190 
Annual Report of the 
Mr. Sherman. Yes, sir; I am speaking of hand work, I am 
talking financially of course. The amount this machine costs me 
a year will cut my grain and a little more undoubtedly, though 
that depends on the price of labor somewhat. But machinery 
according to my experience runs in the same channel, though per¬ 
haps not so expensive. Of course it is a little easier to ride on the 
machine and drive, than to bind; hut we must figure on the finan¬ 
ces if we are figuring for profit. There is some other machinery 
that pays a little better. 
Mr. Bennett. I would like to ask the gentleman if he could cut 
the grain on his two hundred acres for fifty dollars without a ma¬ 
chine. In my experience he could not do it. It would cost him 
fifty dollars to cut fifty acres without a machine. .Now, I don’t go 
for machinery as much as some. Where we can save labor by ma¬ 
chinery, I go for the machine, and for the best one. I think we pay 
too much for our machines, hut I know where there is a greater evil. 
A man will buy a good machine and won’t buy oil, or is too lazy to 
use it, and when he gets done with it, is in too big a hurry and 
won’t draw it home, but leaves it out in the field until the next year; 
or if he draws it home, he takes it, very likely, out to the side of the 
road and leaves it exposed to the weather. And the next year, “well, 
my machine don’t work good!’’ “ What's the matter?” “ Well, it 
is not good for anything; it never was good for anything.'’ He 
lays all the blame to the machine, when, in fact, if he had put the 
machine under shelter and kept it oiled and well cared for, it would 
have lasted twenty years. 
Mr. Robbins. This question of machinery is a very important 
question to the farmer. It has been one of the most important 
questions as far as my success has been concerned in farming. 1 
bought a McCormick reaper of a deaf agent that laid around in 
Grant county, he could not hear a single thing against his interest. 
I took that reaper up there as an experiment among my neighbors. 
He said he wanted to send it up to Platteville, he believed it was 
just the thing we wanted. I hauled it from Freeport to Plattville, 
and when I got there I didn’t know anything about putting it up, 
and the old man come up and put it up on Sunday. He was a Sun¬ 
day man, I don’t know whether he worked on any oilier day or not. 
The old man thought I bought it, hut I never did, hut he always 
thought I bought it, and so I had to pay for it $120. It was a good 
