James A. King
Excerpted from 1910 Technical World Magazine.
Beautiful, simple writing in this article!

When our fathers were youngsters they ploughed with two-ox and two-horse ploughs, turning over an acre every 10 hours.  They planted their corn by hand and tended it with hoes.  They sowed their grain by hand from bags hung over their shoulders. They cut it with the reaping hook and the cradle and raked and bound it by hand. They threshed it on the barn floor with a flail and winnowed it in the wind into baskets and stored in bins to be husked in the winter, the husks being carefully saved and fed cows.

Think of two oxen yoked to a crude plough with a cast iron lay and a cast iron or wooden moldboard.  They plod along slowly and awkwardly, around the field. Every time they cross the field a strip of ten inches wide is turned over. They plough an acre, possibly an acre and a quarter a day.

When harvest came the neighbours would gather into one field. A line would form with the best man in front as a pacemaker. Each would swing a cumbersome cradle cutting a narrow swatch of grain. Behind the reapers would come the binders. With an old wooden toothed rake a man would rake together enough of a strip of the cradled grain to make a bundle. One man would cradle about three acres and one bind about two in a day of ten hours.

In comparison with this, look at the engine ploughing outfit. One man drives the engine, one man watches the ploughs, the engine moving along sedately and unconcernedly, around and around the field.  Every time it crosses the field a strip 21 feet wide is turned over. Such an outfit on my farm in 1908 ploughed a thirty five acre field in five hours and a half.

Yes, in the great grain fields of this country and Canada things are done differently from in our fathers' time. One might see a moderate sized engine hauling five or six large self binders, each one cutting a strip eight wide, binding the grain into neat uniform bundles and dropping them in bunches of five or six handy for the shockers. Or is some sections some may see a large engine hauling a combined harvester and thresher. This machine, with five or six men to operate it, will walk right down through a field of grain and cut it, thresh it, throw the straw onto the ground and sack the grain ready for hauling to market.  In this way on engine and five or six men will cut and thresh from one hundred to one hundred and twenty acres of grain in one hour…… With a large roomy house, farmer of the future can have all the modern conveniences of the city home with the blessing of pure air, room and space, delightful scenery and privacy without seclusion. With the traction engine, automobile, modern home equipment with sewers and electricity, the telephone and the daily mail at his disposal, the farmer will be the aristocrat of the future!