Answer to Question #156363 in History for Mike

Question

Why Russian, Ukrainian, Polish peasants didn't buy McCormick's reaper?

Answer 1

McCormick's reaper was developed to mechanize harvesting and enable large portions of land be harvested within a short period of time. Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian peasants practiced subsistence farming. They used small holdings and grew food mainly to sustain their families. As a result of this, investing in the McCormick's reaper was not practical since it was developed for harvesting in large farm lands. Additionally, they used inferior farming techniques that usually resulted in little harvests making the use of the McCormick's reaper not viable. Also, the land for most peasants was small, hence they were able to manually harvest and did not need mechanization in harvesting.