The Idaho Springs siftings-news., 1918-04-26

filed with earth and the new-made fields presents
a finely mulched surface.
The tank is not only first In 1t is first In
peace For Its weight 1t has pulling power
than any farm machine made. 1t Is the biggest
money saver and time saver ever introduced for
power purposes upon the farm The division Of
agricultural engineering Of the University Of Cali
fornia has found that with a 46 horse
power tractor on the university farm do the
work Of from three to six men with mules. More
over the same machine may be kept going day
and night, great advantage in California, where
1t Is necessary to get large amount of work done
In short time And 1t requires no feed or care
when not working
For varied illustration Of what a track layer
can do take the case of the L-54 a husky little
40 horsepower tractor which has been out of the
shop for eighteen months. The writer watched
her working and learned Of her career since the
day she LETT the factory
She was hauling beets when I first saw her.
Under the thrust Of her powerful engines she
went forward In a cloud of dust that hid her from
all eyes but her drivers. She mounted the sides
OF the levee. dragging her own weight of five and
one-half tons and two eleven-ton truckoads of
Deets as easily as II there had been load at all
The ground the island Is what ranchers in
the delta OF the San Joaquin river call peat bot
tom fun. 1t gave under like logs in a mill
boom as the little L-54 dragged her weight over
It, hugging the ground closely as a badger
When she had reached the top LISA stopped mo-
ment and the driver got his bearings Then the
gears connected with her right track, her left
track remaining stationary, and she swung around
from right to left on her own axis quite as rap
idly as lady In the fox trot.
This. however, was nothing for the L-54. She
can go backward or forward up hill or down. and
can spin around all day like dervsh II her driver
throws in but one clutch. Time and again she has
picked her way over the peat bogs OF the newly
reclaimed land. skirted the edge of big cracks
six or eight feet deep, backed and sidestepped
and bridged miniature chasms, confident that
nothing short of a caven Of the whole earth could
gtOD her that he har
trucks behind were bound to follow wherever she
led.
L-54 is a ponderous. deliberate creature with a
tremendous grip upon the earth II covered with
sheet iron and armored she could tear her way
through wire entanglements as easily as Byngs
tanks tore through the German defenses at Cam
brai. But more than all things else she is q
money saver and a man saver.
This Is all in the days work with L-54 and
nights work, too In fact her driver can remem-
Der when she worked all day and then went at
1t at night with an acetylene lamp. plowing up
beets with a subsoil plow 16 inches deep. She
has been on the Job in way another all the
time for 1S months.
She had pulled a grader holding FIVE cubic
yards Of dirt to level the land for irrigation be-
fore single acre had been put into beets She
had been lent to q farmer In the nearby foothills
He had hitched her up to a chisel-shaped sub
soier that would break the hardest ground In the
district and she had subsoiled the land to q depth
Of 20 inches breaking up the hard-plow pan
where ten span Of horses had failed. For the nrst
time in 26 years that land had produced 30 BUSH
els Of wheat to the AGRA
When the l-H mounted the levss with her two