PRIMARY RESULTS 67 



in each of the more sharply defined farming districts. The 

 figures would also have a directly practical application, for 

 they would be of much service, for example, to local tenant- 

 right valuers' associations, whose figures from which to 

 work out the compensation due to the outgoing tenant for 

 tillage and acts of husbandry must necessarily be made up 

 from average costs. Again, such information is required 

 for contrasting the relative cost of horse and mechanical 

 labour, though in this case it must be remembered that 

 relative cost may have very little to do with relative 

 advantage, when other factors are considered. 



In Table XI is shown a Field-labour Sheet, designed to 

 give in diary form the expenditure of manual and horse 

 labour upon the various acts of husbandry performed for 

 any crops. It is entered up from the daily Time-sheets 

 (see p. 25). The man and horse days or hours are recorded 

 weekly on each crop as employed, under the necessary 

 headings ; the total of each is priced either week by week 

 or at the end of the year, and the unit cost of the various 

 operations is ascertained by dividing by the crop acreage. 



(b) Mechanical Power 



Farmers have long been accustomed to the application 

 of steam power to ploughing and cultivation, and the advan- 

 tages attending its use in certain conditions are fully 

 recognized. Few farmers, however, are the owners of steam 

 cultivation outfits, and in the great majority of cases the 

 cost of the work performed is a simple calculation dependent 

 on the contractor's price for the work, the cost of coal and 

 carting it, and the cost of carting water. Similarly, for such 

 operations as threshing and chaff-cutting by steam the 

 work has been specialized by contractors and the cost is 

 readily ascertained in the same way. The advent of the 

 agricultural tractor, however, has made very many men 

 their own machinists, and at the present time the collection 

 of data as to the cost of the application of tractor power is 

 a matter that calls urgently for investigation. The demands 



E2 



