LIVE STOCK BREEDERS. 121 



true if the machine Is used for the purpose of movinj^ a mass of loose 

 earth, weeds, trasli, etc., into the center of the highway. Most of us 

 reahze this fact. Most of us also see the waste of time and money caused 

 by breaking in one new team each day and by having two or three men 

 idle while their teams are at work on the machine. But have we ever 

 made a careful estimate of these wastes one by one and then footed them 

 up ? Let us do some ciphering. We will first consider the "green team" 

 item. Many of us have seen new teams put on the machine in the morn- 

 ing that so disorganized the other six horses that the outfit did not get 

 to working steadily until the middle of the afternoon. And we have seen 

 balky teams and balky drivers that not only made the other animals do all 

 the work but drag them along to boot. We are also acquainted with the 

 lazy team driven by the shirk;, their double trees are back against the 

 wheel, they do no work, neither do they allow the team on the other side 

 of the tongue to pull. Indeed the very best new team cannot, for rea- 

 sons obvious to every experienced teamster, do itself justice when it first 

 sets in. May we not, then, conservatively estimate that the average 

 "green team" does only half a team's work up to noon of the first day? 

 That is to say, one-fourth of one day's work for a two horse team is 

 wasted by that team. But the other six horses have also lost time. We 

 will estimate the loss of each of the other teams as being one-half the 

 loss of the green span ; that is, one-half of three-fourths, or three-eighths 

 of a day, which added to the other one-fourth gives us a total of seven- 

 eighths of a day for one team. If a team is worth one dollar per day, 

 we have a loss of 87^ cents. Conservative road men will, I feel sure, 

 agree that this is a low estimate to put on the difference between a strong 

 able team of eight horses accustomed to each other and to the work and, 

 on the other hand, a picked-up team, no span of wdiich works longer than 

 a day and a half and which is being constantly changed and disorganized. 

 Eighty-seven cents w^aste per day for breaking green teams. The men 

 who drive and operate the machine waste time also by reason of tho 

 green team. Computing their loss on the same basis as before, each man 

 will lose one-eighth day, equal to one-fourth day for one man, or twenty- 

 five cents, making our total, so far $i.i2|^. To this we must add the 

 time of three other men, for one man can drive eight horses, four abreast 

 almost as easily as he can drive four horses, two abreast, so here is an- 

 other item of loss amounting to $3.00 per day for extra men, giving us 

 a grand total loss for teams and men of $4.12^ per day. More than this 

 is spent on each mile of the road in a majority of our counties and twice 

 as much in some of them. All this is on the presumption that the ma- 

 chine is doing heavy zvork. That is, cutting down banks, filling big 

 ditches or making brand new roads. If, however, it is being used with 



