52
substantially after 1860,^^ and as it did, labor was
freed to go into manufacturing and services. In i860,
58.9 percent of the working labor force was engaged in
agriculture; by 1900 the figure had fallen to 37.5
percent, and it continued to decrease thereafter until,
by i960 only 6.3 percent of the labor force was so
39
engaged. More food with less people was certainly
"one of the great phenomena of economic history.
The machine did not produce food, of course;
the producers were farmers working in the nation's rich
soil. Few regions in the world could compare with the
thick, black of earth of Indiana, Illinois, or Iowa when
it came to growing corn, for example; but machines,
hi
especially the reaper, allowed farmers to make the
most of what they had.
As increasing farm production yielded food
enough for the domestic population and more, the nation
turned its energies to manufacturing.
As a nation we might of course have continued after
the turn of the century to devote our industrial
energies to agriculture in relatively the same
degree as formerly, utilize our surplus productive
38
39
40-
See Appendix A, Table 6.
See Appendix A, Table 5-
Clarence H. Danhof, Discussion of Rasmussen's
"Impact of Technological Change," Journal of Economic
History. XXII (December, I962), p. 592.
hi
Harvesting is a critical point in farm
production. Reaping must be accomplished quickly or the
crop is lost.