50 



BULLETIN 659, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



years. There are two apparent causes for this high rate of deprecia- 

 tion of machinery. First, the farmers arc not certain as to which 

 cost is greater — to construct and maintain buildings for housing ma- 

 chinery (see fig. 15) or to allow the small amount of machinery re- 

 quired on the cotton farms to stand in the fields; as a rule, machinery 

 sheds have not been constructed. Second, a large proportion of the 

 farms are operated by tenants who own the equipment but do not own 

 the buildings. The landlords are loath to construct buildings for 

 the protection of machinery not their own. Depreciation of ma- 

 chinery represented 48 per cent ; interest, taxes, and insurance 1 . 35 

 per cent; repairs, 1G per cent ; and fuel and oil, 1 per cent of the total 

 annual machinery cost. 



Figure 1G shows the relative cost of the various items after these 

 were prorated to the acre basis. The total average acre cost of all 



SEED 



EQUIPMENT 



MI3CELLANEOU3 



HORSE LABOR 



RENT 



MAN LABOR 



TOTAL AVERAGE 



Fir;. 16. — Cost of various items and total average acre cost of production of crops 

 (115 farms, Ellis County, Tex.). 



crops is seen to be $20.87, which is made up of the various items as 

 follows: Man labor, $8.40 ; rent of land, $5.10 ; horse labor, $4.44; mis- 

 cellaneous costs, $1.32 ; equipment cost, $0.75 ; seed, $0.56 ; and inter- 

 est on the cash required to operate the farm, $0.30. 



Table XX. — Productive work units per acre on crops (IJ.'i farms, Ellis County, 



Tc.r. ) . 



Crop. 



Cotton 



Corn 



Oats (grain;. 

 Oat hay 



Sorghum 



Man days Horse days 



per acre. 



per acre. 



5.65 



3.17 



1.99 



3.27 



.78 



1.53 



1.04 



1.85 



2.02 



2.94 



Crop. 



Man days Horse days 

 per acre, per acre. 



Alfalfa 3.49 



Wheat .72 



Miscellaneous 1. 09 



Average on all crops 4. 77 



4.96 

 1.27 

 1.23 

 3.19 



As previously stated, various costs were pi orated to the enterprises 

 according to the number of days of productive labor of man and 



