CHAPTER VIII 



AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY AND THE TRUST QUESTION 



Agricultural labor, as we have seen, is scarce, and growing 

 scarcer. Keeping pace with this growing scarcity of labor is an 

 increase in labor-saving machinery on the farm. Testifying before 

 the Industrial Commission in 1900, a Georgia planter said that 

 now one man and "a McCormick reaper and two mules do the 

 work of eight good men." The same changed condition was 

 pictured by M. F. Greeley of South Dakota, in these words: 

 " When I first worked out it took five binders to follow a machine, 

 one man to rake off, and one to carry the bundles together. Now 

 the hired girl frequently drives a machine that does the whole 

 business." Without accepting the literal truth of this rhetorical 

 statement of Mr. Greeley's we can safely believe the basic fact 

 that there has been a tremendous increase in the use of agricultural 

 machinery in recent years. 



Industrial Revolution in Agriculture. The "Industrial Revo- 

 lution in Agriculture" has come about one hundred years behind 

 the revolution in the manufacturing industry. Since the Civil 

 War we have witnessed a great increase in the use of farm 

 machinery. The following interesting table shows the change in 

 three decades: 



Value of Agricultural Machinery Per Acre of Farm Land 



1880. . . , . $ .76 



1890 79 



1900 89 



1910 1.44 



A calculation made by the Department of Labor in 1899 

 showed that improved agricultural machinery had reduced the 

 labor cost of corn per bushel from 35.77 cents to 10.57 cents, or 

 70.5 per cent, and had reduced the time of human labor from 274 

 minutes to 41.3 minutes, or 84.9 per cent. David A. Wells esti- 

 mated that the labor of three or four men in the Dakota wheat 

 fields would annually produce 1,000 barrels of flour, delivered at 

 the seaboard, or enough flour to furnish bread to one thousand 

 persons for one year. 



Effects. Investing more money in agricultural machinery has 

 made this industry more " capitalistic." There is now less of 

 drudgery in farming and more of business. The capital invest- 

 ment of the farmer must now be rightly apportioned to each of 



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