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 are 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, 35 
per cent ; repairs, 16 per cent ; and fuel and oil, 1 per cent of the total 
annual machinery cost. 
Figure 16 shows the relative cost of the various items after these 
were prorated to the acre basis. The total average acre cost of all 
INTEREST ON CASH 
TO operate: 
..«,L 
SEED 
»ta 
EQUIPMENT 
„c 
MISCELLANEOUS 
■-E 
HORSE LABOR 
— pBBi 
RENT 
5.io fnpnfffim 
MAN LABOR 
TOTAL AVERAGE 
8.40 flj 
L ....«.........,.»»■ 
Fig. 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, $4.11 ; 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 (114 farms, Ellis County, 
Tex. ) . 
Crop. 
Man days 
per acre. 
Horse days 
per acre. 
Crop. 
Man days 
1 per acre. 
Horse days 
per acre. 
Cotton 
Corn 
! 5.65 
1. 99 
.78 
3.17 
3.27 
1.53 
1.85 
2.94 
Alfalfa 
Wheat 
3. 49 
.72 
• 4.96 
1.27 
Oats (grain) 
Miscellaneous 
Average on all crops 
1.09 
1.23 
Oat hav 
1.04 
4.77 
3.19 
Sorghum 
2.02 
1 
As previously stated, various costs were prorated to the enterprises 
according to the number of days of productive labor of man and 
