270 POWER AND THE PLOW 



The tractor adds capacity to the farmer's weapons and the 

 work goes on at top speed. All the work of soil preparation 

 up to planting, or nearly 66 per cent, of the hours required up 

 to the harvest, may easily and quickly be done by the tractor. 



For some operations the operator cannot depend on his 

 animals, and for those jobs the live farmer wants power when 

 he wants it, not when the other fellow is through. Even on 

 the farms where there are plenty of horses, how often are the 

 shredding and shelling delayed until the nasty fall rains and 

 snow set in, while an individual outfit could have finished in 

 nice weather. Corn is put into the silo either too green or 

 too dry for lack of an engine at the proper time; top prices 

 missed for want of means to rush stuff to market; and roads 

 allowed to go to pieces for want of power to work them in the 

 spring, when they need attention most. There are dozens 

 of things that a tractor can do when regarded as something 

 more than an ornament. It can pull mowers, haul hay to the 

 stack, bale the stack and haul the bales to town. It can econom- 

 ically do everything to raise corn except the easy work of 

 planting and cultivating, and in addition it will run any one 

 of the half dozen machines for putting the corn into more 

 convenient shape for feeding or market. It can handle every 

 operation connected with small grain crops. With the individual 

 threshing outfit more than one small farmer throws off the 

 belt and, using a big rack, goes after a big load of bundles with 

 the tractor. Thus, three or four men and a team to haul grain 

 do the threshing instead of the usual big, hungry, dirty crew. 



The tractor costs much less than the horses that will equal 

 it in power. If both are worked constantly at full capacity, 

 the tractor will last the longer. It is not subject to disease 

 and death, and if seriously damaged can be replaced piecemeal, 

 while the horse is permanently out of commission. Repairs 

 on a well-built tractor are less than shoeing and veterinary 

 attendance on the horses that will accomplish the same volume 

 of work. Overhead charges therefore are less on the machine 



