From Men to Machine

Now join hands and circle to the left

With the tractor in the lead . . .

Swing along to the engine's roar,

See how Fast-Hitch lets you do more...

Hitch that blister, disk and plow

Right from the seat, you all know how.

Outside Chicago last week, to the fiddled squeak of Turkey in the Straw, International Harvester Co. showed off a new kind of square dance that will tour the country-fair circuit later this summer. Performed by four new Harvester tractors, the dance is designed to show just how fast the machines can hitch up to various farm implements, with the help of a new hydraulic coupling device. With Harvester's new coupler, farmers do not have to dismount from their tractors to hitch or unhitch plows, harrows, weeders and other Harvester implements; working from the tractor seat, they can do the job in seven seconds.

Harvester's Fast-Hitch coupler is the most important of a complete new line of farm implements on which the company has spent about $150 million in the past two years. Included in the line are a variety of implements formerly usable only with the biggest tractors and now redesigned in smaller sizes.

Lightened Load. The new machines are clear proof of Harvester's confidence that the farm-equipment market, transformed by the shift from men and horses to machines, is still far from filled.

In 1910, there were 24.2 million horses and mules on U.S. farms v. a mere 1,000 tractors. Now the horse and mule population is down to 5,600,000,* along with a drop in manpower, while the number of farm tractors has soared to 4,400,000, supplying more than 80% of the power for field work on U.S. farms. Other farm machines have scored similar gains. In 1940, there were 190,000 combines on U.S. farms; now there are almost a million. The number of corn pickers has jumped from 110,000 to 588,000, hay balers from 25,000 to 240,000. Between 1940 and 1952, U.S. farmers bought $22.2 billion worth of machinery, and economists expect purchases to stabilize at around 8% of farm income, or an estimated $2.5 billion in 1953.

Two Billion Man-Hours. Farm mechanization got a big lift from World War II's huge food demand, and the skyrocketing cost of farm labor--up 300% since 1939 v. a 100% rise in the cost of machinery. It has amply paid off. Items:

P: Tractor equipment saves farmers an estimated 2 billion man-hours a year.

P: A 12-ft. grain combine harvests 30 or more acres a day, cuts labor by 85%.

P: A mechanical cotton picker will do as much work in one day as 40 men, cut picking costs from as high as $52.55 to $18.70 a bale.

P: A milking machine will save up to 30 man-hours per cow in a year's time.

The average, well-equipped corn-and-livestock farmer in today's Midwest, with 350 acres of crop land, has an estimated $18,000 invested in machinery, including one small and two large tractors and a score of implements to hitch behind them. In terms of labor savings, it is worth the cost: with tractor and power equipment, a farmer can prepare and plant three acres of land in the time one acre could be done with work animals. Furthermore, if the tractor is put on a 24-hr, schedule, which is not possible with work animals, the job can be done seven times as fast. The farmer can figure on his mechanized equipment paying for itself in two or three years, through the reduction of hired hands, horse maintenance, etc. And if he is smart enough to buy a piece of equipment, e.g., a corn picker, that his neighbors do not own, he can pay for it in one summer by renting it (and himself) out on jobs.

More for Less. The agricultural change has had a far deeper meaning for the U.S. as a whole. In colonial days, it took 85% of the nation's work force just to produce the food needed; now 15% does the job. Between World Wars I and II, mechanization cut the number of man-hours in a crop year by 9%, while farm output rose 29%. Furthermore, much more of the output was for human consumption and not just animal feed. In 1921, there were 88 million acres of U.S. farmland growing feed for horses and mules; now it is down to 19 million acres. In short, mechanization has helped provide the U.S. farmer with 69 million new income-producing acres, and the U.S. with 51% more food. It has also provided the U.S. with the problem of crop surpluses (see below), even though the number of U.S. farms has declined (from 6,800,000 to 5,300,000 in 15 years). But farm efficiency keeps on improving as marginal farmers sell off their acreage to mechanized neighbors and move to jobs in town.

While the present farm problem concerns surpluses, the future problem will be to supply enough food for a population of some 190 million by 1975. Because of mechanization and greater use of fertilizer, output per acre has already risen one-third since pre-World War II days; with further mechanization, plus additional research into better crops and conservation methods, the U.S. should be able to meet future needs.

* One side effect of the declining horse population: cordovan leather now sells for $1.48 a ft., up 33-c- from last year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.