50 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



production amounts to 46.3 per cent. The average date of the 

 hand-method investigations made use of in this presentation is 

 1850; the average date for the machine-method investigations 

 is 1895 a difference of forty-five years. Surely it will not be 

 too much to say that during the last half of the nineteenth century 

 the cost of production of these crops was reduced by one half. If 

 we take into account the decreased cost to the farmer of food and 

 lodging for his hired workmen and of the decreased cost of storage 

 room for grain in the straw, then the total saving must appear to 

 be even greater than this. 1 



Fluctuations in Quantity of Product 



The use of machinery in the production of agricultural products, 

 as in the production of manufactures, tends to diminish the fluctua- 

 tions in supply. Capital in any form cannot, ordinarily, be diverted 

 from the production for which it was designed, without more or 

 less waste. If, for example, a farmer wishes to change from pro- 

 ducing wheat to producing potatoes, he must sell his reaper at a 

 sacrifice. The difficulty in making such changes operates against 

 great and sudden changes from one line of production to another, 

 even when the prospects for profit in such other line may be 

 unusually bright. Thus the supply of the more profitable product 



1 To ascertain the amount of saving precisely is difficult ; but looking through 

 the successive stages of management and seeing that the owner of a stock farm 

 in the preparation of his land by using lighter plows is able to cast off one horse 

 in three ; and by adopting other simple tools to dispense altogether with the great 

 part of his plowing ; that in the culture of crops by the various drills, horse- 

 power can be partly reduced ; the seed otherwise wanted, partly saved ; and the 

 use of manures greatly economized ; while the horse hoe replaces the hoe at one 

 half the expense ; that at harvest the American reaper can effect nearly thirty 

 men's work ; while the Scotch cart replaces the old English wagon with exactly 

 half the horses ; that in preparing corn for food the steam threshing machine 

 saves two thirds of our former expense ; and in preparing food for stock the 

 turnip cutter, at an outlay of is., adds 8s. a head in one winter to the value of 

 sheep; lastly, that in the indispensable but costly operation of drainage, the 

 materials have been reduced from 80 s. to 155., to one fifth namely of their former 

 cost ; it seems to be proved that the efforts of agricultural mechanists have been 

 so far successful, as in all these main branches of farming labor taken together, 

 to effect a saving on outgoings or else an increase of incomings of not less than 

 one half. Quoted from Pusey's report on Agricultural Implements in the 

 Exhibit of 1851, by Hearn, " Plutology," p. 171 



