THE TRACTOR TRIALS-AND TRACTORS.
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That the Agrimotor is Rapidly and Certainly Displacing the Horse is the Conclusion of a Pioneer Practitioner and Early Advocate of Mechanical Tillage.
By Selwyn F. Edge
IT IS NOT too much to ,say that everybody interested. in the legitimate development of the internal-combustionemotor should endeavour to follovi?-this year's tractor trials as closely as. his other
• business will permit. They are, in my eyes, one of • the most important milestones of automobilism. From now on one may look forward to seeing them held. annually. Every go-ahead farmer hopes so. And
. + eVerYbody who eats bread should share, at least, this one. aspiration of the progressive agriculturist, because the essential value of the farm tractor, if Britain is ever to free herself from, the overseas wheat-barons,
cannot possibly be Over-stated. . . I often wonder if those who attended these trials in the past appreciated to what a large extent they were hastening the actual and complete disappearance of the horse, in all directions save that of an animal preserved and bred purely for saddle and light harness use—that is, as an instrument of pleasure. ' Nobody who keeps proper transport cost accounts on a.darna can afford to use horses for rbad,haulage, simply becauswof their expensiveness, Once this fact is reallyappreciated, the horse will disappear in an amazingly short time—the horse, Iniean, regarded as an implement for the farmers. service.
Certainly, the growing use of mechanical road-haulagain intimately bound up• with the extension of good roads. But, even so, good roads are constantly increasing in numbers and quality. The improvements, steadily, if slowly, proceeding, in the by-roads around, our farms will surely make for the increased utilization of mechanical haulage, and then Dobbin's, day will be_ done. .
When we come to consider work on the land, the tractor must entirely supersede the horse in a very littre while, for many reasons. The simplest, clearest and most practical reason is that almost any tractor is equal to three teams of harms. Thus, on the point of labour costs alone, the tractor tends to become universally employed. Its use means that the farmer is, in the first place, able to reduce his staff by two carters, with a consequent reduction in wages. This wage-saving will not be so great as might at first sight appear, because the time is arriving when a good trac tor-driver will receive twice. as muola pay as a good horse-ploughman. But, the man in charge of mechanical farming appliances can do so much more work per day that, although his pay is higher, his work costs less per acre.
.. But, 'I have proved conclusively on my own farms that, on heavy, clayey soils, my tractors, on an .aVer age, plough for one-half thecost, incurred when ploughing with my horses:, despitethe fact that I breed and use only pedigree Shires, tended by the
best men obtainable, and kept at their Most efficient conditionsomething lots of farmers cannot claim, because of the terrible-cost of horse-feedin these tunes and the high wagesa demanded by good men. In addition to this, the work can be done witlatractors so much more rapidly than With horseflesh, because no farmer could keep the numbers of horses: and men required to equal each individual tractor's •
ploughing work. . On my Downland farms, tractors make slower headway and less brilliant showing than on the heavy Weald clay, not only because the lighter soil makes easier work for horses, but also because my head man on these farms was not mechanically inclined at first. His original experience of tractors, some five years ago, did not impress him at all.' Like so many peeple who begin to use tractors, he tried to plough late in the year, on wet ground, and thus revealed the weak c8 . points of tractor ploughing. In addition to this, ignorant use' of the tractor caused the development of mechanical troubles which should . never have occurred.
I knew, however, that my constant pressure on him, 'to get and keep his field work up to elate, must inevitably-Call for mechanical work, as these particular farms (though well-equipped with buildings) simply did not possess enough stabling to accommodate. all the horses that, were necessary to keep pace with my ideas and .policy Concerning field work,all to be done rigidly 'to a time-table much in advance of that followed (or not, as the.case might be) by the old-Style farmer, who, apparently, often farmed meroly for a bare living, and not to make ever-increasing money out of an ever-extending business.
When, in due course, the merit of the tractor (in enabling .him to work lip to schedule) dawned upon we 'hired one Or two. tractors in 1917—from the' War Agricultural Committee. He promptly saw what could be done upon the farms under his charge with the aid of the tractor and_ then he—in common with all practical farmers who are willing to give the tractor a fair trial—decided that he must have one for his permanent use. .A Titan was obtained, and a man secured who was not only a good tractor-driver, but also knew the farming side of the job. The result, to-day, is that, despite his inherent love of horses and belief in them for all they can be demonstrated to do, there is no keeneradvocate of tractor-tillage than the manager of my South Down farms.
Much of this DoWinland is steep and light ; but the horses are used less and less as time proceeds. And what is of such real importance from the profitenaking point -of view is:that the yields per acre are in. creased, though less .seed is'gsown—purely because the work, whether sowing or harvesting, is done at the right 'time, often a month, or even two months, before the farmer who is only horse-equipped is ready to go on with the next stage of his Work, after one phase is done, agriculture being (as I suppose everybody must knownowadays) an endless cycle of phases, best carried ant in the strictest rotation, and to. the minute, almost, as phase succeeds phase in the farmer's timetable.
To see a good, modern tractor dealing with clay land that has been .summer-fallowed (which means left to ". rest" when the sun and air can do it most good), and must be seeded before the rain comes; is a real sight for sore eyes. A team of implements are fitted. First a strong tractor-cultivator, or disc-harrow, then a roller, then a seed drill, and, finally, a light harrow.. The tractor can easily do 15 acres per day with two mere—an amount of work which would. call for at leas( eight horses and two men. During this past summer My tractors,: with hay loaders behind them, did twice as much work with five men as horses could have done with nine men and pitchers. Once these things -are seen and realized in their full importance, the tractor must rule supreme.
All this is good from a purely material moneymaking staapoint ; but another great fact in my eyes is that the good tractor-driver can really earn, and really 'deserve, more money than the horse-man can, and, thus, we se.ebeing attracted to work on the land a class of man far superior to the old-style farmworkers. This adds immense pleasure to farm life. I always did like to have nice, bright, thinking people about me in any business in which I was engaged, and have always made a point to get them. For a long while I missed them in my new sphere, but the use of mechanical farming appliances is bringing them around me again, and is also keeping on the land where he was born the boy with a taste for maainery (a taste he could never gratify in the old horse-farming days, so that he gravitated towards factories in cities and towns,. to be among the mechanism for which his soul yearned, just as that of another boy yearned for the sea). To-day, on my pedigree pig farms I have some 20 stock keepers, men and women, almost all educated, many at our famous public schools. Their superior brain power, understanding and fibre generally, mean immense assistance to my enterprise. Many of these will gradually aesimilate my ideas and make wealth quite comparable with that made by some of my old helpers in the motor. trade. And the beauty of this is that farm life enables them to retain health while they are acquiring wealth. In conclusion, to every farmer I would say, " Use tractors, save money, and, incidentally, draw to, and hold on, the land all the good mechanical brains you can." To the designer and manufacturer of tractors I would say, "Design and build the best tractors you can. They cannot be too good, because tractors do most of their work, if not all, in circumstances like those of a car running uphill against a headwind. We have some very fine tractors to-day. We can see them at work at Lincoln. But the perfect tractor has yet to come out of the box. When it does, everybody associated with its production ought to share in some of the richeat rewards that have ever fallen upon British engineering." These are my serious convictions, based upon many years' careful study of mechanical agriculture, and, every day I watch the wonders being wrought by my tractors, I am more and more convinced that only the full, consistent, intelligent and unlimited application of the farm tractor can enable Britain to grow the bulk of her own staple food—something she has, some time or other, to achieve, unless she is going to settle down into a minor role among the nations that count