COMPE TITION. 8 1 



upon it as it moves along, cutting two furrows of 

 fourteen inches wide. When it is considered that not 

 infrequently four of these four-horse teams, one after 

 the other, are seen in the same field, cutting furrows 

 miles in length, an idea is gained of what is being 

 done in the West by machinery and a very limited 

 amount of human labor. One man, who does the har- 

 rowing, drives four horses attached to a gang of four 

 harrows, covering a width of twenty-four feet. The 

 seed is sown by broadcast seeders, planting seed over a 

 width of sixteen feet, and drawn by four horses. To 

 gather the harvest self-binding reapers, drawn by three 

 horses, are also managed by one man. 



Of the great reapers one farm in Dakota operates 

 sixty-five. It is said that " Dr. Glen's forty-five thou- 

 sand acres of wheat in California in 1880 were gathered 

 by machines, each of which cut, threshed, winnowed, 

 and bagged, sixty acres of wheat in a day." 



The threshing and cleaning are mostly done by steam 

 power in the field, and the grain is frequently hauled in 

 bulk to the railway stations to be deposited in elevators 

 or warehouses. 



Mr. Dalrymple's hundred square miles of wheat are 

 cultivated and gathered with machines and a troop of 

 four hundred farm servants. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in 

 referring to this in his " Triumphant Democracy," gives his 

 opinion that it would require five thousand men in the 

 ordinary way of the East to accomplish the same result. 



As conditions exist it seems practically impossible for 

 small farmers to compete with farming conducted on 

 such a stupendous scale as that on the great farms of 

 the West. 



At ho7tie, the broad ranches of Texas, Kansas, and 

 4* 



