Labor was so abundant and so cheap that the farmer had no need of them.

But the Civil War took one man in three for the armies, and it was under this pressure that the farmers really discovered the value of machinery.
A small boy or girl could mount a McCormick reaper and cut a dozen acres of grain in a day.

This circumstance made it possible to place millions of soldiers in the field and to feed the armies from farms on which mature men did very little work.

But the reaper promoted the Northern cause in other ways.

Its use extended so in the early years of the war that the products of the farms increased on an enormous scale, and the surplus, exported to Europe, furnished the liquid capital that made possible the financing of the war.