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Gentlemen, Take Your Seats
Seats on implements helped boost farm productivity
By Ralph Hughes
The millions of immigrants who came to America during the 19th century brought with them a variety of skills, experience and knowledge. There were carpenters, cabinet-makers, shopkeepers, coopers, gunsmiths, miners and factory workers. Thousands of the immigrants also had been farmers or field hands in their homelands. Shortly after arriving in America, those who could, bought land to farm; some traveled farther west to establish homesteads and others sought jobs on established farms. Immigrants from eastern Europe found the farming practices and implements used in America to be much the same as those in their native countries, and that horses and mules furnished the muscle to pull the implements the farmers trudged behind.