10 POWER AND THE PLO\V 



Let no one liken the motor contest merely to an old-time 

 Scottish plowing match, where slow, careful work, a steady 

 team, and a skilful hand were the winning factors. The 

 Scotchman aspired to leave behind him smooth furrows, 

 straight as an arrow, with the crest of each standing up sharp 

 and unbroken from one end of the field to the other. Here at 

 Winnipeg, where all is speed, distance, and bustle, we might 

 more easily liken the scene to a hunt. We might call it a sport 

 of kings, where men spend thousands to win a golden bauble. 

 A bauble, did we say? Yes, and no, for the medal carries with 

 it a claim on the lion's share of trade in a new farm empire 

 richer than Ind. 



Fifty important firms on this continent are building tractors. 

 A million-dollar addition in Indiana, a new million-dollar plant 

 in Chicago, a two-million-dollar factory in Iowa, have been 

 erected to construct gas tractors in the brief interval since they 

 have been recognized as a possibility. New companies are 

 appearing, old firms expanding, to take care of the business 

 that rewards aggressive methods. The Northwest is the battle 

 ground. Machine power is on the ascendant. You hear it, 

 see it everywhere. Farmers and business men talk it. Sales- 

 men breathe it. A single issue of a Canadian magazine con- 

 tains 16,000 agate lines of reading matter and 20,000 of adver- 

 tising devoted to power plowing. In Western Canada two 

 hundred million acres of tillable land lie in a virgin state, 

 waiting for power and the plow, and trainload after trainload of 

 tractors, bedecked and bannered, are pouring from the East 

 and the South, through the Winnipeg gateway, and on to the 

 wide aces of Alberta and Saskatchewan to answer the call. 



Here is the fascination of the Winnipeg motor contest. 

 We are witnessing in miniature the conquest of the last great 

 West, a fit occupation for the strong. Broad, free stretches of 

 virgin land, so large as to dishearten the lone settler, offer a 

 problem to test the mettle of the keenest and the most power- 

 ful. Mechanical power has added tens of millions of bushels 



