Now consider agriculture as a case of that pattern:

 Scythe with cradle

Labor involved in growing 100 bushels of wheat

•    1830  250-300 hours by hand
•    1890  40-50 hours by horsedrawn machine
•    1930  15-20 hours with a tractor
•    1975  3-4 hours with large tractors & combines

1837 John Deere produced a wrought iron plow with steel cutting edge for sticky prairie soil--his factory produced about 1000 in 1846, about 10,000 in 1857.  Harrows, grain drills, cultivators, and mechanical threshers (John and Hiram Pitts, 1837) come into use in 1840s

  McCormick Reaper

• McCormick didn't have the most uniform or satisfactory product but he moved his factory from Virginia to Chicago to be nearer the demand while Hussey stayed in Baltimore.
• McCormick succeeded by advertising and demonstrations, and by developing exclusive dealerships and selling machines on credit.
• Manufactured by regional franchises until 1851, at which point his production was 1000 per year.  Even his steam-powered plan in Chicago in 1850 depended on skilled workers, not special-purpose machines.
• Annual new model made manufacturing innovations difficult and meant replacement parts were an incredible headache--this wasn't a conscious marketing strategy but a combination of improvements and meeting the expectations of farmers.
• Even in the 1870s, factory manager Leander McCormick did not want to expand production and was notably unknowledgeable about machine tools--ordered things that did not exist and asked for parts that were not normally supplied (Chicago too far from New England, for one thing).
• Only introduced mass production techniques in 1880, when Cyrus kicked out Leander and hired Lewis Wilkinson, who had worked at both the Colt Armory and the Wilson Sewing Machine company.  Production increased fivefold by 1902.

•  labor shortage and high prices resulting from the civil war--farmers had cash to buy machines.
• When prices went down after the war farmers had to expand and mechanize to keep up.  Farm workers 64% of labor force in 1850, 49% in 1880.
• Machine farming developed on a large scale with settling of western Great Plains, 1870-1890.
• Rainfall of less than 15 in/yr and required wells 50-500 feet deep (windmills scare until 1900).  Open range pretty much gone by 1890s; ranching took advantage of barbed wire (invented in 1874) to fence grazing land.

 Glidden's 1874 barbed wire design

• 1870s brought first attempts at large-scale, technology-intensive farming.
• Took advantage of new varieties of wheat (particularly Russian) that could grow as winter wheat in cold climates.
• Dry farming techniques--planting in deep furrows (dust mulch).
• Experiments by people such as Oliver Dalrymple in mid to late 1870s--Grandin Bonanza, a farm of 61,000 acres worked by 200 pairs of harrows, 155 binders, 16 threshers, combines pulled by teams of 30-50 horses and mules or by steam tractors.  But many large farms went bankrupt in the droughts of 1885-1890.

PEM Photo, Steam Tractor, Dacusville Farm Days

• By 1900 5000 steam tractors made per year.
• Required many men to operate and much carrying of supplies, not to mention danger of setting fields on fire with sparks from the engine.
• Mass production of gasoline powered tractors began in 1903.