Item - The Great Little Wheelbarrow

Item-Level Details

Alternate Title:	The Song of the Wheelbarrow
Subject / Tag:	Poem

(source: NIU Libraries)

Online Full Text:	Northern Illinois University
Series:	New York Weekly v. 30 no. 52 (page 5)
Item:	The Great Little Wheelbarrow
Author:	Wallace, William Ross, 1819-1881
Date:	November 1, 1875
Description:	It was said by one of the wise men that "the man that made two blades of grass grow where one grew before, was a public benefactor." If inventions were valued by the results; that is the good done by the invention to the world at large, perhaps the inventor of the wheelbarrow would hold as high a place as any other. In almost all other inventions the thought that brought it about can be traced to other things, and almost all of our best machines are the product of many minds; and a growth from one thing to another. But the simple wheelbarrow, with its one wheel, well under the load, and its two handles for the laborer, must have sprung whole-formed from the brain of its inventor. To judge its value by its results, it at once enabled one man to do the work of four in moving material. Remember that this is an old invention, and made at a time when material was moved upon men's backs. Here were not only two but four blades of grass where there was one before. And its principle has never been improved upon. The wheelbarrow has been made of different material, and in many shapes, but the one wheel and two handles are there still just as at first. In this age of improvements it keeps its place as a labor-saving machine against all comers. It builds our railroads, digs our canals, and does our dirty heavy work. We might ask how could we do without it? Our canals would have cost four times as much to have dug them without it, and so with hundreds of other works. Such is the interesting preface written by the distinguished inventor, John W. Sutton, for The Song of the Wheelbarrow.
First Sentence:	Trundle me, trundle me, with my one wheel;