Essay 11-A: The Rise of Mechanical Farming and the Consent of the People
The American farmer of 1820 was not free in any meaningful sense. He owned his land. He answered to no landlord. He believed in self-governance with his whole heart. But from the moment the wheat ripened until the last stalk was cut, he was a prisoner of his own harvest. A strong man working without rest might cut two acres in a day. Every acre beyond that was lost. A family’s future rested entirely on the strength of his body and the mercy of the weather. There was no time left for anything else, not community, not civic life, and not the work of being a citizen. When Cyrus McCormick demonstrated his mechanical reaper in a Virginia wheat field in 1831, he did not just change how Americans farmed. He changed what it meant to be an American.
