)MiPULL 



T ft ACTOR 



MAN made his first step toward civilization when he took 

 a crooked stick and began to till the soil, using first the 

 force of his own muscles. Later he learned to apply 

 the power of the animal to the work. Upon cultivating the 

 soil, he became master of the plants and shaped them to serve his 

 purposes. With the plow the savage life of the hunter and the nomad 

 life of the herder gave way to that settled agriculture that now 

 yields our food supply and upon which rests our modern civilization. 



Strangely enough, this work of plowing with which man began 

 his systematic labor remains today still his severest toil. For man, 

 as well as animals on the farm, the dusty and monotonous work of 

 plowing is the hardest drudgery. Think of the power required to 

 pull a plow only the distance across the room, and then of the eight 

 miles of furrow travel in every acre of land. To plow a square mile 

 one man and two or three horses must walk 5,200 miles each. It is 

 easier and the distance less to walk around the earth at the equa- 

 tor than to follow a plow turning a tract of five square miles. To 

 plow three townships the plowman must walk as far as irom.th.e, earth 

 to the moon and back again and sixty thousand miles farther. Ten 

 horse power hours are needed to turn an acre of land, and to plow one 

 half the area of the United States nine billion four hundred and fifty- 

 four million seven hundred and thirty-six thousand (9,454,736,000) 

 horse power hours are required. 



In the main, power is required for three great human needs. 



First. To changing the shape of materials, as grinding of 

 grains, spinning, weaving, and the working of metals and wood in 

 factories. 



Second. For transporting men and materials from place to ^* 



place upon the earth. In wagons, steamboats, on railroad trains, ^D^YeZ 

 automobiles and motor trucks. 



Third. In tilling the soil, and in this field the toil of turning 

 once each year by the plow the face of the whole earth consumes 

 more power than any other single human need. 



This plowing task — man's earliest and still his greatest need 

 for power — until yesterday has been performed almost 

 exclusively by animals. Today, only one acre in 

 twenty thousand is plowed by mechanical 

 power, and this not without reason 



The world's most efficient 

 machine is still the human and 

 animal muscle, which in all the 

 perfection to which it has been 

 developed in the countless 



ere 



