The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-15

Consider, for example, what Is being carried on in Minnesota. The experi- mental project-the pioneering project under this plan--is just outside of Red Wing, where a five-mile line has been built to Serve fifteen farms, electricity was first sent through, the line Christ mas Eve, 1923, and the occasion was marked by a celebration around the first electrically lighted Christmas tree ever seen in that .s section. Subse- quently the homes on these farms were equipped with every conceivable appli- ance, and the farm buildings and the far nyards and fields are being used as natural laboratories for practical experimentet with all manner of machinery and appliances for doing mechanically, either automatically or semi-automatically,N those chores and tasks ordinarily done by animal or human labor.
 Wood saving and splitting, water pumping, silage cutting, silo filling, grain. grinding, milking, separating, churning and many more chores and similar tasks are being done by the use Of electric motors!s
 But it is in other fields that the real experimental work must be carried on, since 1t is estimated that from 80 to 90 per cent of all labor on the farm is drawbar, or traction, labor, such as the hauling of wagons, blowing, harrow ing, planting, spreading of fertilizer, etc. These experiments are being car ried on by some of the committee and state schools and colleges.
 Early in the experimental work it became apparent that much of the farm machinery which is designed for operation by human power, animal power, or steam or combustion engine power, is not, as it stands, adapted to electrical drive. In other instances it was found that small power, high speed motors properly geared to ma chinery could do automatically-that is, without the constant attention and direction of the farmer or farm hand "a given job which had previously re- quired a large horsepower tractor or internal combustion engine and the constant attention of from one to of motors and operating speeds of ma chinery must be changed.
 Experiments are being made with an electric blow at the State Agricultural college at Ames, Iowa, under the di- rection of Prof. J. B. Davidson. An experimental automatic blow has been built This operates with an electric motor, receiving energy through a cable on a spring spool which alter ately pays out the cable and takes up the slack as, the blow moves up and down or across the field. The experi- mental blow has only a six-inch blow share, operated with one horsepower motor,5 but 1t is believed that two horsepower motor will operate full size blow,
 Such a blow will work twenty-four hours a day without an attendant and will cover as much land as 'three- gang zplow working eight hours a day.
 Giving the farmer comparatively in- expensive machinery, automatic or emi-automatics to reduce farm labor and to shorten his work horse and les- sen the work of the women folk, should result in greater production per farm, with higher living standards for the entire family. Also, the farmer and his sons and perhaps the wives and daughters, should be able to find re- munerative employment on rainy days and during the winter months in the manufacturing of machinery parts, novelties, wood products and anything else which can be made on hand Iathes or with automatic or semi-automatic machinery, electrically driven.