respects, agriculture stands rather apart from transportation, manufacturing, and artistic industries where the tools, machines, and raw materials remain fairly inert as men work on them. Machines move but do not live, and therein lies the major difference between agriculture and the other arts. Farmers deal with plants and animals but the museum can show only the things a farmer uses as he accommodates to and regulates nature. Some of the objects, in themselves, give a fair idea of how the farmer used them. Most people, after all, know about edged blades and digging tools. Nearly anyone can grasp what a man might do with a scythe or a plow. Even the working of a modern reaper needs only a little explanation. But museums cannot well show cross-breeding of plants and animals. Museums seldom can show the results of that cross-breeding. Bags of fertilizer can be put on display, as can vials of penicillin, and jars of herbicide. Although some may find these interesting, such items show little in and of themselves.

Unfortunately, the things that cannot be shown in any easily intelligible way surpass in importance the items that can be shown. The sheep shears, which anyone can understand, represent less to the farmer than do the sheep. Sheep shears, no matter how sophisticated and no matter how necessary, do not explain sheep husbandry. The shears tell little about the wool industry, and nothing much about sheep breeds. And so on through the list of agricultural enterprises.

Museums must collect and exhibit the tools, implements, and machines which farmers use in their business. These items, however, seldom make up the core of real agricultural activity. The catalog here presented shows something of the range of items that farmers use and that can be preserved and shown. The variety nearly equals the volume. Most museums try to avoid duplication. Even so, few museums manage to collect a continuous series of things showing any one line of development. The discontinuity of farm objects on hand virtually rules out the telling of a coherent and complete history of agriculture. Nevertheless, the museum can show something about the major technological developments in agriculture. The evolution of the plow, the reaper, or the tractor can be suggested even if not fully illustrated. Hitting the highlights has to suffice.

The full history of technological change also involves several social and economic conditions.

First, changes in implements, tools, and methods result from the accumulation of knowledge. Device builds upon device: first came the wheel, and then, much later, the tractor.

Secondly, the potential user of the device must feel a need for it. The new method or device not only must save him work but must clearly increase his well-being. If any device or change merely increases the wealth of someone else (a tax collector or a landlord for example), the farmer seldom will adopt the new technology.

Thirdly, since, at first, the new technology almost invariably costs more than the old, the user must have or be able to get the capital to buy and use the newer devices and methods.

Of these conditions for technological change, only the cumulative nature of the knowledge can be shown by the objects. Even here, however, missing objects make it possible to present only the most obvious changes, and then not all of them. Still, seeing the things once used—no matter how crude or how few—can sometimes help us understand the way changes took place. Also, this knowledge sometimes can help us guess how other changes will take place:

The sequence of inventions also depends upon the changing needs of a society. Needs and circumstances vary more than do degrees of talent. Thus when need and knowledge merge, inventors quickly appear. Indeed, several men in several places are likely to work on the same problems at the same time, and they often solve it in almost identical fashion. Nearly simultaneous inventions or discoveries occur with astonishing frequency in the history of technology.[2]

The Use of Farm Machinery in America

The part of America that was destined to become the United States started its history at the very time when the parent European civilization began to make major breakthroughs in science and technology. Thus, Americans became the automatic beneficiaries of the achievements of others. Because of peculiar opportunities and needs, Americans could and did push on to unique achievements. Nowhere, however, did this building on the past appear as early, or as impressively, as in the agricultural sector of the economy. American inventors of farm implements made important strides earlier than those in any other field. In turn, American farmers made more and better use of discoveries and inventions.

From the 1650s onward Europeans expanded their activities in all fields and in all directions. By that time Europeans had already discovered the New World, and had seized or bullied most of the Old. European trade and industry increased, and as these grew so also did population and urbanization. People multiplied, and an increasingly greater proportion of them began to live in towns and cities. Simultaneously, the Europeans increased in wealth; indeed, most of their activities created more wealth. The ever-increasing number of people called for more food, and for changes in European farming. The Europeans' growing wealth also allowed them to buy luxury items from around the world: silk and spice and everything nice. The goods came not only from the Far East and Africa but also from the New World. When Europeans began to settle America, they almost at once had the advantages of a large and growing metropolitan market in western Europe. This market provided opportunities for wealth, but only if the American farmers developed appropriate commodities and produced them at reasonable prices.

The English, Dutch, Swedes, French, and Spanish settled in North America at trading and exploring stations. So located, they could direct the flow of products to Europe. The English chiefly sought rare products such as gold and spices, and they sent back furs. The Dutch concentrated on furs. All European pioneers, however, had to feed themselves. This took a bit of doing, which at first involved a merging of European technology with Indian crops and methods. Later, the settlers adapted European crops and animals. In spite of starving times in almost every colony from Virginia to New England, the new Americans at least mastered the art of feeding themselves.

European technology used animals for draft and employed plows, harrows, and similar implements. This technology fit European crops better than it fit American crops. Thus, European implements and draft animals did not appear until comparatively late. As long as they depended chiefly on Indian crops, Europeans simply substituted iron hoes for stone hoes, and iron axes for stone axes. But methods such as girdling, slash and burn, and the rest, came almost directly from Indian technology. The Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation went 12 years without a plow; Virginians went almost as long. The hoe of corn culture served well enough to keep men alive. Hunting and fishing, of course, supplemented the food supply, as it did for the Indians.

From north to south the story was largely the same in the 17th century. Everywhere