THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



21 



the prices he pays his help. The home competition in 

 labor is becoming more direct and severe each year. 



The building of suburban steam and trolley lines, 

 the extension of telephones into farming districts, and 

 free rural delivery, are bringing the city and country 

 into a constantly closer union. Farm and city laborers 

 meet and compare notes, and the farmer's son or the 

 farm worker no longer hesitates to try his fortune in the 

 factory if wages or conditions of labor seem more at- 

 tractive. With the increasing wages and shortened 

 hours of labor in the factory he is insisting more and 

 more that farm work shall have the same privileges. In 

 any event the influence of organized labor and the rising 

 wages of the cities is felt today in every agricultural 

 community. Men no longer work from sun-up to sun- 

 down and where labor is scarce, as in California, the 

 hours are as rigorously restricted as in any city factory. 

 If American agriculture is to maintain itself in the 

 markets of the world, it must do this through a con- 

 tinued improvement in machinery which will make the 

 individual man more and more efficient. 



It is not possible to say how this will be done with 

 respect to any particular machine, for the work of the 

 inventor is always an advance into the unknown, but we 

 may with profit consider some of the general influences 

 which should be utilized to secure improvement in de- 

 sign and more efficient use of machinery. The first 

 thing is better training for the American farmer in me- 

 chanical principles. American farm machinery is not 

 rendering the service it should, because it is not selected 

 with wisdom and not operated and cared for with skill. 

 We buy a plow which needs a team of 1,700-pound 

 horses to pull it, and then hitch it behind a team of 

 1,200-pound horses. The result is neither plow nor 

 team is a success. We leave our wagons, our mow- 

 ers, and our self-binders exposed to rain and sun, 

 thus lessening both their life and their service, and we 

 do this without shame or reproach. We need in this 

 country a public sentiment which will put the farmer 

 who neglects or misuses machinery on the same plane 

 with the farmer who has poor breeds of stock or who 

 neglects to care for them. We need investigations 

 which will enable farmers and manufacturers to adapt 

 machinery more perfectly to the power that is to run it 

 and the strength that is to control it. How much does 

 the average farmer today know or think about the power 

 required to pull any machine or the importance of hav- 

 ing the size of machines adjusted to the size or number 

 or horses which he keeps? And how much energy in 

 this country is wasted by teams who walk too far for 

 the work they do or who are worn out by being harnessed 

 to a load too heavy for them to pull? Investigations 

 carried on last year by the Iowa State College, to de- 

 termine the relation between the weight of horses and 

 the draft of breaking-plows, show how valuable to both 

 the farmer and the maker of machinery a better under- 

 standing of these matters would be. When we hare 

 studied the relation of the power needed to operate ma- 

 chinery to the size and weight of the horses which sup- 

 ply this power, as we have studied the chemistry of feed- 

 ing animals or the relation of fertilizers to the needs of 

 soils, the factory will make better tools and the farmer 

 will make more money out of their use. There has, 

 however, been so little systematized study of the prin- 

 ciples involved in the operation of farm machinery and 

 so little attention given to instruction in farm mechan- 

 ics in our agricultural colleges and technical schools that 



manufacturers have had difficulty in securing properly 

 trained men; that is, men who combine mechanical 

 training with a knowledge of agricultural science and 

 practical familiarity with farm life. 



I have thus far spoken solely of the use of animal 

 power as a substitute for hand labor. We are, 

 however, in the beginning of another evolution 

 whose possibilities we are unable to forecast. 

 This is the employment of steam, wind, gas 

 and electricity as sources of power in farm 

 work. How far these are to take the place of both men 

 and animals we can not predict, but every year sees 

 their uses widening. Wind, which was at first used al- 

 most solely for pumping water for live stock, is being 

 used to cut feed, saw wood, run the machinery of dairies, 

 and it seems possible that with improvements in elec- 

 trical storage it may in time light the farmer's house, 

 furnish the heat to cook his dinner and iron his clothes. 

 The potential power of the streams which rise on our 

 mountain summits and flow down to the sea is enor- 

 mous. Much of this is unutilized because heretofore the 

 factory had to go to the stream and this was not possible, 

 but with the improvements in electrical transmission the 

 stream now goes to the farm and the factory. The 

 waterfalls of the Sierras now generate electricity which 

 pumps water for the irrigation of farms in the Santa 

 Clara valley, 240 miles away. Steam and gas engines 

 plow and pulverize the soil, plant the seed, pump water 

 for the irrigation of the crop, run the cultivator, the 

 harvester and thresher. Some are so nearly automatic 

 that they almost displace the man as well as the horse. 

 Gas engines used in lifting water for irrigation have 

 run day after day an entire season with no attention ex- 

 cept refilling the oil cup and the gasoline tank. Some 

 farms now have more power and more complicated ma- 

 chinery than many extensive factories. On one ranch 

 in California the farm machinery operated by gas or 

 steam cost over $60,000, and the farm equipment of this 

 character is being constantly increased. This kind of 

 power seems to be displacing the horse just as the loco- 

 motive has supplanted the stagecoach. The automobile 

 can go faster and longer than the trotter. The steam 

 plow in some places does better work than the horse and 

 does it cheaper. This year a gasoline engine attached to 

 a harvester on the water-logged lands of the Northwest 

 was able to run in fields where horses mired. Through- 

 out the southern part of the United States there is a 

 great field for the steam and gas motor. They can oper- 

 ate in the summer's heat, amid the mosquitoes and flies, 

 without discomfort and loss of efficiency which attends 

 the use of the horse and mule. 



To me the most interesting feature of the Lewis 

 and Clarke Exposition and one which was most sig- 

 nificant of our advanced civilization in this country was 

 the splendid display of farm machinery in the agricul- 

 tural building. No one could look at this without hav- 

 ing pride in the men who require and use such tools. 

 I filled page after page of my notebook with a list of 

 these evidences of American inventive skill. It includes 

 dairy machinery which makes better butter than can be 

 made by hand; a 30-horsepower steam plow which will 

 turn over the soil of a good-sized farm in a single day; 

 a 40-horsepower traction engine which hauls its load 

 over the country roads at five miles an hour and requires 

 as much mechanical skill to run it as a locomotive. 



The full benefits of farm machinery are not realized 

 because the average farmer has not the mechanical 

 training or the requisite skill to get the best results out 



