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182 Annual Report of the 
in any given time. For a sample illustration, take True’s Potato- 
Planter, with which one man, a boy and horse can plant one acre 
per hour, fixing the rate of travel at two and one-half miles an 
hour and the rows three feet apart. At a reasonable calculation, 
the same force, without the planter, would plant one acre a day; 
thus the planter virtually increases the effective force of the horse 
and workmen ten times. One more illustration may be useful. Take 
the “ Superior Grain-Drill,” of eleven hoes, six inches apart, which 
would plant three rows of beans two and one-half feet apart, at a 
time, two acres an hour, at a speed of two and one-half miles an 
hour, with one man to drive and operate it. Estimating the team 
at the working value of one man, we have two men planting twen¬ 
ty acres in one day by the aid of the drill, and alone they would 
plant but one acre a day; giving the drill the power to increase 
the effectiveness of the two men twenty times. 
Leaving these two illustrations as sufficient to indicate the mul¬ 
tiplying power machinery gives to manual labor, we will next con¬ 
sider the comparative cost per acre of planting by machinery or by 
hand, and we will premise that the preparation of the ground for 
planting be the same in either case, and the amount of seed planted 
the same. Estimating the days work and board of a man at $1.25 a day, 
and of a horse at 75 cents, and the boy at 75 cents, and the wear 
of machinery, repairs and interest at fifteen cents an acre, we have 
as the expense of planting one acre, thirty-seven and one-half cents, 
and by hand $2.75, making a gain in favor of machinery of $2.37L, 
or nearly one-seventh, being about as high a per cent, gain in cost 
as in time, with an added consideration that the work is better 
done and the seed more evenly distributed. A like gain in favor of 
the drill is easily seen and need not be accurately figured. 
Passing to the after cultivation of what are commonly termed hoed 
crops, and a like large gain in favor of machinery will be seen, both as 
to time consumed and the expense involved; besides which we must 
add another item in favor of the machine-work, and that is, that it 
will be far more effectively done, reaching deeeper and leaving the 
soil looser than a hand-hoe can, as ordinarily used. 
In the sowing of small grains we do not find near as much gain 
in time or expense, but we find two operations performed by the 
same machine, sowing and cultivating, and a marked improvement 
in the evenness with which the grain is distributed, and in the case 
