COST AND UTILIZATION OF POWER ON FARMS. 
25 
for grinding the year's supply of feed. Usually the wood was sawed 
at one or two different times, while for grinding feed the tractor was 
run for only a few hours per week in the winter months. 
The tractors were often not powerful enough for the heavier work 
of filling silos, thrashing, shredding, and shelling corn, and this 
accounts in part for the small number of men who used their tractors 
for these operations. However, there were no silos on many of 
the farms; shredding was not common in any except the Ohio 
areas and in the Madison County, Indiana, area; the practice of 
shelling corn on the farm was common only in the Illinois areas; 
and on a majority of the farms thrashing was still done with custom 
outfits. 
CUSTOM WORK. 
One hundred and eighty-three farmers did some custom work 
with their tractors during the year. This work amounted to an 
average of 4.6 days for all tractors (see Table 10), or 7.2 days for 
the 183 which were used for custom work. The number of men 
who used their tractors for different kinds of custom work and the 
average number of days spent by them at each operation are given 
in Table 20. In all, 116 tractors were used for custom drawbar 
work, and 113 for custom belt work. 
Table 20. — Custom work. 
Operation. 
Number 
perform- 
ing. 
Days 
used. 
Drawbar: 
Plowing 
Disking , 
Other work . . 
Belt: 
Filling silos . . 
Thrashing . . . 
Sawing wood 
Shredding . . . 
Other work . . 
5.0 
2.0 
3.1 
3.3 
8.5 
1.9 
7.2 
3.6 
More than half of the drawbar custom work done by the tractors 
was plowing. The ' ' other J ' drawbar work shown in the table included 
dragging roads, cutting grain, and other kinds of field work, but less 
than 10 per cent of the owners did any one kind of this work for hire. 
Comparatively few men did any one belt operation for hire, but 
from the standpoint of the time spent at the different operations by 
the men who actually performed them for hire, thrashing and shred- 
ding were more important than plowing. 
TRACTORS WHICH WERE USED FOR NEITHER BELT NOR CUSTOM WORK. 
While drawbar work on the home farm amounted on the average to 
only 76 per cent of the total work done by the tractors, 55 of the 286 
56390°— 21— Bull. 997 4 
