July, 1 9 10 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



AUIOMOBILING 



267 



What the Motor Vehicle Is Doing for the Farmer 



By Walter Langford 



ESS than five years ago farmers generally 

 looked upon the automobile with bitter- 

 ness, and condemned it as a "toy of the 

 rich." To-day, there are farms compris- 

 ing hundreds and even thousands of acres, 

 on which nearly all of the heaviest Avork 

 is done by motor vehicles. There is hard- 

 ly any part of farm work that cannot be done more 

 quickly and with greater satisfaction by the use of motor 

 power — either applied to a self-moving machine or in the 

 stationary form — than with horseflesh. Whether it is 

 making a quick trip to town with a load of butter, eggs, 

 fruit, or vegetables, to the creamery with the evening's cans 

 of fresh milk, to church with the family on Sabbath morn- 

 ing, doing the spring and fall plowing, cultivating, reaping, 

 threshing — the motor vehicle in its varied forms has be- 

 come the latest ally of the progressive, prosperous farmer. 

 It has been a matter of general knowledge and common 

 comment in automobile circles that extraordinary numbers 

 of motor cars have been going into the remote sections of 

 Kansas, Ne- 

 braska, Minne- 

 sota, the Dako- 

 tas, Colo rado, 

 and even Mon- 

 tana, Oklahoma, 

 and Texas during 

 the past season. 

 The statement 

 has been made by 

 a man identified 

 with the trade 

 and presumed to 

 be posted, that 

 fully one-quarter 

 of the purchases 

 o f motor cars 

 west of the Mis- 

 sissippi during 

 the season of 

 1909 were made 

 by farmers; and 

 this means a good 

 many when the 



combined output of the manufacturers of the country for 

 the year aggregated in the neighborhood of 75,000 ma- 

 chines. Some of the little communities in the Middle West, 

 with a population numbering only hundreds or at most a 

 few thousand inhabitants, have begun to boast of possess- 

 ing more motor cars in proportion to population than any 

 other city or town in the country; and to prove it, they 



An automobile traction engine used for driving a threshing machine 



congregate all the cars in the Main Street of the town and 

 have a group photograph taken. 



The farmer who has long distances to go for everything, 

 from a keg of nails to a paper of tobacco, and who works 

 early and late to make up time lost partly in going "to 

 town," has not been slow to appreciate the luxury and time- 

 saving ability of the motor car. He balances off the cost 

 of a tenth or a twentieth of a gallon of gasoline per mile 

 traveled against a third or half bushel of oats a day at 65 

 cents a bushel, whether the horse is working or is standing 

 in the stall on a rainy or a winter day, and reckons the time 

 saved to himself as mainly pure gain. 



Scattered all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific 

 coasts there are small fruit and vegetable growers, dairy 

 farmers and poultry raisers, who make a daily practice of 

 carrying light loads of produce to market in the tonneau or 

 on the rear deck of ordinary light touring cars. They can 

 leave the horses to work in the field, and can make the trip 

 in a third or quarter of the time formerly consumed, there- 

 by gaining just that much additional time to be devoted to 



more work or to 

 reading, visiting, 

 a 1 1 e n dance at 

 concerts, lectures, 

 etc. 



The ordinary 

 four or five-pas- 

 senger tour ing 

 car of moderate 

 power and rea- 

 sonable price is 

 most extensively 

 used bv farmers. 

 Some of the ac- 

 companying illus- 

 trations show 

 how such a car is 

 put to practical 

 uses on the farm, 

 with the rear seat 

 removed. This is 

 the general util- 

 ity automobile of 

 the agricultural 

 sections, and is used for a great variety of purposes. With 

 it the farmer drives out to his grain field to superintend the 

 threshing, runs down to the pasture with a reel of wire to 

 repair the fence, runs into town with the horses' collars and 

 harness to have them mended, carries cans of milk to the 

 creamery or crates of live poultry to the express office. 

 Observing the growing demand by farmers for a car for 



