280 FARM MANAGEMENT 



If we measure a farm by the amount of labor, these are 

 really smaller farms than the farms in New Jersey. About 

 the same labor was hired as in the county in Utah and half 

 as much as in New Jersey, and less labor than in the dairy 

 county in Illinois. These Iowa farms are not bonanza 

 farms. They are family-farms. With the intelligent use 

 of horses and machinery, a family in this county can farm 

 '320 acres and do it well without hiring much help. The 

 movement in this county is toward farms of 160 or more 

 acres. 



The counties studied in Alabama, New Jersey, and 

 Utah are making only a limited use of machinery and 

 horse power, because the types of farming are so largely 

 dependent on hand labor. Shelby County, Iowa, is typical 

 of an entirely different system of farming. When one 

 man begins to drive four horses instead of one or two, we 

 have entirely different conditions. 



As we would naturally expect, the farmers who drive 

 four-horse teams are prospering. Much of the rise in land 

 values in the Central West is due to the great economy 

 in production that has come from the use of modern 

 machinery. 



It is often said that this machinery has saved horse 

 labor, but the saving is in men more than in horses. The 

 negro's mule raises as many acres of crops as does the horse 

 in Iowa, but the negro drives one mule. The Iowa farmer 

 drives more horses, so that he raises nearly five times the 

 crop area per man. After the county was settled, the 

 size of farms began to decrease. The idea of driving more 

 than two horses then came in and in twenty years raised 

 the size of farms 65 per cent. 



It is this change that has resulted in the decrease in 

 rural population in Iowa. 



