286 POWER AND THE PLOW 



The animal must have frequent rest while at work. Under 

 average farm conditions it is idle eight hours in nine, yet it 

 must be kept warm and sheltered, must be fed and watered 

 three times a day whether in use or not. It deteriorates rapidly 

 in use or idleness, and is subject to premature death. Two 

 per cent, of all horses die of disease each year, and their working 

 life is less than ten thousand hours of actual service. 



The new farm power, the mechanical tractor, does not age 

 nor deteriorate when idle, and requires neither fuel nor attend- 

 ance when not at work. It solves the peak loads in agricul- 

 ture seed time and harvest time. The time spent annually 

 in caring for one horse will keep it in perfect working condition, 

 A mass of tireless but obedient steel, it will endure heavy work 

 twenty four hours instead of six, and outlive the average work 

 animal in hours of service. It can be sheltered with a year's 

 fuel supply in a tenth the space required by horses of equal 

 power and their feed. It concentrates hi one man's hands the 

 power of twenty horses, the endurance of a hundred, and adds 

 many fold to the acres he can cultivate. For the present it 

 consumes nothing from acres which might produce food for 

 mankind. 



At the close of the nineteenth century there remained 

 practically no field which the manufacturer and inventor had 

 not touched upon in the effort to conserve human labor. 

 Mechanical power and invention had largely fulfilled their 

 immediate promise to the industries of making and carrying, and 

 with the twentieth century dawned the last great epoch in the 

 transition from hand to machine power in human enterprise. 

 Agriculture, the greatest of all industries, awoke fully to the 

 necessity for greater power mechanical power. The duty 

 of agriculture is to supply food for the people, raw material 

 for manufactures, and products for trade and transportation. 

 With the introduction of machinery and animal power, this 

 task has been accomplished with relatively fewer and fewer 

 workmen. The application of mechanical power, which is 



