Mechanization

In 1972, a potato farm near Wayland, NY was the site of a farmworker camp where the Geneseo Migrant Center ran outreach programs. It was owned by James and Stanley Jablonski, who at the time were blaming a labor shortage and “loss in desire to work” on an antipoverty initiative called Project REACH (Rural Education and Cultural Horizons). The next year, they vowed, it would mean “harvest by machine to avoid the use of migrant labor” (Wade 5). The Jablonskis’ complaints about the cost and shortage of labor actually were recurring ones; historian Neil Adams McNall argues that they have been present since the beginning of colonization in Western New York: “A scarcity of hired labor marked the agriculture of the early Genesee. A large family constituted a valuable asset in farming operations. Both sexes from youth to old age found numerous tasks to perform. Yet beyond the family bond, and the work which could be exchanged with neighbors, there existed no dependable source of labor” (88). The four images below from The Genesee Farmer illustrate this tension between the needful labor of hired hands and a desire to suppress their wages—or even replace them—through mechanical equipment.

The first image, “Old’s Corn Planter” (published in 1841), highlights how farmers and hired laborers traditionally planted by hand--a little hole in the ground for each kernal. The horse-powered corn planter promises to do that work without manual labor from the farm personnel. Its hoe plows the land as the wheels indent small holes in the ground and seeds are dropped into those holes. There were hundreds of other patented designs for corn planters.

Next we see a “Revolving Horse Rake” (1841) sold by P. D. Wright of Rochester. It was designed to rake hay, which needs to dry after cutting but is susceptible to rain--thus, raking and baling the hay quickly was important. In Western New York, a shortage of hired labor meant that farmers relied on local workers using hand rakes. Revolving horse rakes were an improvement over earlier ones because a driver didn’t need to constantly stop once a rake became full of hay. Wright’s equipment ranged from at least $225 to $350 in adjusted current prices, which was quite expensive for farmers. The horse rake itself highlights the use of animal labor which preceded  the engines and heavy machinery that is seen today. The horses still had to be hitched up and driven around by a farmer in order to rake the land evenly; probably additional labor still was required to operate the rake.

The third illustration is titled “Crosskill's Clod-Crusher” (1856), and also shows the utilization of non-human power. After initial plowing in the spring, drying soil still had large clods that made seed-planting and germination unpredictable. Here we see two horses plulling the apparatus of wheels with sproketed teeth, which broke up dirt clods, as a farmer manages the team. Crosskill’s design was very successful because it transferred work from the farmer and hired hands to farm animals.

Finally we come to an advertisement for Sanford & Mallory’s Portable Flax and Hemp Dresser” (1863). The selling point of this horse-powered machine was that it didn’t “require in its use any peculiar skill. It can be operated by boys or girls, and does not involve any risk to the hands or arms of the operatives, while the ordinary machines require the use of skilled labor, and as experience has proved are always attended with risk to the operatives” (296). As in most of these images, an impressive machine stands alone, without human operatives, and promises “labor-saving” efficiency. The labor being eliminated usually was that of hired hands, transfered to farm animals and later fossil-fueled engines.

 Works Consulted

-- “Crosskill's Clod-Crusher.” The Genesee Farmer 17.9 (Sept. 1856): 276.

-- McNall, Neil Adams. An Agricultural History of the Genesee Valley, 1790-1860. Greenwood Press, 1952.

-- “Old’s Corn Planter.” The Genesee Farmer 2.11 (1841): 184.

-- “Revolving Horse Rakes.” The Genesee Farmer 2.6 (1841): 112.

-- “Portable Flax and Hemp Dresser.” The Genesee Farmer 24.9 (Sept. 1863): 296.

-- Wade, Garth. “REACH Angers Steuben Potato Growers.” Elmira Star-Gazette 26 Nov. 1972: 5-B+