December, 1931] Dairy Farming in Grafton County 



67 



175 per cow. Not all of this efficiency can be attributed to milking ma- 

 chines, however, because the farms with milking machines were larger 

 as evidenced by numbers of cows per farm (Table 57). The greatest 

 advantage of the milking machine may be in alleviating fatigue, rather 

 than in saving time. 



Table 57 — Relation of milking machine to various factors and to labor income. 



Man Work Units per Man 



Out of the 395 farm organizations in this study, 67 operators were 

 able to obtain more than 300 work units per man. This number of 

 work units is a very laudable attainment. A farmer who has developed 

 an organization of his business which provides a distribution of labor 

 good enough to enable each worker to average 300 units of productive 

 work may be sure he is in efficient company. Few farmers do that well. 



Varying success in labor efficiency among these farms is to be seen 

 in Table 58. In the first group, 61 operators got an average of 113 

 work units per man. In other words, the laborers, including the opera- 

 tor, each averaged to accomplish about one-third of a year's work. 



Table 58 — Relation of man KorTc tonits per man to labor income. 



Their inefficiency is reflected in an average labor income for the group 

 of — $270. Under conditions existing in the year of the study, over 

 150 work units per man were required to get a plus labor income, 

 225 work units to get a labor income equal to the average for the sur- 

 vey, 250 to get hired men's wages, and over 300 to get $1,000. The 

 consistent change from an average labor income of — $270 in the first 

 group of low-efficiency farms to $1,256 for the last group with high 



