THE IRRIGATION AGE 



43 



The Mesa Verde is the graveyard of 

 lost and half forgotten tribes, who had 

 passed out of existence before the ancient 

 mound-builders came to the country. 

 Their ruined castles, amid the canons of 

 Colorado, and regions which once teemed 

 with a busy population, are now given 

 over to the coyote, the prairie dog and the 

 Indian. It is a weird and silent country, 

 whose story is almost lost in the darkness 

 of the past. 



MACHINES AND THE FARMER. 



The wonders wrought by machinery jn 

 many lines of human and animal work 

 have been best realized by bringing the 

 story into figures. The engines of the 

 world are reckoned in horse powers and 

 the enormous number of horses that would 

 be required to replace them have been 

 computed; other machinery, such as shoe- 

 makirig, have been estimated in the num- 

 ber of men and hours needed to do the 

 work of a complete set of machines. The 

 most telling presentment is what machines 

 have done for farming. Calculations have 

 been made of the time and cost of produc- 

 ing a bushel of wheat, corn, etc., in the 

 lyth century and by the aid of implements 

 and machines at the close. 



Before the use of improved machinery 

 the average time required to produce a 

 bushel of corn was four hours and thirty- 

 four minutes; by the use of machinery the 

 time is only forty one minutes, while the 

 cost of the labor declined from 35:1 cents 

 to IDs cents. 



The advantages of machine over hand 

 labor was greater in some lines than 

 others. One of the greatest was in the 

 shelling of corn; in this case the machine, 

 operated by steam, shells a bu>hel of corn 

 a minute. In the old way the labor of one 

 man was required for 100 minutes to do 

 an equal amount of work. 



The amount of human labor that has 

 now to be expended, from beginning to 

 end. to produce a bushel of wheat occupies 



only ten minutes. In 1830 it was three 

 hours and three minutes. 



During this interval the cost of labor ta 

 accomplish this has declined from 17! 

 cents to 3 cents. According to these 

 figures the pay of the laborer is increased 

 from a fraction under 6 cents to 20 cents 

 per hour. 



The plow of 1830 was a heavy and 

 clumsy affair, seed was sown by hand and 

 harrowed into the ground with bush har- 

 rows. The grain was cut with sickles, 

 hauled to a barn and threshed with flails, 

 after which it was winnowed upon a sheet 

 fixed on rods. The grain was thrown upon 

 it with a shovel and tossed up by two men 

 until fhe wind had blown the chaff away. 



In the case of the corn crop the money 

 measure of the saving in the human labor 

 required to produce it in the last year of 

 the century, as compared with the old 

 methods, was $523,276,642, for wheat, 

 $79,194,867; oats, $52,866,200; corn, 

 $1,408,950; barley, $7,232,480; potatoes, 

 $7,366,820; hay, $10,034,868, a total of 

 $681 , 47 1 ,827. Farm Mack inert/. 



HAWAII AND PORTO RICO. 



In the act making appropriations for 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture for 

 the present fiscal year Congress provided 

 for the inauguration of experiment stations 

 in the islands of Hawaii and Porto Rico. 

 In accordance with this provision, the De- 

 partment has taken preliminary steps to 

 determine the best plan of operation in 

 each case and the subjects which are in 

 most need of immediate attention. The 

 work has been placed in charge of the 

 Office of Experiment Stations, and the 

 following information in relation to the 

 action taken by that office is from Experi- 

 ment Station Records, Vol. XII, No. 1. 



Prof. S. A. Knapp, of Louisiana, has 

 been selected to investigate the agricul- 

 tural conditions and possibilites of Porto 

 Rico, and went to the island in June. He 

 will study the existing agricultural condi- 



