The Bozeman courier. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1919-1954, 1923-02-07

4OO0 W supply Al6 " ASOAO A1N
surplus left over for city consumption
was limited. What he lacked in
equipment had to be made up in man
power.
With a one-horle walking plow of a
century age one man could plaw, per-
hapS two acres a day. Seeding by
the broadcasting method, he could
plant approximately eight acres in a
day, resulting, incidentally, in a del
plorable waste of good seed, because
of wind-blowing or bird-banquetlng.
When harvest time came around he
could cut half an acre a day with al
sickle if he had a strong back, or i'll
he had one of those highly developed
harvesting tools of that day, the era
~dle-cythe, he could harvest upward of
two and a half acres in a day BY
steady, unremitting swinging of the
the harvest was garnered, it was
threshed out with a fail, at the rate
of seven bushels of wheat a day, 1S
bushels of oats, ID bushels of barley,
or 20 bushels of buckwheat. Or he
could thresh it by treading out the
| grain with oxen at the rate Of almost
two bushels an hour, and, of course,
having the oxen tramp on the grain
added greatly to the flavor Of the
flour, or meal, for which the farmer
made no extra charge.
h. And in the matter of haying, a
: farmer did well to cut an acre a day
with a scythe, and raked the hay by
hand at the same time.
That was less than one hundred
years ago.. Consider the contrast Of
the present day methods. Today one
man with a 1920 tractor and a three
furrow, power lift plow can turn from
7h to 10 acres in a day, while with a
large tractor 80 acres of ground can
be plowed IN the same length of time.
! Compare this to the two acres a day
of the one-furrow plodder, who is still
very much in evidence.
Today a man with a tractor and two
s-foot grain drills can plant 40 acres
a day and be assured Of practically
100 per cent termination of seed, as
~contrasted to the 8 acres a day and 80
per cent termination of seed byt ne
broadcaEting method. And when 1t
comes to harvesting, the present day
farmer runs up an acreage of from 10
to 20 acres in a day, according to the
size of binder he is using, which may
include cutting, tying into sheaves and
stacking (the latest combination), al
done in the same length of time that
one man would require to cut merely
21% acres by hand. In some parts Of
the west modern harvesting goes ever
a step further, for there the harvest
~er-thresher cuts, threshes, cleans anC
sacks the grain as a one-unit OF
Grafton, at the rate of from Is to IL;
acres in a day.
And so it goes. Where one mai
threshed sever bushels of wheat in
day with a fail, one hundred-and il
many places less than fifty-year
ago., one man with one or two helper;
with a small individual threshing out
fit, can now thresh so bushels an hou'
while a larger thresher viii handl
wheat at the rate Of from 200 to 81
bushels an hour. Where the farme
: made one trip to town with a load c
farm produce with a team and WACO
and still does, for that matter-th
progressive agriculturist of toda
makes three or four trips with h
motor truck, saving the difference
time for essential farm work. Whel
one man cut one acre of hay in a ds
with a scythe, he can, with a move
cut ten acres without difficulty al
with a horse rake gathers twel'
times as much hay in a given time
by hand. Where it took three men
no minutes to throw on a load of h;
u by hand, one man can do the sar
- work in fifteen minutes today. Su
is the labOr-saving value of mode
lsS farm implements.
Ids And so today farming isn't so mu
his a matter of men as of machines. w
ent proper farming equipment, ten pr
I'm cent of the present population shot
en- be able to feed the other so per ce
ice. which is an extreme reversal of I
so situation that existed a century al
in Wonderful progress has been made
ign the past decade in the development
airy farm machinery, and still great
Lrm progress is due to transpire witt
DDS. the next few years. The present I
ore grafton fro mthe farm will flow bs
am in a diminished but more effici'
loes wave. An the retail implement dc
AN er, together with the ~manufactu1
It will reap benefits incidental to the
lck- creased demand for farm equipme
all brought about by the decreased lal
or supply.
The journeying to the city of ms
who farmers and farm labor is by
the meanus the tragedy that some wo
nan. have you believe. For the most ?
these farmers have either been uns