20 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 



feed, and when they reach an unprofitable age for 

 work, they can be fattened and sohl for beef. Oxen, 

 however, move slowly and cannot endure as many 

 hours of continuous labor as horses and mules. 

 With a good span of mules a man can easily plow 

 an acre a day in ordinary soils. He will do well to 

 plow half an acre with a yoke of oxen. One man 

 can manage eight horses and a sulky gang plow, but 

 with four yoke of cattle it requires one man on the 

 plow and usually two others to manage the team. 

 In countries where human labor is very cheap it 

 probably still pays to use cattle; but in countries like 

 the United States and Cuba, where farm wages are 

 high, it is cheaper and more satisfactory to use horses 

 and mules. At the South mules seem on the whole 

 to stand farm labor better than horses. Where 

 farming is carried on on a large scale and where the 

 land is level and other conditions are favorable, steam 

 power is coming to be utilized more and more for 

 plowing and other farm work. Steam plows are of 

 two general t3^pes: first, those where the gangs are 

 drawn by locomobile engines which simjjly replace 

 the animals and move round and round the field; and 

 second, those where the gangs are attached to cables 

 and are drawn back and forth across the field by a 

 single stationary engine or by two which are moved 

 slowly along its opposite sides. Recently the at- 

 tempt is also being made with some success to adapt 

 gasoline or alcohol motors such as are used for auto- 

 mobiles to agricultural purposes. 



If a field is always plowed in tlie same manner, the 

 continued turning of the furrows in one direction 



