CHAPTER X 

 FARM EQUIPMENT 



BY the term " equipment " we mean all produced instruments 

 of production. In this class fall all agencies of production ex- 

 cepting man and land or nature. Thus horses, tools, machinery, 

 buildings, fences, seeds, feeds, and other supplies are here classed 

 as equipment. Economists have used the term " capital " 

 in the same sense the term " equipment " is used here. The 

 term which clearly refers to the concrete goods rather than to 

 their value or to the amount of money invested in them is 

 preferred because a large share of the readers of this book are 

 accustomed to thinking of " capital " as the amount of money 

 invested in the land and the equipment together. 



The equipments of the farm may be classed as movable and 

 immovable. In the first class fall the live stock, tools, machin- 

 ery, and supplies, while buildings, fences, wells, etc. form the 

 latter class. A distinction is sometimes made between operat- 

 ing capital and fixed capital; the former is applied to those items 

 which we call movable equipment, the latter including land as 

 well as permanent improvements. It is only fair to note, how- 

 ever, in this connection, that a dairy cow barn and silos are just 

 as truly operating capital in the milk business as the cows them- 

 selves, and a tobacco curing shed is operating capital to the 

 tobacco grower as much as his transplanter, but in the common 

 usage of the terms, the barns, silos, and shed would be classed 

 as fixed capital. 



Farm buildings in the United States were valued at $6,- 

 325,451,528, April 15, 1910, or about 15 per cent of the valua- 

 tion of all farm property. Implements and machinery were 

 valued at $1,265,149,783, and live stock at $4,925,173,610. 



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