inventor did not take out a patent, a deliberate abstention in order that the implement might go into the world free of any avoidable expense. A public-spirited nobleman, indeed, offered to bear the expense of a patent, but this offer Bell refused. “ Bell took his M.A. degree and became a Presbyterian minister. He left for a stay in America in 1833, and his reaper, oddly enough, lapsed into comparative obscurity. As fie himself later wrote, his invention was like a child born prematurely into a world which was not ready for it. “ No people has ever done very much good in the world that did not make a job of farming its land,” state tho authors in their concluding chaptei. “ There are still to-day a few people who live like our own dim ancestors, collecting tho seeds of wild grasses and hunting for frogs and snakes. They spend all the days and years of then lives trying to find enough to eat, and they often fail. They are perishing fast because they cannot farm. ' “ Again, the citizens of tho United States are alarmed to-day because they see millions of acres of their rich soil turning to desert. They realise that the catastrophe is of their own making, for they have failed to understand their land or even to do their plain duty by it. In some of our own African colonies the same causes are operating, and the same results can be clearly foreseen. We must, while there is yet time, teach the peoples of these countries tho principles of farming. “ Again, in India there is a population already 10 times as big as that of England and still increasing rapidly. The people are poor and land is precious. There is only one way to relieve the poverty of these masses, to give them leisure, education, and the opportunity to develop their culture. That way is by better farming. “ Many peoples have been tempted in times past to make short cuts to prosperity, to beat their ploughshares into swords and to live in luxury by the sweat of their slaves and captives. But this plan, apart from proving ruinous to their morals, has not proved a permanent success. “The greatest object lesson on the other side is to be seen in Denmark or Holland. There men have fought their battles not with their fellow men, but with tho moor and sea. Their achievement is not small. They have come near to abolishing poverty; they have won leisure and education, comfort and freedom. And the foundation of the whole edifice has been better farming. “ We ourselves have squandered a good deal of land in these past 60 years, -—poisoned the soil with smoke, covered it with slag heaps; let our rivers silt up and down the land that our grandfathers painfully laid dry, we have let the thorn and bramble come again on land that they cleared with much sweat. “ But at last we are beginning to be a little ashamed, and are giving a measure of encouragement towardsYepairing the damage. The damage can be largely repaired; we have tools and resources that even Mechi in his wildest dreams never imagined. We can drain and lime again, mend the fences, and rebuild the steadings. And when we have finished the task in, the home paddocks we shall still find plenty to do in the outlying fields of tho Empire.”