302 POWER AND THE PLOW 



leaving his platform. A simple, durable and efficient power- 

 lift plow, using some other medium than steam, would assist 

 in the solution of this problem. 



But the tractor has still greater opportunities open to it. 

 Had the steam tractor become even fairly well perfected in the 

 early days of the nineteenth century, before Stephenson brought 

 forth his railway, the latter might easily have been delayed for 

 several generations. In its place we might have now a nation 

 closely knit together by a system of excellent roads, upon which 

 our freight and passenger traffic would proceed. But empire 

 builders have pushed smooth steel roads over easy grades into 

 all corners of the continent, and brought the ton-mile cost of 

 freight on heavily patronized lines to three eighths of a cent. 

 On our crude rural highways, horses haul farm products at 

 twenty-three cents per ton-mile and the best tractors at ten 

 cents, competing with the locomotive only in the ability to 

 traverse the byways and penetrate the fields left vacant by the 

 network of railway steel. 



Brandeis startled the world by declaring that he could save 

 the railroads of the country $300,000,000 a year, simply by 

 improving their efficiency. What then might the nation be 

 saved if possible reductions were made in the cost of trans- 

 porting farm products? Mechanical power has revolutionized 

 transportation on railways and steamships, but masters of the 

 art have neglected the opportunity to apply it to a business 

 which the United States Office of Public Roads estimates at 

 a half billion dollars yearly. The opportunity of saving three 

 fourths of this cost by the introduction of mechanical power is 

 as startling as its neglect is deplorable. 



Why has the traction engine not already saved the greater 

 part of this preventable waste? The answer is, that it is 

 more sadly handicapped than the horse by the conditions that 

 cause the waste to wit, bad road surfaces and steep grades. 

 It is here, much more than in plowing, that the wonderful 

 flexibility of the horse finds its greatest usefulness. The gas 



