Longtime reader Tom Grady posed a provocative question after reading my recent essay on old time baseball in Lafayette Park. He asked what kind of lawn mowers were used back in the 1860s. The actual games in question were in 1861.
The first patent for a modern bicycle design was first issued in 1866. That design would seem simple compared to one for a lawn mower, but not so. It turns out that the harvesting of crops was more of a practical necessity than say, riding the KATY trail. So the mower got invented first.
Everything following the scythe
The first known thing that you would consider a mower of grass showed up in Gloucester, England in 1830. It was 19” wide, and pushed from behind for manicuring gardens and sports fields. Early crude horse drawn sickle-bar mowers first appeared in the US around 1845. These looked like the ‘New Champion,’ below:
The first reel spiral bladed mower, also horse driven, was patented in the U.S. by Amariah Hills in 1868. A human pushed lawn mower appeared in the 1850s, and the initial rotary mower not until 1920. Things moved fast after that. Toro introduced a small and light power mower in 1938. It took off with the addition of a lightweight aluminum Briggs and Stratton motor in 1953. Manufacturing in bigger scale made the new mowers affordable. This coincided with the postwar development of suburban America. Well kept lawns were almost part of a suburban definition.
But back to the 1870s
From 1870: “A smooth, closely shaven surface of grass is by far the most essential element of beauty on the grounds of a suburban home. Dwellings, all the rooms of which may be filled with elegant furniture, but with rough uncarpeted floors, are no more incongruous, or in ruder taste, than the shrub and flower-sprinkled yards of most homes. There, they mingle in confusion with tall grass or ill-defined borders… however choice the shrubs and flowers, if they occupy the ground so that there is no pleasant expanse of close-cut grass to relieve them, they cannot make a pretty place*.
A full eighteen years later, one can still find opposing points of view. Regarding congruity, a post from the June 6, 1887 Globe-Democrat, argued against mowing. It much preferred the meadow look of unplanned plots. “Drive through any ambitious township and you will see what I mean. On all sides there are places over nine-tenths absolutely neglected, while in front is a bit of lawn tended in city style. The owners are very proud of their lawn, but never consider the incongruity presented by the contrast…Let there be harmony among all parts of your property and rest assured you are showing good taste.”
A closer look at the anti-mow movement
Another protest involved the sound of whirling blades at work. It brings to mind how little industrial noise existed in the 19th century. What might this 1889 poet have written about the din of gas mowers, leaf blowers and string trimmers?
The noise of mowing could even cover nefarious activities. In June of 1890, two men went to a residence on St. Ange Avenue near Lafayette Park. Finding no-one home, they went to a shed out back, and brought out a lawn mower. One man mowed the grass in the front, averting suspicion from the neighbors. He made noise enough for his partner to break a rear window and sneak into the house. They made off with a pair of gold watches, an amethyst ring, a shotgun and a case of imported wine, along with the lawn mower.
The mower became the “smoking gun,” when Detectives McGrath and O’Connell came upon three men in an alley near Park and Mississippi Avenues. The stolen mower was with them. They had spent the morning in Lafayette Square, going door to door in search of empty homes in which to duplicate their mower-enhanced burglary.
Overall, the anti-mow crowd began to yield to the short grass enthusiasts. Newspaper stories in the late 1800s appeared, like the grass itself, in the spring. They continuing through the summer months each year. In 1888, the Post-Dispatch wrote a story called, “The Lawn Mower And How To Use It To Obtain A Soft Velvet Sward.” It began by calling the lawn mower, “a great institution in many ways.” After all sorts of advice on frequency of mowing, care of roots, fertilization, and length of cut, it wrapped up with this. “A beautiful well-kept lawn requires intelligent treatment to become a true ornamental adjunct to the family residence.”
The mowers move into the parks
In 1870, the St. Louis Parks Superintendent reported to the Board of Park Commissioners. His December report noted the widespread placement of grass sod in several parks, and need for top dressing, or fertilization. The recommendation was stable refuse, which “costs nothing but the transportation for it.” A suggested source was the white lead works, which could supply product “without interruption.”
White lead, used in almost all early paint manufacturing, was produced by curing lead in horse manure for a time. The chemical reaction that followed oxidized the lead, leaving a commercially valuable white powder. Since Southeast Missouri was rich in lead deposits, St. Louis became a hub for production and distribution.
A contest at Tower Grove Park
The following year, an advertisement appeared in the Missouri Republican for a mower popular in the East:
The Excelsior utilized either man or horse power. Eight local distributors sold this mower; the best ‘way to keep your lawns in fine order with much ease and little expense.”
Lawn Mower trials were held at Tower Grove Park on May 23, 1874. The popular Excelsior took on the Philadelphia Lawn Mower and Swift Lawn Mower.
The trial lasted for four hours. Results were interesting. The judges considered eight factors for deciding the superior mower:
1) Light Draft – no difference noted in draft among the three. 2) Easy Handling – a winner: Philadelphia. 3) Suitability on uneven surfaces – a winner: Philadelphia. 4) Simplicity – a winner: Philadelphia. 5) Easy Sharpening – a winner: Philadelphia. 6) Benefit of Roller Attachment – no winner. 7) Durability – no winner. 8) Perfection of cut – Excelsior and Philadelphia equally good.
Then pony lawn mowers, those pulled by a small horse, were evaluated on grass six or more inches tall. The Excelsior was considered superior, although it was noted that the horse shafts for the Philadelphia were unfortunately forgotten in town. As a result, it could not be demonstrated to best advantage by two men instead.
A win for Philly
As a result, the Philadelphia mower took its pride of place among the St. Louis mowing crowd. Here’s an add from the June 23 1878 Globe-Democrat:
The Philadelphia offered their mower in two inch width increments, from 10-18 inches, for whatever reason:
One would have to really enjoy spending time in the yard to trim it with a 10” mower.
I focus on the Philadelphia mower because it addresses the question about how parks mowed grass in the early years. This ad contains a testimonial from Leonard Hunt, superintendent of Lafayette Park. Below it appears one from Henry Shaw himself, on behalf of Tower Grove Park. Note the superintendent of the St. Louis Fairgrounds, who states that his mowers were in use ten hours per day.
Play ball!
The widespread adoption of the lawn mower accelerated development of two sports dependent upon manicured grass; baseball and golf. It might be pure coincidence that the National League, professional baseball’s “senior circuit” began in 1876. The first golf clubs in America were chartered in the 1880s and quickly grew. A St. Louis Republic story in 1903 described a local course that employed five men full time to mow, with horse driven mowers on the fairways and man driven mowers on the greens and tee boxes. There were 267 golf clubs by 1910, and over 1,100 USGA sanctioned clubs by 1932. Today, there are over 10,600 golf courses and many more thousand ball diamonds. They all require scrupulous mowing.
And if you’re going to play, or avoid choking out the newly cut lawn, the clippings need to go somewhere. There were bagging attachments back in the 1880s, but they left users with the quandary of what next to do with the harvest. A 1901 writer to the Post-Dispatch considered the clippings to be refuse. He bemoaned that people “take a great pride in tidying up their lawns and then dumping the refuse at their neighbor’s back gate or convenient alley.”
A passion for mowing grass
Growing up in the 1960s, it seemed that every boy’s first experience with gasoline engines, and capitalism for that matter, revolved around summers and lawn mowers. I found an article in the Detroit Free Press from summer of 1879, that claimed, “every well-regulated family should have a boy about fourteen years old, a lawn-mower, and grass enough to set the boy to work for an hour after school.”
This is fine, but boys often grow to be men, and might grow too fond of their mowers and duty to the lawn. A page one story from the May 11, 1904 Post-Dispatch related the story of two men equally set on mowing the same lawn at Mullanphy Hospital. It didn’t end well for either.
1904 was, of course, a noteworthy year for St. Louis. The World’s Fair here proved to be a showcase for art, travel, entertainment and technology.
Keen Kutters and Klover Katchers
Simmons Hardware Company was a large manufacturer of tools, founded in 1870. Founder Edward Simmons retired in 1898 and his son George became general manager. They oversaw an enterprise that made ammunition, wire, knives, wine and dog collars. A catchy Simmons motto of the time was, “if you can’t eat it, fold it or pour it, it’s hardware.” At the end of the 19th century, both Simmons and Shapleigh of St. Louis along with Sears Roebuck of Chicago were the hardware titans of the country. In 1895, one hundred business leaders wrote the same number of essays about American manufacturing in 100 Years Of American Commerce. Edward Simmons was chosen to write the section dealing with hardware.
A key product line of Simmons was Keen Cutter bladed tools. There were over 800, but Keen Klipper lawn mowers were a particular hit.
A large exhibit at the hometown Worlds Fair was sponsored by Simmons and its Keen Kutter products.
Arch rival Shapleigh Hardware purchased Simmons in 1940, and continued the Keen Cutter brand until 1960. A couple of other purchases followed, and the Keen Cutter brand eventually devolved to just knives by Schrade Cutlery, where they are still available.
The Keen Klipper mowers employed ball bearings for less friction, and proved to be a very easy sell. They made high grass and low grass mowers, in widths from 12 to 20 inches, in a price range from $6.00 to $13.00. You could throw in a grass catcher for as little as $0.50.
The dawning of suburbia
A feature in the October 25 1903 Globe-Democrat looked at “Country Life For City People.” It speculated upon experiments in Berlin in which an electric car reached speeds of 180 miles per hour. The utopian author foresaw that, with widespread adoption, everyone could live in the country. “A blissful prospect, as one speeds from his vine-embowered cottage twenty miles out, to the heart of St. Louis in fifteen minutes.”
Bliss, in his neighbors “not knowing what he is having boiled for dinner,” and “making it their business to know if your grass isn’t cut.” The writer argued that no-one would need be a grass slave, when provided a hammock and a good cigar. One could do as he pleased, rather than “toil in melancholy pining and perspiration after a lawn mower.” At two miles a minute, one could place half a county between himself and the smoke, smell and crime of the city in a quarter hour. Thus, the dream of a perfect suburban existence.
Indeed, the pastoral, easy life feel of mowing ads made the art of groundskeeping look both easy and elegant:
Given enough technical progress, ads eventually suggested that a pretty girl wouldn’t even be competitive with the sheer thrill of mowing one’s lawn:
It’s now the days of zero turn radius riding mowers and landscaping crews that offload machines that zip through a lawn cutting 96” swaths and mulching the clippings before they can land. On a spring weekend day in suburban America, the sound of mowers, blowers and trimmers issues from all directions. Most folks have normalized the noise as the price you pay for the “peace and quiet” of the country.
Epilogue
To think that, 120 years ago, some folks agonized over the clatter of a push mower. Here’s a little reminder of how relatively quiet it was back in July 1902.
The Old Lawn Mower When in the summer twilight Upon the steps you drop To read the evening paper And find which team’s on top It sadly jars the pleasure Of thoughts you had in store To hear the rattle, rattle Of the old lawn mower Rattle, rattle, rattle! Oh, will it never stop? Clatter, clatter, clatter! You wish its wheels would pop. Oh, for an ax to smash it, This unremitting bore, This noisy and pestiferous And squeaky old lawn mower!
Today it’s more the binging and chirping of the car’s safety features, the phone’s notification features, and police, fire, ambulance and tornado sirens. The poet cited above would never have survived it. We’re a hearty and tolerant people these days!
Resources
The days before push mowers are well described in The Small Farmer’s Journal, at: https://smallfarmersjournal.com/a-short-history-of-the-horse-drawn-mower/ Lynn R. Miller
A handy timeline of mowing technology appears at whirltronics.com
The weird interplay of horse stable waste and lead in the production of white lead was subject of an earlier essay: http://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1878-the-power-couple-of-the-square/
More on mowers from https://www.ourmidland.com/lifestyles/article/Chuck-Martin-nbsp-Early-American-nbsp-lawns-were-15417263.php#
The reference to sodding of St Louis parks and sourcing animal waste from white lead works appeared in the Missouri Republican of December 6, 1870.
*The quote from 1870 on lawns is from “The Art Of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds” by Frank J. Scott. It’s a 700 page whopper, published by D. Appleton and Co; available in it’s flowery entirety here: https://archive.org/details/artofbeautifyi00scot/mode/2up?view=theater
Wikipedia offers a nifty history of golf in its entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_golf
History of Keen Cutter at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keen_Kutter and Simmons Hardware at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simmons_Hardware_Company
And various articles from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Globe-Democrat and St. Louis Republican and Missouri Republican newspapers.
Mike,
My father-in-law gave me an old Kleen Kutter-type mower. It was hardly a satisfaction to push and cut with. So it sat next to my Snapper in my garage for 15 years.
Dan
It’s funny how disused tools pile up. Like we’ll get back to them, or they’ll somehow come in handy for an alternate use. A cousin in Massachusetts is currently restoring an old Keen Kutter, but I don’t think her satisfaction is guaranteed either. I can’t remember ever pushing my folks to let me mow the lawn.