Machinery. 



I sometimes think we do not often realize how much we are 

 indebted to machinery for our present industrial and agricul- 

 tural output. Harrington Emerson, in his work on the "Twelve 

 Principles of Efficiency," estimates that the amount of coal 

 used to-day for power purposes develops a volume of power 

 equivalent to supplementing each adult man with 22 mechan- 

 ical slaves. The American farmer has always led the world 

 in supplementing his own labor with horses and machinery, 

 just as in this period he leads the world in the use of tractors. 

 Prior to the war Germany had an agricultural population nearly 

 as great as our own, but she had on her farms only about 

 one fifth the number of horses and mules. Our superiority in 

 horse power on farms over that of Germany would exert a 

 muscular force equal to that of 80,000,000 men. Furthermore, 

 it has been estimated that the farm machinery invented and 

 perfected between 1830 and 1895 resulted in the latter year in 

 saving 450,368,992 days' work, or 79 per cent of the labor which 

 would have been required by hand methods to produce nine 

 of our principal agricultural crops. The farmer, then, who 

 would take the risks out of farming must pay careful attention 

 to his farm power and his equipment of machinery. 



We should consider carefully how much power we need, and 

 whether it should be horse or tractor power, or both. There 

 seems to be a pretty general agreement that tractor power is 

 not much cheaper than horse power, but that there is a decided 

 gain in time. This is a very important point in this climate 

 where we have to raise crops between frosts. The first season 

 after I bought my tractor was very cold and wet in the early 

 spring. Our first plantings of string beans rotted and had to 

 be replanted. This upset our schedules of plantings, and had 

 there been much delay in replanting we would have run into 

 fall frosts. But with the tractor working sixteen hours a day 

 v\hen dry weather came we were able to refit the ground for 

 replanting quickly, to keep up with our other work, and grow 

 a profitable crop. Our ability to meet this particular emer- 

 gency probably paid the entire cost of our tractor. So far, 

 however, I have not dared to let the tractor displace much 



