The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-30

1 dust in farm work that the air that zoe
 into the engine has to be washed befor' 1 it is used.
 The wheels of the tractor are differen
 from those of the motor car They art
 made of steel with tires five inches wide
 and with great teeth or Jugs two inche: deep which are set at an angle to the
 tire rim three or four inches apart. This ] gives the wheels a surface of b or Il | inches, keeping them from cutting into 1 the soil, and also gives the wheels the l grip which is needed to make them move When the cheap, light weight tractor 1, was proposed the makers of the heavy tractor claimed that weight was a neces- sity to the success of any such machine Whereupon Mir. Ford said: Have you l ever seen a bulldog chase cat up tree A dog has plenty of weight, but the cat 1 does the climbing. It's claws give 1t the 1 tra ction, and it is the traction that counts" The cheap tractors upon which 1 they are experimenting here weigh lit tie more than a ton. Some of the heavier tractors weigh five tons. Each has its own place i'll the cultivation of our farms
 As to the cost of the tractors, those used in Illinois at that time cost from $500 to upward of $2000, and they ] ranged in size from those which would QTaW two plOWS to luOSt WlllSh WOGA0 draw eight blows A two-plow tractor costs $500, a three-plow little more than 5000; a five-plow over $500 and
 a six-plow machine a little over $2OOO This was the average from reports Of 148 machine owners. The government investigators stated that the high priced tractors were not profitable for small farms, and that the w-priced ones would not do for large farms. For foY nf a-A nt 1ncG blow tractor is considered the best, 1 while on farms of from 300 to 450 acres
 the four-plow tractor is the most prof itable. The cost of running the outfit varies with the size of the tractor, and on the average the fuel consump-
 tion is two and one-half gallons of
 gasoline per acre, and about one gall Ion of lubricating oil to every five acres. The tractors do better work than
 the horses, and they cover more
 ground, according to size.
 In 1916 there were 4000 tractors in Kansas alone and thousands have been introduced into all the states of the corn belt. The number in Kansas has
 increased 60 per cent in one year, and
 the high prices of farm products will undoubtedly encourage the introduce tion of such machines into all parts of the United States.
 The number of companies making farm tractors is rapidly increasinE
 There are 121 in the United States at
 this writing and 30 of these have begun to build such machines during the past summer. The centers of the industry are in the agricultural states and especially in the northwest. Min
 nesota leads with 24 different fac tories making farm tractors, large and small. Illinois comes next with 19, and Wisconsin next with 16. The states of Ohio and California have each nine tractor making establish ments, Michigan has 10, Iowa five, Missouri four and Kansas, South Da- kota, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania have each two. while there are single tn- stitutions of the kind in Kentucky, New York, Delaware and Massachu, Setts.
 Nearly every one of these companies has its own special tractor and the machines range in weight from two- blow machines up to the heavy trac- tors which will drag 10 blows and more through the furrows
 All of the companies recognize the fact that the industry is at it's begin ming and that the field for it's expan- sion is enormous. There are more than 6,000,0O0 farms in the United States and l venture that all the tractors now in use are less than 100000 in num-
 per. Suppose the machines could be used upon one-third of the farms, the
 possible demand would be at least 100000, which Is Just about one
 half as many automobiles as are now owned in the United States. Like the automobiles. the machines of the fu ture will be of different grades. weights, power and prices. Some will be adapted to large farms and others 10 small, greatly needed machine is