Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1896-10-07
FUTURE OF FARMING.
Some Kind Of a Cheap Motor for
Flowing Needed on the
Prairie Lands.

New Rockford, n. D., Sept. 3O.-Last
year North Dakota raised 10000, 900
bushels Of wheat for sale, besides what
was needed for seed and bread. The
state has an area of $4,000 square miles,
or over 44,OOO,OOO Of acres, about two
thirds of which is arabic land. and a.
large part of the balance is fit for graz
ing or the production of hay of good
quality. Not more than one acre in ten
OF the tillable land in North Dakota is
now under cultivation, and if She raised
lO,OOO,OOO bushels of wheat for export
last year what effect will it have on the
market some years hence when all her
rich lands are brought under cultivation.
and when she will raise or can raise five
times as much wheat as she did in 1895 :?
The prospect of higher prices for wheat
is not good, even when we consider the
rapid increase in population, and the
large numbers of people who annually
come to us from foreign lands, and when
we take account of the large stocks of
gram which other countries are sending
10 the markets of the world
linen we must not lose sight of the i'm
portant part which improved farm ma
chlnery is playing in the food producing
business, and we must not neglect the
probability that the inventive genius Of
our countrymen will cOntriye other ma
chimes or devices for tilling the soil and
harvesting grain that will make a still
greater saving of manual labor. The
gangploW, the broadcast seeder. the nat
ent drill, the selfbinder and the steam
tthreshing machine have done wonders in
increasing farm products and in lessen
ing the toll of the farmer. But the next
step will be in finding some other motive
power besides the horse to till the soil
on those vast and almost boundless prai-
RES. line men who are racking their
brains to invent hOrseless carriage are
at the same time trying to invent a
horseless pillow, and a horseless selfbind-
ef ana when street cars are run success
fully with compressed air or stored cleo
trlcaI energy, the American Agricultural
ist will be doing all sorts of farm work
which requires power with the same
agency. Electricity has already taken
the job of the horse and the steam en-
glne IN many places, and perhaps it will
soon be running the gangplOw and doing
much or the farm work now being done
with the horse. In fact, the horse is
now TOO slow and too weak to meet the
demands of the new order of things. es-
peclally in the West If the prices of
all sorts of farm products are to remain
low, the ground must be ploWed and har-
roWed, and the grain must be harvested
and threshed at less expense than it
now is. and the horse must be relieved
of much of the hard work that he is now
doing.
Some new and less expensive motive
power on the Western farm than the
horse is one of the necessities of the
situation. His work now is too hard
and too constant, and his life is as hard
and his labor as severe on a grain farm
as 1t used to be for the slave in the rice
swamps Of Solsh Carolina. The spring
blowing and seeding are scarcely over
hpfnrn % 10 hrno liz III;
or summer following the stubble of the
previous harvest, and as soon as that is
finished the grain is ripe and ready
for the binder. Then follows the thresh-
ing machine and the fall plowing until
the ground freezes up about December
L. This round of duty he is called upon
to perform every year during the term
of his natural life, and it is a short and
hard one. He is patiently waiting for
the good time coming
The Cosmopolitan Magazine offered a
prize of $4,000 last summer for the best
hOrseless carriage, and the trial came
off in New York in August last. The
motor that took the award was run with
compressed air, and when it was charged
would run the machine sixteen miles
without renewal. Sixteen miles is about
what team of good horses travel in IL
day when attached to a gangploW, and
turning over six acres of prairie land
Imagine the new farmer, sitting on his
gangplOW, having his keg of compressed
air under his seat that will last him half
a day, doing the work of dozen horses
and blowing forty or fifty acres in day.
Then farming will not be the hard work
that it is now. but will be mere pas
time in which men will engage for pleas
IRE as we'll as profit and when science
shall have added SO much to our knowl-
edge of the laws of nature that the old
Nd TO. ~ H.
Of the brow, shall be repealed, and the
pent up powers of the earth will do the
sweating for us. A. M. T.