CHAPTER VI
Transformation period 1830-1865.
THE THIRTY-FIVE years of this period saw the almost complete transformation of American agriculture from the self-sufficing to the commercial stage, and its record constitutes one of the most remarkable chapters in the economic history of the world.
European agriculture had taken up the breeding of better livestock, improved cultural methods, systems of crop rotation, the growing and feeding of roots, and the use of commercial fertilizers; but, aside from the better livestock, these matters had received but little attention in this country. Agricultural tools had been slightly improved on both sides of the Atlantic, and we have seen the inception of the modern plow but, beyond this, it may be said that prior to 1830 there was not an agricultural machine in common use anywhere in the world.
At the beginning of this period all farm work except plowing, harrowing and carting, was done strictly with hand tools. Agriculture was practically the same as it had been for two thousand years before. Grain was sown broadcast, and harrowed in with a wooden tooth drag or a tree top drawn by oxen. The reaping was done with a cradle and the threshing accomplished with a flail or by driving
