XXVII 

 BUSINESS MANAGEMENT IN TRACTION PLOWING 



THE success of a plowing outfit depends not only on 

 the efficiency of the equipment, but upon the 

 energy and business ability of the operator. It 

 goes without saying that good equipment is the 

 prime essential, but it is a common observation that all makes 

 of engines and plows fail in incompetent hands. 



The most successful use of the traction engine involves 

 farming on a basis of quality rather than quantity. The 

 biggest handicap to the popularization of engine power has been 

 slovenly work. There was a time when steam plowing was 

 synonymous with poor plowing and weed-infested farms. 

 Prof. Thomas Shaw, of Minnesota, now in charge of over 

 forty experimental farms for a great railway system in the 

 Northwest, even now goes so far as to ask if manufacturers 

 cannot bind their customers to a higher quality of work than 

 the majority are doing. In the past this complaint might 

 have been due somewhat to crude and clumsy equipment. Now, 

 however, the traction engine makes quality in farming possible, 

 owing to the fact that no work need be slighted for lack of 

 power. The engine and plow equipment is excellent, and one 

 by one other implements are being especially adapted for use 

 with engines. Operators must now remember that there is 

 more money in one acre of well-tilled land than in two where 

 the owner's desire is simply to farm on a large scale. 



A Saskatchewan official draws a parallel between the evolu- 

 tion of a large railway system and that of custom plowing 



243 



