738 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
June 15)22 
It seems that he did not expect to have his state¬ 
ment printed. It was intended as a personal note 
• * 
Statement of total income for milk, month by month : 
March. 1921 . .. 
April . $(>4.47 
May . SOlIo 
June . S4.9S 
July .*. 514.12 
August . 105.18 
September . 513.35 
October . 5>7.5*5 
November . 74.20 
December . 58.04 
Januarv. 15*22 . 10.25 
February . 23.31 
Potatoes sold . 211.41* 
Hay sold . 27.00—$1,062.16 
Land tax. $517.43 
School tax . 251.31 
Fertilizer . 40.00 
Grafts seed . 25.65 
Insurance . 17.33— 218.72 
Net income. $843.44 
merely, but the paper printed it as a complete state¬ 
ment. Now read this: 
A Farmer's Farm Account 
The following figures are taken from an accurate 
farm hook account: 
SOLD 
Milk . 
Potatoes . 
Hay . 
Bull, at 3c per lb. 
One cow hide. 
One calf hide. 
Six bobs . 
$823.76 
211.40 
27.00 
27.00 
.75 
.25 
0.00—$1,099.16 
EXPENSES 
Wages for 8 months.$200.00 
Land tax .. 97.43 
School tax . 29.31 
Tuition, high school. 27.51* 
Insurance . 17.33 
For corn and grinding.... 515.77 
Seeds bought . 37.62 
Fertilizer . 49.00 
Blacksmithing . 21.51* 
Paint and wallpaper. 51.99 
Booting . 8.60 
Binding twine . 7.00 
Reaping grain .. 24.00 
Thrashing . 29.25 
Coal *fof thrashing. 3.76 
Dinner for the help. 7.50— 
$707 56 
Borrowed monov . $150,110 
Owe boy.'. 60.00 
Two cows died. 200.00 
We also have the farm figures showing prices of 
milk back to 1907. and along with them the taxes 
paid for each year. In 1907 milk prices averaged 
$1 per loo lhs.. while taxes were $12.90. In 1921 
milk itrices averaged $1.22. while taxes were $97.43 
—there having been an increase in land acreage! 
The cost of such work as horseshoeing is just double 
what it was in 1911. Clothing will average nearly 
twice tis much, and at comparative milk prices about 
seven quarts are now required to purchase what 
could formerly he bought for four quarts. This 
man has also paid out money for educating his chil¬ 
dren. and lias done most of the work with the help 
of his son. The farm is worth at least $12,000. 
Let him charge 5 per cent for investment, a very 
moderate allowance, and we must add $<X*0 to the 
expense account. The item of depreciation is 
allowed in computing income tax or in estimating 
the returns from business. A hired man, working 
as this farmer does, would not do a stroke for less 
than $40 per month. Add in all these legitimate 
charges and see where this farmer comes out! Then 
realize, if you can. the cold-blooded assurance of 
these people who undertake to show from this 
farmer's statement that he is doing well! The 
truth is that for the past few years there have been 
thousands of smaller farmers, like this man. making 
a heroic struggle to keep the farm and hold the 
family together. It has been a desperate fight 
against heavy odds. Only by the hardest work and 
the closest economy have they been able to live. 
They are the victims of a system which has cut 
down the prices of what they have to sell and 
boosted prices for all they have to buy. besides 
loading upon them an unfair share of the tax bur¬ 
den. And the most outrageous tiling about it all is 
the complacent theory of these city men that such 
a farmer is “doing well." It does no good to tell 
them the truth in the plainest, terms; they simply 
will not understand. If the average farmer was as 
stupid about understanding the relations between 
city and country as some of these newspaper men 
are at understanding the farmer’s problems, the sit¬ 
uation would lie hopeless. Perhaps some of it is 
not mere stupidity—at times there seems something 
malignant in the way these town people talk. The 
fact is that the farmer is the most essential citizen 
wo have. The world could not live without him, for 
food and clothing are essential products, and man 
lived and did his work long before our modern sys¬ 
tem of middlemen and handlers was adopted. The 
average city worker is in no way essential to mod¬ 
ern civilization. Habit and custom have made him 
think he is, but in truth most of the work he does 
could he given up, and the world would still proceed 
on its course. If the farmer gave up. death and 
disaster would follow. 
A Farm, a Farmer, and a Tractor 
T HE PERSONAL TOUCH.—I have been a sub¬ 
scriber to Tun R. N.-Y. for the past few years 
and read the articles on farming, and on tractor 
farming in particular, with much interest, hut find 
that while they are of inestimable value to us. in 
general they are from men connected with State 
agricultural stations. State colleges, and from va¬ 
rious other sources, and lack that personal experi- 
W>* have found tile goose a very wise and ]>)•• >lit- 
able bird. They can lie driven like sheep after you 
learn how to do it. and the geese will graze like 
cattle. They are so easy to keep and so little trouble 
that farmers ought to give them greater consideration. 
ence and personal touch that conics from the man 
who operates a tractor and makes his living on his 
own farm. It would seem that a story of our ex¬ 
perience with a tractor and with tractor farming 
should lie of both profit and interest. 
EARLY PROBLEMS.—Early in the Spring of 
15*18 my brother-in-law and I put our new tractor 
to work plowing and fitting the land on our 225-acre 
farm in Thompson Township, Geauga Co., Ohio. We 
use a two-gang plow of two 14-in. bottoms. This 
is known as a breaking plow; we prefer this type, 
because it has a long moldboard with a gradual 
twist, which makes it a light-draft plow. When we 
put our tractor to work we found it to lie an oil hog, 
pumping lubricating oil up above the piston and 
fouling the spark plugs. Time and time again we 
could not let the engine idle for I wo minutes with¬ 
out having to stop and clean one or more plugs. I 
obtained oversized pistons and new piston rings 
from our local dealer and installed them, hut with 
no relief from oil pumping, so I made a special trip 
to Cleveland. <>.. for rings which i installed on the 
top and middle grooves, respectively, leaving orig¬ 
inal ring on lower groove. I had previously notified 
our local dealer of our oil troubles and our inef¬ 
fectual efforts to correct them, and he in turn noti¬ 
fied tin* distributor company, who sent two men to 
see us. They arrived just as we were installing the 
new rings. These men waited until we re-assembled 
tin* tractor and then went out to the field to watch 
the tractor operate and plow, and after watching 
the stream of blue smoke issuing from the exhaust 
pipe, departed, saying they hoped that when the 
lings wore in a little more our oil troubles would lie 
over, 
CONTINUED TROUBLE.—They were not over, 
however, and on making further complaint wo were 
again visited by two men from the distributors, who 
attempted to micrometer or measure the cylinders 
with a piece of haled hay wire. They then pro¬ 
nounced the cylinders out of round, and said they 
probably came that way from the factory. A new 
cylinder block was ordered for us, and the old one 
was to he sent hack to rhe factory. In due time a 
new block with new rings and wrist pins came, and 
we drove 13 miles to get same, and after installing 
them we drove 13 miles to return the old block, and 
then found that we had the same old oil troubles as 
before. We figure that we have used, at times, as 
much ns three gallons of lubricating oil, costing us 
80 cents a gallon in barrel lots, in a nine-hour service 
run. or $2.40 for lubrication, which was more than 
the fuel cost for the same service run. We finally in¬ 
stalled all new rings in the pistons, which cut down 
oil consumption to about, one gallon in a nine-hour 
service run, hut we still fouled plugs quite often, so 
we then installed a set of other rings, obtained in 
Cleveland. O.. where we were told they would posi¬ 
tively cure our oil troubles, and, if they did not. 
come back and get $1(*(> forfeit. Well, they still have 
the $100 and our oil troubles were not lessened. 
OPERATING METHODS.—During all this time 
we operated our tractor by starting out to our fields 
with the oil level below the lower oil cock, and on 
arriving at tin* field to he plowed or fitted, we 
poured in enough lubricating oil to run freely out of 
lower oil cock, but never out of upper oil cock: then 
sot tractor to work, stopping in the middle of the 
morning, when we would find the oil level again be¬ 
low the lower oil cock, and again pour in oil as at 
the start, repeating the operation at, noon and mid¬ 
dle of afternoon, returning to tractor house or shed 
at night with oil level below lower oil cock. In 
August of 1921 T heard of another piston ring guar¬ 
anteed positively to prevent oil pumping, also not to 
wear cylinder out of round, and to have other good 
feature about it. so. after investigation. I ordered a 
set of pistons equipped with these rings, and in¬ 
stalled .them, with the result that, our oil troubles 
have been cured to stay cured. But enough of trac¬ 
tor troubles; let us see what the use of the tractor 
has meant to the profit or loss side of the ledger, for, 
after all. that is what counts. 
RESULTS IN WORK.—In the Spring of 1919, 
through use of our tractor, we had oats planted and 
up before our neighbor could get his oats planted, 
and the same was true of corn, so much so that our 
neighbor bought a tractor before his corn lot was all 
fitted, and right here T want to say that his tractor 
lias never had any oil trouble in the three years he 
lias owned and used it. That year we raised, among 
other crops, 1,1*71 Ini. of buckwheat, a crop made 
possible to us only by our tractor, (ho value of 
which, together with other things made possible by 
our tractor, was greater than the cost of tractor and 
two-gang plow. In 15*20 we had 82 acres of thrash¬ 
ing. so we bought a new thrasher, and besides rais¬ 
ing 171 lm. of wheat, 846 bn. of oats, 30 bu. of Tim¬ 
othy seed. 18 bu. of Soy beans, and 1.045 bu. of buck¬ 
wheat. we went out doing neighborhood thrashing 
with our tractor, the gross returns for which, and 
including the value of our own thrashing bill, 
amounted to a little more than $1,300, hut I must 
not forget to say that buckwheat crop alone that year 
again paid for our tractor. The year 1921 was a 
poor year here for most crops; however, we thrashed 
918 bu. of buckwheat that year, losing about 150 bu. 
shelling out in the fields because of a wet Fall, and 
we were unable to harvest same in good shape. We 
also raised a wonderful catch of Soy beans on our 
wheat lot, which we turned under for green manure, 
a manuring process not possible to us if we depended 
on horses alone. 
OTHER FARM WORK.—Of course we buzz our 
firewood with our tractor, and among other things 
we sharpen fence posts, grind feed, haul a King 
drag on the road, and during the week of January 
22 to 28, 15)22, we thrashed over 350 bu. of corn with 
our tractor and thrasher. This may he a new thing 
to some readers of The R. N.-Y.. so 1 will explain 
that our corn is harvested with a corn harvester or 
hinder, and when In the right condition we put the 
bundles through the thrasher the same as a bundle 
of wheat or oats. The corn comes shelled through 
the weigher and bagger, and the stalks are shredded 
and pass through the blower up into the barn, to be 
fed to the stock. In Conclusion let me say that I 
have always been in favor of deep plowing, which is 
seldom if ever done with a team and walking plow. 
A deep seed bed means better tinder drainage in a 
wet season, and holds more moisture in a dry season. 
Also, 1 want to say that tin* best agricultural and 
horticultural authorities tell us that at least one- 
lmlf of the tree is underground, so what chance lias 
a 7-ft. stalk of corn in a seed bed plowed 4, 5 or 6 
in. deep? The same is true of other crops. 
Realign Co., o. uaiuiv cozens. 
