246 POWER AND THE PLOW 



renewed should be procured and kept on hand for emergencies. 

 Better prices and more prompt delivery can of course be had 

 during the slack seasons. 



During the season, if repairs are needed, they should be 

 ordered by wire and shipped by express, as every day's delay 

 means a loss of much more than the cost of telegrams and ex- 

 pressage. In all cases when ordering repairs, operators should 

 be careful to give a full description. They should ascertain 

 also, if possible, the number of the part, the number of the en- 

 gine, and the date when it was purchased. This in itself will 

 save many agonizing delays which occur when insufficient data 

 are given to enable the repair man at the branch office or factory 

 to locate the desired part. 



Every possible precaution should be taken to prevent 

 accidents and delay. It takes approximately twenty-seven 

 minutes every day of the year merely to do chores for one 

 work horse; hence an hour a day is not an excessive amount 

 of time to be spent by one man in looking after a machine 

 capable of doing the work of twenty-five to thirty horses. 



The plowing season is short, also the threshing season. The 

 time of doing the work is the constant factor; the number and 

 capacity of outfits, the variable factors. The more each opera- 

 tor accomplishes in a given time, the less competition he will 

 have and the more service he can obtain from his engine. 

 Counting only the items which are comparable to the over- 

 head charges on the engine, that is, the interest, depreciation, 

 shoeing, etc., we find that overhead charges amount to about 

 $30 per year on each horse. This is divided among about 

 1000 working hours, hence two horses have an overhead cost 

 of 6 cents per hour and another cent can be added for the plow. 

 A driver's labor costs 12 to 15 cents per hour. If the driver 

 stops his team for fifteen minutes to adjust a plow, the loss 

 is a trifle over 5 cents. Counting the daily overhead cost of a 

 gas tractor as $4.00, the plow cost as $1.25, and the labor of 

 two men as $5.00, we have a total of about 1.7 cents per minute. 



