26 BULLETIN 997, .U. S. DEPARTMENT OE AGRICULTURE. 
tractors were used for nothing but this class of work during the 
year covered by the investigation. 
The location of the farms on which these 55 tractors were owned 
is as follows: 
Madison County, Ohio 4 
Seneca County, Ohio 
Madison County, Ind 4 
Montgomery County. Ind ] 4 
Livingston County, 111 21 
Knox County, Til ; 12 
On most of the farms visited in Illinois and in Montgomery County, 
Ind., there was no wood to cut. Silos were not as common in these 
three areas as in the others. Less livestock was kept on the farms 
in Livingston County, 111., than in any other area, and consequently 
few of the tractors there were used for grinding feed. In fact, on 
many of the farms in both Illinois areas the only belt work done was 
thrashing and shelling corn, and the power for this work in most 
cases was furnished by steam engines. 
The greater the percentage of farmers in a community who own 
tractors, the less will be the opportunity of doing custom work with 
them, even if the tractor owners desire to do it. Tractors were more 
numerous in Livingston County. 111., than in any other area visited, 
and only 25 of the 60 men interviewed there had used their tractors 
for custom work during the year. 
WORK DONE BY HORSES. 
The average number of days of horse labor used for the various 
operations on the farms of different areas is shown in Table 21, and 
the daily duty of one horse for each of the field operations in Table 22. 
The daily duty of one horse, i. e., the number of acres covered per day 
per horse, at the different operations varied somewhat in the different 
areas, and to this extent the number of days of horse labor is not a 
true index of the actual amount of work done by the horses. 
Plowing. — Since the tractors did 85 per cent of the plowing on these 
farms, the average number of days of horse labor used for this work 
is necessarily small. On the average it amounted to less than 20 
days per year in each area except in Madison County, Ohio. The 
greater use of horses for plowing in this area was due to the fact that 
several of the farms were so large and the amount of spring plowing 
so great that the tractors could not do all of it in the time available 
and the horses were used regularly to supplement the tractors. Table 
IX shows that the tractors covered slightly less ground per day in fall 
plowing than in spring plowing. Similarly, the average daily duty 
of one horse was slightly less for fall plowing than for spring plowing. 
