Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-04-11

VIZ ASHINGTON, D. c., April 6.-Travel-
wv ing through certain parts of Illinois
at night you may be aStonlshed to see
searchlights moving restlessly over the fields
like giant tiret1ies, playing their long white
beams over burrows and between corn rows.
These are not fivvers gone astray; they
are tractors, blowing ground or cultivating
corn by their own lights. For the farm
tractor, during the past few years, has null
tiplied, especially N the middle west, In
fact the rise of the tractor is one of the
most striking and significant things in pres
ent farming. The tractor got a late start.
1t is now in that stage of rapid growth and
improvement which the automobile had
reached about 1910.
During last year alone, the number of
tractors in use more than doubled. Of
course, this was partly due to the war. Farm
ers were making money and labor was scarce.
You will probably be surprised to learn
that the number of tractors now in use is
only 10000. In land of six million farms
this is certainly not many. But the move
ment has just started. The manufacturers
of tractors have estimated their production
for 1919 at 314,936. In other words, they
expect again more than to double in single
yea the number of tractors in Use. whether
they will do it remains to be seen. They
are holding out for wartime prices and some
of them are even boosting prices a little,
while all of them are loudly predicting that
tractor prices will stay up for long time.
But some observers in the employ of the gov
eminent say that with the price OF steel low
cred, tractor prices will have to come down
by 1920, and will probably be down by next
fall.
Be that as it may, the significant thing is
that the application Of the gasoline motor to
farming is plainly on the eve of great eX-
pansion and development. All sorts OF
changes are predicted result. The horse
less farm is in prospect, and there are said
Loo FOR q CqGf0Tn16
Also the hircd-manless farm is coming. One
energetic man can today with the aid OF a
tractor cultivate far more acres than ever
one man could cultivate before, and there is
no telling how much he may be able to do II
the near future, as he applies Internal COM
bustion mo and more to his purpose
The rise of the tractor began about ten
years ago, when there appeared on the mar
ket several makes Ct large ploWlng tractors
These machines cost several thou ana dol-
lars carried eight Or ten ploWs, and deVel-
oped about forty horsepower at the draw
Lcr, which means about eighty horsepower
81 the engine. They attracted lot OF at
tention; pictures Of them were published IN
all the magazines; they were the l2test me-
clanical marvel.
But as tanning machinery they were tall-
ure in most places They survive only on a
few enormous wheat farms of the west. They
are too expensive to own and to operate Tor
the vast majority of American farmers ihose
who bought them in the heyday OF their pop
clarity abandoned them for the most part
within a few years.
Yet the giant tractor, according to govern
ment Observers accomplished one thing Tor
which it has never been given credit. 1t came
into use just about the time that the last Oh
the wild prairie lands were being put under
the plow In western Kansas and western
Nebraska and in the Dakotas, the last big
patches of buffalo grass and CROSSWORD were
being conquered. And the giant tractor