THE MOTOR CONTEST 5 



during the long busy hours, the lack of opportunity for restful 

 sleep and clean washing, all emphasize the bustle and confusion, 

 and give some hint of the hardships borne without a murmur 

 by the loyal mechanics. Their iron steeds have been put 

 in the final pink of condition. The night before the supreme 

 test the men sleep in their clothes on the field, one eye open for 

 prowlers from rival camps. 



Out on the fields at dawn we find the officials, business-like 

 college professors, clad in wide-brimmed hats and overalls. 

 Harassed and buffeted by contending ranks, they discharge 

 their duties with all the more zest. Fuel and water are care- 

 fully dispensed, and one by one the puffing, purring steamers 

 and the puttering gas tractors are sent into the fray. Down the 

 field, headed straight for each flag in the line, the steersman 

 strikes his furrow. Circling quickly at the other end, he re- 

 turns carefully upon the edge of the first. Back and forth the 

 engines puff and groan, while plowshares that have been 

 sharpened to a razor edge at the factory cut the tough, dry sod 

 as a knife cuts cheese. Two acres of virgin prairie grow dark 

 with every mile of travel, four acres in an hour. Once in a 

 former contest an acre of stubble ground was plowed in eight 

 minutes, a world's record. Tons of coal and carloads of water 

 are sent into the thin air, and between sunrise of one day and 

 nightfall of the next three hundred and twenty acres of 

 virgin land are doubled in value by breaking. 



Here is a mammoth steam engine of the double-cylinder type; 

 there a single cylinder. Yonder is an engine which has been 

 used until bearings are worn to a glassy smoothness and every 

 joint is limber. Next to it is one losing hopelessly through lack 

 of preliminary tuning up. Alongside a steam mogul is a 

 gasoline midget. On the next course is the hope of an inventor 

 who has staked his all on a crude combination of plows, harrows, 

 and packers. A fussy little single-cylinder engine is coughing, 

 "I can't, I can't, I can, I can, I can, I can't, I can't." Yon- 

 der can be seen a gas tractor with opposed engine, here a four- 



