THE 



TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF THE 



CEYLON AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Vol. XXXV. COLOMBO, SEPTEMBER 15th, 1910. No. 3. 



AGRICULTURE IN THE UNITED 

 STATES AND CANADA. III. 



The American is world-famous for his 

 capacity in inventing labour-saving 

 machinery, and it is worth while to 

 examine into this position also. Ceylon 

 is almost at the opposite pole. Nearly 

 everything is done here by brute labour, 

 and if tools are used, they are clumsy 

 and inefficient. Italy, Prance, and 

 England show progressive intermediate 

 stages between the two, 



Now a comparison of these countries 

 shows that there are two items which 

 vary together in a parallel way. As 

 labour becomes more expensive, so does 

 machinery become more wide-spread 

 and efficient. It is hardly too much to 

 say that the scarcity and consequent 

 expensiveness of labour in America is 

 mainly responsible for the great deve- 

 lopment of machinery that has gone 

 on there. 



By the aid of good machinery, culti- 

 vation can be carried on efficiently and 

 cheaply. No one who has seen the big 

 machinery at work in the wheat fields 

 of the far West, or the giant locomotives 

 pulling loads of 1,500 tons of corn, can 

 any longer wonder at the difficulty the 

 English farmer finds in competing with 

 American or Canadian wheat, leaving 

 out of account at present the fact that 



the British public does not like English 

 flour in bread. 



With labour scarce and expensive, 

 the invention of tools to reduce the 

 amount required is greatly stimulated, 

 and practically all the advances in agri- 

 cultural machinery of the last 40 or 50 

 years have come from the American 

 continent. 



It is not pretended that the use of big 

 tools drawn by horses or other animals 

 will necessarily be better than hand 

 labour with smaller tools. If the latter 

 be efficiently carried out, it is in general 

 better. The yield of wheat, for example, 

 on a small holding in France is larger 

 than that on a large farm in America. 

 The important point is that for the 

 amount of production, the machinery is 

 cheaper and more efficient. As the 

 amount of produce required per unit 

 area increases, so does the efficiency of 

 the machinery. 



It is in this way that the Western 

 American or Canadian wheat grower 

 can compete successfully in England 

 with the English, who get a larger actual 

 yield per acre. By the use of big machi- 

 nery the cost per bushel to the farmer is 

 small. By the use of gigantic loco- 

 motives (thus reducing expenditure per 

 ton on dtivers and conductors) he gets 

 it carried cheaply to the ports, and the 

 steamer freight is hardly worth mention. 



