XXXII 

 THE FUTURE OF THE TRACTION ENGINE 



THE field that is now ripe for the introduction of 

 tractors on American farms alone is enormous, 

 without considering future and foreign opportuni- 

 ties. The tractor is best adapted, as we have 

 seen, to the raising of cereals. Thirty -five per cent, of the 

 horses and mules of the United States are found in ten cereal- 

 producing states where tractors are already used in large 

 numbers. In 1909, Minnesota, the two Dakotas, Montana, 

 Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and California 

 had 8,766,000 horses and mules of all ages, worth $859,444,000, 

 according to the latest Year Book of the Department of Agri- 

 culture. This is over five times our total annual output of 

 tractors and farm machinery for both domestic and export 

 trade. Many farmers in these states are replacing four horses 

 out of five with gas tractors. Let the average man replace 

 but one hi five, and there is sale for over 60,000 tractors at 

 $2500 to $3000 each. To pay cash for them would take less 

 than one seventh of the crop values produced in these states 

 in the year mentioned. 



The tractor will eventually occupy much of this field. It 

 already saves enormously in the cost of production and mar- 

 keting. In the future we may expect to see great improve- 

 ment in performance as operators become more and more 

 skilled. We may look for cheaper costs of manufacture when 

 machines are standardized, when designing has been reduced 

 to a written science and when the experimental cost has been 



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