1008. 
THE K.URA.L NEW-YORKER 
79 
THE GASOLINE ENGINE ON THE FARM. 
Part II. 
I promised to say more about the gas, or gasoline 
engine, as they are erroneously called, but, strictly 
speaking, it is a gas engine, as there is not a drop of 
gasoline entering the combustion chamber, but a gas 
is formed by a current of air passing over a very fine 
stream of gasoline. As I am only an ordinary farmer 
with a little experience with gas engines as applied 
to farm machinery, I can only write from my own 
operations, together with a few observations along 
other lines of business. Fifteen years ago a gas 
engine was an unheard-of piece of machinery on the 
farm. To-day at least 25 per cent of the farms 
throughout the country are operating some portion of 
their machinery by gas engine power, and I predict 
that by the time gas engines have beer, in use as long 
as steam power a steam engine will be as much of a 
curiosity as a gas engine would have been 20 years 
ago. Millions of dollars are about to be spent in the 
United States Steel Corporation, where almost a hun¬ 
dred steam engines are to be relegated to the scrap 
heap to be replaced by modern gas engines, and why? 
Simply because they can save a few cents a ton in 
the production of steel. Now, if this is good for the 
great manufacturing industries, why is it not equally 
as good for the farmer? The cost to the great in¬ 
dustries of operating their power plants is of vital 
importance. Thus the gas engine is fast superseding 
the steam engine. It costs less to install them, the 
fuel expenses are nearly or quite cut in half, the ser¬ 
vices of the high-priced expert steam engineers are 
dispensed with, no towering smoke stacks belching 
forth their vile, black, sulphurous, nauseating smoke, 
and the danger of fire is reduced to a minimum. 
These are all points to be considered. 
The gas engine has made all these conditions pos¬ 
sible, and to the farmer the same conditions exist, 
only on a somewhat smaller scale. All through the 
great West, and especially in grain raising sections, 
they are beginning to know the value of the gas 
engine as a motive power for driving all manner of 
farm implements, plowing, harrowing, seeding, and 
even operating their grain harvesters, as well as their 
immense thrashing machines. In the State of Kansas 
it has been recently demonstrated by actual test, that 
the cost of plowing with a gasoline auto-tractor is but 
37 cents per acre. Any farmer well knows that it 
costs him that much to feed the hired man and team. 
I believe that $1.25 per acre would be a conservative 
estimate for the average farmer. In a certain section 
of the West two or three years ago the incessant rains 
just previous to harvesting made the ground so soft 
that their grain harvesters could not be operated by 
horses. Small gas engines were placed upon the- 
harvesters that operated the cutting and binding 
machinery, while the horses drew the machine over 
the ground, thus saving the crop. Otherwise, in these 
days of scarce and high-priced labor, much if not all 
the crop would have gone to waste. 
1 here is practically no piece of farm 
machinery that the gas engine will not 
operate more successfully, cheaper and 
more efficiently than any other known 
portable power. The writer has a two 
horse-power gas engine that operates 
the cream separator and churn, pumps 
water, grinds feed, saws wood, turns 
the grindstone, and I hope to milk the 
cows with it in the near future. The 
cost of fuel for operating it is about 
1^2 cent per horse-power per hour. 
When we wish to start any of the dif¬ 
ferent machines (and we frequently 
operate all of them at one time except 
the sawing outfit and feed mill), we 
give the wheels a turn or two and off 
she goes, no smoke, no dirt, no litter, 
no fire. Fig. 39 shows my plan of 
arrangement. By a very simple device 
of my own contrivance I heat all the 
water for use about the creamery with 
this engine. It is possible for this same 
little engine, mounted on light trucks 
and fitted up with the traction wheel of 
an old discarded grain or corn harvester, 
to do the greater part of the farm 
trucking. There is no end to the little 
things the gas engine will do. It will turn the wash¬ 
ing machine, the sewing machine, the sausage grinder. 
The durability of the gas engine I believe to be far 
in excess of the steam power, as with good care and 
proper lubrication there is practically little wear on 
them. In fact one of the most satisfactory solutions 
of the farm labor problem to-day is the installing of 
modern farm machinery, and the farmer who adopts 
modern methods is alive to his own interests. The 
gas engine is one of the most indispensable of all 
modern farm machines. 
We have had numerous kinds of power on the farm 
more or less for 50 years. The horse power or sweep 
is built in sizes from two to 1 eight horses, has to be 
housed out of doors, takes, besides the horses, from 
one to three men to operate it, and the life of the 
thing is short at best. The windmill was considered 
good in its day, but is superseded in my case. The 
farmer has labored under these conditions for years, 
pumped water by hand, shelled corn by hand, cut 
MONSTROUS ASPARAGUS STALK. Fig. 41. 
See Ruralisms, Page 84. 
wood with a bucksaw until his back was broken, and 
many of them have ended their days wishing for an 
economical, reliable power that was always ready and 
could be started at a moment’s notice. The steam 
power has been one of the most satisfactory forces, 
but it is not or never will be an all-around, practical 
farm power. It takes too long to get up steam, has 
to be fired continually in cold weather or the boiler 
emptied to prevent water from freezing, and requires 
almost the constant care of a man while in operation. 
This alone is an important matter. 
When I say the gas engine is a reliable power, I 
think I can hear some one say: “Well, Mr. So-So has 
got one of those gasoline machines, and it won’t go 
only when it has a mind to.” True it is there are 
many cheap, worthless gas engines made by men who 
know as little about building a gas-power as a farmer 
does about buying stocks on Wall Street. I once saw 
an advertisement that read, “Runs like sixty, sells like 
sixty, sells for sixty,” and quite likely they might have 
added, “Bothers like sixty.” It often happens when 
your engine balks or refuses to start readily, that it is 
not the fault of the engine, as like all other pieces of 
machinery there are many little things that are pos¬ 
sible to happen, and I venture to say that in 99 cases 
out of a hundred where an engine refuses to work it is 
either the fault of the attendant or something entirely 
outside of the general construction of the engine. 
Some years ago four of us neighbors purchased an 
eight-horse gas engine to operate our silage cutters. 
In due time the expert was on the spot to set it up 
and start us on the road to success. As a matter of 
course, all the curious people and all the wise heads 
and many others were on the job to see us make a 
failure or success, whichever our fate might be; and 
it seems to please some people best to witness a failure, 
but it was our good fortune to be obliged to admit that 
we never saw the equal of that benzine thing. Every¬ 
thing went well for two or three weeks, until one day 
we were thrashing at a neighbor’s and all of a sudden 
the thing stopped and, do what we would, we could 
not get a kick out of it. We all agreed that the only 
thing to do was to send for the gas engine doctor, and 
in due time he arrived upon the scene, and in less 
time than it takes to tell it, the engine was running as 
nicely as it ever had done. And the trouble? Well, 
it was so simple that I would be ashamed to tell what 
it was,, but it was no fault of the engine, and it cost 
us $5 to find that a tiny set bolt had become loose in 
the mechanism of the sparking device, and it is just 
such simple things as this that tend to discredit the 
gas engine in the hands of a novice. f. d. squiers. 
ALFALFA ROOTS LIKE A TREE. 
The following letter was dated January 6: 
“I am sending you, under separate cover, an Alfalfa 
root of which the history is as follows: In the Spring 
of 1907 manure from cows and horses fed on Alfalfa 
was spread on a small lot, and in the stress of other 
events cultivation was not followed up as it should 
have been. On New Year’s Day, 1908, the piece was 
plowed up, and this root was one of the smaller ones 
turned out. It has been cut back severely, for it was 
the most unwieldy thing to do up that I ever tackled. 
Comes pretty near being a weed, doesn’t it? Of 
course it was irrigated. I have a small patch in hen- 
yard sowed to Alfalfa last September that to-day is 
six or eight inches high, and as green as can be.” 
Benton Co., Wash. l. a. peters. 
After cutting off about two feet of the root as it was 
sent we had an engraving made (see Fig. 38.) The 
foot rule shows the size of this enormous plant. Many 
readers have no doubt read stories of the great yield 
of Alfalfa. We can all believe them when we realize 
what an immense root system this plant can develop. 
This will rank with tree roots, and we see the plant 
is a chance seedling, less than a year old at that. We 
once plowed an old Alfalfa field. The roots were the 
size of your thumb, and they nearly stopped the plow. 
They were babies beside this one. You might as well 
try to plow after clearing a piece of timber, but what 
of that if you can cut the Alfalfa eight or ten years? 
When wc read of cutting three and four tons of 
Alfalfa per acre in one year we must understand that 
an immense root system is required to 
produce such a crop—and here we cer¬ 
tainly have the root. In parts of the 
West farmers have learned to measure 
the value of land by its ability to pro¬ 
duce Alfalfa. It will be the same in 
many other States and sections when 
farmers learn more of the great value 
of this crop. We are sure it will pay 
every eastern farmer to study and work 
his best to make Alfalfa grow. 
EVAPORATED MANURE.—As you 
are aware I am conducting 
a dairy of 32 cows in New York City 
where farms and users of manure are 
very scarce. Conditions are arising 
which will compel me in the near 
future to dispose of the manure from 
these cows, by carting it to the public 
dump. I would like to ask if any of 
your readers ever undertook to dry the 
manure, so as to use it in a commercial 
way, say dry and grind it and then ship 
it in bags to those who were willing to 
buy it? I could readily see a way of 
selling it, by placing 3n advertisement 
in The R. N. Y., but what I should like 
to know is, how I can expel the heavy moisture, 
from cow manure most economically. I have 32 cows 
now, but wish to double my stable capacity very soon, 
and the amount of manure would then be nearly one 
ton per day. As these cows are getting as much of 
the richest of food as we can coax them to eat, the 
manure is all that could be desired for farm and 
greenhouse use. There is surely a market for it if 
handled properly. a. schimmel. 
FLOYD Q. WHITE AND PUS CHICKS. Fig. 42. 
