patrick.net

bob2356 says

and they sourced them from where? there are no sources listed on their site either.

Got me it was the first site listed on a google search.

bob2356 says

How does that represent technology reducing the number of farm workers.

As I stated it is about percentages.

bob2356 says

he key word is reducing

Which it did by 20% not including the slaves.

bob2356 says

it represents a greater increase in industrial workers than farm workers.

That is always how the economy grows. Your math skill and or logic is suspect.

bob2356 says

What technology was that between the civil war and the 1920's when farms started mechanizing?

Many:

1. Cotton Gin: In colonial times, cotton cloth was more expensive than linen or wool because of the extreme difficulty of separating seed from the clinging fibers. One man could pick the seeds from only about 1 pound of cotton fiber per day.

In 1793, Eli Whitney built a machine consisting of a row of close-set wheels with saw-like teeth around their perimeters. The wheels protruded through narrow slits between metal bars into a hopper filled with cotton bolls. As the wheels revolved, the teeth caught the cotton fibers and pulled them through the slits, which were too narrow for the seeds to pass, thus separating the two.

Whitney's cotton gin allowed 1,000 pounds of cotton to be cleaned in the time it took one man to do 5 pounds by hand. As a result, the price of cotton cloth plummeted, the cotton plantation culture of the South was established and the use of slave labor in growing cotton became entrenched.

2. Reaper/Binder: Small grains had been harvested by hand for centuries, cut with sickles or scythes, hand-raked and tied into sheaves. Grain harvesting machines first appeared in Great Britain in about 1800, and in the U.S. a decade or two later, but most failed. Obed Hussey and Cyrus McCormick developed successful reapers during the 1830s. McCormick's machine became the more popular one; today he is credited with inventing the reaper. Those early machines still required the sheaves to be bound by hand, but in 1857 the Marsh brothers equipped a reaper with moving canvases that carried the grain to a platform where it was tied into bundles by a worker riding on the machine.

The first twine knotter was demonstrated in 1867 by John Appleby. Sylvanus Locke developed a wire binder in about 1874 and it was adopted by McCormick. Wire dominated for a short while, but bits of wire got into the grain and ended up inside livestock and flour with disastrous results. William Deering adopted the twine-tying mechanism for his popular Deering harvesters, and in about 1881, McCormick did as well.

3. Thresher: When grain was being cut by hand, the method for separating the kernels from the straw was equally slow and labor intensive. Grain was hauled to a barn where it was spread on a threshing floor and either beaten with hand flails or trampled by animals. That knocked the kernels free of the straw, which was then raked away. The remaining mixture was winnowed by tossing it into the air where the wind was relied upon to blow the chaff and lighter debris away from the heavier grain, which fell back onto the threshing floor.

The first threshing machine with a revolving, toothed cylinder and concaves was invented in 1786 in Scotland by Andrew Meikle. Brothers Hiram and John Pitts are credited with invention of the first successful American separator in 1830, as well as with adapting a horse tread power to run the thing. Hiram soon added a fanning mill to the threshing drum to separate and clean the grain at the same time.

Later improvements resulted in machines that extracted virtually all the grain from the straw and thoroughly cleaned it.

4. Steam Engine: Until the end of the 18th century, American farmers relied primarily upon their own strong backs and arms and those of family members, hired men or slaves. New farm machines then being developed required more power, so oxen, horses and mules were pressed into service. Stationary steam engines were used early on to run cotton gins and mills. The additional power required by improved threshing machines led to the development of portable steam power, which made its first appearance in 1849.

At first, horses were used to haul portable steam engines from job to job. During the 1870s, several inventors developed practical drive systems and the self-propelled steam traction engine became common as power for the many threshing rigs around the country. Such machines were also used to pull multiple gangplows in the large fields of the wheat belt.

5. Combined Harvester-Thresher: By the 1920s the steam traction engine was on it's way out, but it paved the way for the gasoline tractors that followed.

Although a "traveling thrasher" (or combined harvester-thresher) was patented as early as 1828, the first successful machine was built by Hiram Moore in 1834. Moore's combine successfully cut and threshed grain, although it had to be winnowed later. After the Civil War, big horse-drawn, ground-driven combines were developed in the wheat-growing regions of the Northwest. In 1871, B.F. Cook put a steam engine on a combine to drive the mechanism, decreasing the number of horses needed to pull the machine. In about 1886, California farmer George Berry built a combine around a steam traction engine and voilà: the first self-propelled combine.

6. Auto Truck: Machinery, critters and crops, among other heavy things, all need to be moved around the farm or to market. Two-wheeled carts sufficed for early farmers. Soon 4-wheeled wagons became the norm and were universally used for a couple of centuries. It's impossible to pin down the first motor truck, but steam-, electric- and gas-powered commercial vehicles made their appearance at about the turn of the 20th century and by 1910 were common in urban areas. The first real attempt to make a vehicle to replace the ubiquitous farm wagon was by International Harvester with its "Auto Wagon" introduced in 1907. Since that time farm trucks of all sizes have proliferated and today no self-respecting farmer is without his pickup.

7. Gasoline Tractor: Steam tractors required a lot of water and fuel (coal, wood or straw), and a trained engineer at the wheel. The internal combustion engine, developed in the 1890s, offered an alternative to steam. John Froehlich is generally credited with inventing the first successful tractor in 1892. The first commercially successful tractor was built in Charles City, Iowa, by Charles Hart and Charles Parr. Early tractors were big, heavy, awkward and none too reliable, but by 1920 the better ones had survived and were becoming hugely popular on American farms for heavy tillage and belt work.

8. General Purpose Tractor: During the 1920s, row-crop work such as planting and cultivating was still largely done by horses as tractors were too heavy and not versatile enough for those lighter jobs. Several lightweight row crop tractors had been tried, but most were not satisfactory. Several manufacturers offered motor cultivators during the 'teens, but few farmers were willing to buy a machine that was used only a month or two each year.

In 1924, IH introduced the Farmall, the first real general purpose tractor that could pull heavy tillage and harvesting machines as well as plant and cultivate row crops. The Farmall quickly caught on; by 1930, IH was churning out 200 Farmalls per day. Soon, every major tractor manufacturer offered a similar row crop machine. The swift mechanization of American farms that occurred during the late 1930s and early 1940s was on its way.

9. Rubber Tires: Steel-lugged wheels limited speed, vibrated, shook bolts loose and quickly dug themselves into soft ground if they spun, not to mention what they did to the driver's innards.

Solid rubber tires began to be fitted to industrial tractors in about 1920, and Florida citrus growers experimented with large truck tires on tractors in 1928. Harvey Firestone became interested and in 1932, fitted large, low-pressure tires to an Allis-Chalmers U owned by farmer Albert Schroeder. The tires were a huge success and AC began to offer air tires on the Model U tractor late in 1932, an industry first.

The advantage of pneumatic tires over steel wheels in fuel economy and performance, not to mention driver comfort, sold farmers on their advantages and by 1940, 95 percent of tractors were ordered on rubber. Harvey Firestone's dream of putting the farm on rubber was on its way to being reality.

10. Hydraulic Implement Lift with Draft Control: The first tractor mechanical lift appeared in 1927, and a hydraulic lift in 1934. These lifts, however, were just that: lifts. They raised and then dropped the implement without the operator having to wrestle a hand lever but depth control still required frequent manipulation of a lever or crank.

Irishman Harry Ferguson can claim credit for the first hydraulic lift with automatic draft control. By 1933, he had perfected a way of attaching an implement to a tractor by three arms. The tension load on the lower arms and the compression load on the upper arm caused the "virtual hitch" point to be near the tractor's front axle, thus keeping the front end of the tractor on the ground. In addition, the top link compression load operated a hydraulic valve that caused the implement depth to be automatically regulated according to the draft needed to pull it.

Ferguson's 3-point hitch was probably the most revolutionary improvement in tractor and implement technology during the first half of the 20th century. Today, virtually every tractor sold anywhere in the world features a 3-point hitch based on Ferguson's system.

indigenous says

Whitney's cotton gin allowed 1,000 pounds of cotton to be cleaned in the time it took one man to do 5 pounds by hand. As a result, the price of cotton cloth plummeted, the cotton plantation culture of the South was established and the use of slave labor in growing cotton became entrenched.

What?

indigenous says

bob2356 says

How does that represent technology reducing the number of farm workers.

As I stated it is about percentages.

Which just goes to show you don't understand percentage or much of anything else in math. Look at your own numbers: 1860 2 million farms at 200 acres per is 400 million acres 1910 5.7 million farms at 150 acres per is 855 million acres. So you doubled the acres farmed plus 7% and doubled the number of people farming. Wow how does the percentages work on on that? Where is all that reduction in labor and slaves you are talking about?

indigenous says

Many:

That's the funniest thing you've posted in a long time. Do you ever read what you post? Almost everything on your list was pre 1800's or post wwI.

thunderlips11 says

cotton plantation culture of the South was established and the use of slave labor in growing cotton became entrenched.

They are wrong on that .

bob2356 says

Which just goes to show you don't understand percentage or much of anything else in math.

Here you go with your usual MO of misdirection, change the subject, ad hominem type stuff.

For the 3rd time,

1860: farmers 58% of labor force;

1900 farmers 38% of labor force [not including slaves]

Do you see that Bob? that is a 20% difference

bob2356 says

Almost everything on your list was pre 1800's or post wwI.

Personal computers came on the scene in the late 70s but were not in wide use until the late 90s, that is a 20 window in a day age where technology moves much quicker than the 1800s

indigenous says

They are wrong on that

I don't understand. Are you saying slavery did not matter because it would be replaced by automation in the 1800s???

lostand confused says

I don't understand. Are you saying slavery did not matter because it would be replaced by automation in the 1800s???

I'm saying that the need for slaves would diminish over the years. The percentage of the labor force in farming went from 58/% in 1860 to 2% today. I many have misspoke a little by stating in short order, but so what, the point is still the same.

indigenous says

I'm saying that the need for slaves would diminish over the years.

Wrong! America has always needed manual laborers, especially in the years following the Civil War as Reconstruction gave way to the Industrial Revolution. Plenty of people were effectively slaves in this era, with long hours, meager wages, and robber barons watching over to ensure nobody left the factory with enough to skip work the next day.
It took the labor movement and Teddy Roosevelt to emancipate the American worker and give him a voice.
Today we see a regression to those bad old days in many sectors of our economy. The rich are just vastly richer now and the poor even more desperate.

Good Gawd don't make me puke. Spare me the conjecture. Fuck Roosevelt he did not do shit, I'm tired of educating you mutts about this...

Rosevelt was disaster. His New Deal took 20 years of reworking before it started to work. And if not for WWII and the post war boom it created. We would have probably been worse off than the USSR when the Soviet Union collapsed. It would have probably been us first.

I meant Theodore Roosevelt

You are right FDR was an absolute fucking disaster but that is another can of worms.

indigenous says

Here you go with your usual MO of misdirection, change the subject, ad hominem type stuff.

For the 3rd time,

1860: farmers 58% of labor force;

1900 farmers 38% of labor force [not including slaves]

Do you see that Bob? that is a 20% difference

For the third time your numbers mean nothing. What you posted was the population and farm population. The entire population isn't the labor force you ninny. It wasn't a difference because farming was less labor intensive. The farm workers per acre didn't change much at all according to YOUR numbers if you could figure out how to read them. The number of acres farmed doubled, the number of farm workers doubled. Where exactly did automation reduce farm labor?

indigenous says

What you posted was the population and farm population.

It clearly states percentage of the labor force?

Assuming that people had the same grocery basket that mean that fewer farmers are producing more goods.

And since there was considerable deflation during that time period the price of the goods were not helped by inflation.

dodgerfanjohn says

You still suck Obama

Why am I not surprised that not even one of your points holds up ?

dodgerfanjohn says

IF you want me to accept your proposals, first explain where and how each of the individuals obtained their guns and how your proposals would have prevented that.

Any valid proposal for reducing gun violence, doesn't have to be something that would have clearly prevented any specific mass murder in the past, to be good and valid, especially with regard to the long term impacts. Reducing the amount of guns available to criminals is not something that is going to happen quickly.

dodgerfanjohn says

Make mental illness treatment and awareness a key platform of you administration and a focus of Obamacare.

Obamacare does radically increase access to mental health care.

dodgerfanjohn says

Either you are an idiot or you think the American people are. Stop using the 30,000 gun deaths per year number. It's utter bullshit. 19,000 of those deaths are suicide. 18,999 of those would occur regardless of access to firearms. ~8000 of the deaths are gang related.

Guns not being in the hands of people who committed suicide probably prevents at least some suicides. Gang related murder is one of the biggest focuses of his reforms. Making it harder for dealers to sell guns to kids on the street. Sellers are going to start being liable for who they sell to. I.e, selling to the guy who sells to the gangs could get a dealer in big big trouble.

Too bad you hate Obama and are therefore too biased to even listen to him. When he makes the point about all the things we are willing to do for safety such as seat belts, but can't regulate guns in any way, he makes a point that proves where you are coming from.

dodgerfanjohn says

moron

Lay off the sauce bro. At least until after 3.

Ironman says

Isn't it absolutely amazing, after reading all the crap Marcus posts here, the school board actually allows him to be alone in a classroom full of kids?? No wonder the current generation of high school graduates are so fucked up in the head.

You can imagine how thrilled I was when my high school age step daughter came home excited about how much one of her teachers hates Donald Trump.

Teachers like Marcus are absolute abominations.

Why do teacher say anything about politics?

I dunno. Also dunno why Marcus chose to un-ignore me for a few hours. Guess thats all it took to get his blood boiling enough to make him ignore me again.

But then again I dont understand teacher logic, or lack thereof.

I wouldn't know he has had me on ignore for longer than I can remember, which is fine...

dodgerfanjohn says

Eeesh, listening to this guy is giving me a headache.

Ha Ha! Obama trolled you so badly that you took the time to create a thread about how irritating he was!

Obama pwned you. Obama is winning teh internets!