Reap What You Sow

The mechanical reaper, patented in 1834, helped many nineteenth-century farmers to double crop sizes.

The inventor Cyrus McCormick, born on this date in 1809, was an astute businessman whose McCormick Harvesting Machine Company was consolidated with other firms to become International Harvester Company in 1902–03. McCormick's reaper spurred other innovations in farm machinery such as the equipment shown here on this California farm.

F.J. Howell depicted the Caricof family farm in Stockton, California, as an orderly, bountiful, and efficient establishment.… Behind Caricof's Italianate-style farmhouse and its formal garden stand the tank house and windmill water pump, common features of northern California farms. The mechanical reaper and steam-powered thresher indicate that his farm prospered with the period's most up-to-date machinery.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: F. J. Howell, dates unknown, The Ranch of Michael Caricof, 1882, pen and ink and ink wash on paper, 9 7/8 x 12 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.