248 POWER AND THE PLOW 



is applied to his whole day's work. For instance, suppose an 

 outfit averages twenty acres per day, the engineer getting 20 

 cents, guider and plowman 10 cents, and teamsters 7J cents 

 per acre. For fifteen acres the wages would be $3.00, $1.50, 

 and $1.13, respectively, and for twenty acres, $4.00, $2.00, and 

 $1.50. If the acreage goes above twenty, even slightly, a 

 slight amount, proportioned to the minimum rate for each 

 man, is added to the rate for the day. If the engineer got two 

 cents extra the others would get 1 cent and f cent, which, 

 on twenty-one acres would mean 42, 21, and 16 cents, respec- 

 tively, added. This does not invite abuse of the equipment. 



A good plan is to make the bonus effective only in case 

 the man remains with the outfit until the close of a given 

 season. As the season advances, the extra wages which might 

 be secured from some other operator are not sufficient to meet 

 the loss of bonus. One ranch of 25,000 acres in central Kansas 

 hires about 120 laborers, paying $20 a month as wages and at 

 the rate of $100 a year bonus, if the laborer remains on the farm 

 until the close of the fiscal year, on September 30th. 



Still another plan is to pay a very low rate of wages, amount- 

 ing to approximately half the normal earning capacity of each 

 man, supplementing this with a payment by the acre, which, 

 for an average day's run, would pay an average total wage. 

 Thus, a man worth $2.00 per day would be paid $1.00 per day 

 and 5 cents per acre. His wages would seldom fall below $1.75 

 and could be increased to from $2.75 to $3.00 with everything 

 favorable. 



The tractioneer should remember that the plows of to-day 

 are designed to run at the speed a horse will maintain, namely, 

 two miles an hour or less. At a higher speed a given plow may 

 scour better, and will undoubtedly pulverize better, but there 

 is also the danger of throwing the dirt too far, scattering 

 trash, and unnecessarily increasing the power required to turn 

 the furrow. Special plows, such as are used with oxen on the 

 one hand and some foreign cable systems on the other, produce 



