The Dynamics of Power

If any characteristic of American agriculture can be singled out as being especially representative of its dynamic nature, it is mechanization. The American farmer has distinguished himself consistently from other farmers throughout the world by his willingness to experiment with his tools and buy new ones. During the last two-thirds of the 19th century he showed an unrestrained eagerness toward virtually any innovation that crossed his path.1 The 20th century has seen a continuation-even intensification-of this zeal, with the result that American agriculture now is the most mechanized and has the highest productivity of any in the world. To the student of American agriculture or history, the story of mechanization is a familiar one, and innovations such as the steel plow, the reaper, hybrid corn, and the cotton harvester have become part of the accepted lore. However, the extremely rapid, almost explosive, increase in the rate of technological developments in the field during the past two decades has led to an equally rapid change in the number, size, and types of machinery that populate the agricultural landscape. This revolution is well known to farmers and other persons within the complex system of farm-related business (often referred to as agri-business); but the rapid transfer of population out of the agricultural realm and the concurrent rise in other, more spectacular, aspects of our national life, such as space exploration and computer technology, have led to a neglect of the dynamics of farm technology. This is not to say that the history of agricultural technology has been neglected. One has only to peruse the pages of Agricultural History or Technology and Culture to see a blossoming of attention. However, the greatest interest seems to be

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• Mechanizing cotton production in the American south

  Open Access•Moses S Musoke•Explorations in Economic History•1981

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