The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-30
FIGHTING TEEE WAR WITH FARM TRACTORS

l a low-priced tractor which will use a 1 comparatively small amount of gaso- line or kerosene. Such a machine
 Should be able to drag two or three blows. It will be widely used and will :! do much to solve the labor and food 1 situation.
 l It was when the wheat was reee and they were harvesting the grain that I rode from Detroit out to Henry l Fords big farm at Dearborn, to see what he had accomplished in the way of making a cheap tractor. This farm has been turned into an experimental l laboratory and near it will be erected a great plant which is to make the | light weight machines which have I been ordered from Europe. This trac- ] tor is by no means perfect, but 1 am | told that it will save the work of many horses and p1owmen and that | it will be of great value in increas. ing the food supply of Great Britain. In 1915 we had 6O,O000OO acres in wheat and the bumper crop of that year, the largest the nation has ever known, was little more than 1,000,000,000 bushels Nevertheless, the average yield per acre was only 7-10 bushels. It was Il bushels less for every acre than the Germans raised that year on their total of some- ',thing like 5000,00O acres and far less per acre than the crop of England and France. Had we increased our yield to equal the production per acre of Ger many we should have had 660,000,0OO bush els of a surplus for shipment to Europe,
 and that in addition to the 1000, 900, ,00C
 bushels we raised that year. The surplus
 would have been greater than our whole wheat crop of 1916. We could in fact
 have lived on the surplus, giving barrel of flour to every man, woman and child
 of us, and setting aside 100,000,00O bushels for seed. have had still 100000 bush
 els of wheat for export to Europe.
 The crops we raise today are for the most part planted and harvested by the
 use of horses and mules. Much of the
 blowing Is but little more than scratch
 ing the earth, and very little of 1t goes
 to the depth of the seven inches easily
 possible with the farm tractor. The
 labor loss is enormous. The most of the blows have gone over the fields with
 a man in the burrow behind holding
 the blow handles. According to a recent estimate, every time the farmer blows an acre that way, he walks eight miles and his team does the same. Suppose I60 acres be plowed on his farm the dis tance walked is about as great as from Chicago to New Orleans and the walk ing fully as bad. On the 100,0O0,OOO acres of cornfelds the men and animays have
 walked 900 miles, and worked all the way. The number of our farms is more than 6,000,o00, and by the last census there were 24,000,000 horses and mules, an average of four to each farm. The total number used in blowing every time the crop is gone over is 1000 900 and 3,0Oo,- 000 or as one of the agricultural statisticians figures it, so many that if you hitched them up side by side the team would be as wide as the distance from Philadelphia to Memphis, and the distance plowed would be longer than
 from Boston to Salt Lake City.
 Since the war broke out there has been a larged ecrease. both in blow hands and blow materials. Hundreds of thou sands of horses and mules have been taken from our farms to the battlefeldS, and the farmers boys who have been drafted are even greater in number Since that time there has been a large in crease in the use of the farm tractors, but the industry is still in it's infancy, and the tractor for the small farm has not yet come into use. Not long ago the department of agriculture at Wash ington received reports from 200O of our farmers who have been using tractors, and it was then stated that the heavy machine could be worked profitably only on farms of large size. In South Dokota the average size of the farm upon which
 thet ractor was used was about 800 acres, and it was seldom found on farms of less than 320 acres Iowa has many farms as small as 160 acres which are using
 tractors, but as a rule the owners em-
 ploy their tractors also for custom work,
 renting them out to blow and reap for
 their neighbors. Many of the farmers are using their tractors by night as well as by day, and this is especially so of those who have a large acreage, such as 1000 acres and upwards. The average life of tractor in North Dakota is about