The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

COST, FORDSON, $880. WEARING LIFE, 4,800 HOURS AT 
4/5 ACRES PER HOUR, 3,840 ACRES
3,840 acres at $880; depreciation per acre
$0.221
Repairs for 3,840 acres, $100; per acre
0.026
Fuel cost, kerosene at 19 cents; 2 gal. per acre
0.38
1 gal. oil per 8 acres; per acre
0.075
Driver, $2 per day, 8 acres; per acre
0.25
Cost of ploughing with Fordson; per acre.
0.95
8 HORSES COST, $1,200. WORKING LIFE, 5,000 HOURS AT 
4/5 ACRE PER HOUR, 4,000 ACRES
4,000 acres at $1,200, depreciation of horses, per acre
$0.30
Feed per horse, 40 cents (100 working days) per acre
0.40
Feed per horse, 10 cents a day (265 idle days) per acre
0.265
Two drivers, two gang ploughs, at $2 each per day, per acre
0.50
Cost of ploughing with horses; per acre
1.46
At present costs, an acre would run about 40 cents only two cents repre-
senting depreciation and repairs. But this does not take account of the time 
element. The ploughing is done in about one fourth the time, with only the 
physical energy used to steer the tractor. Ploughing has become a matter of 
motoring across a field.
Farming in the old style is rapidly fading into a picturesque memory. This 
does not mean that work is going to [be] remove[d] from the farm. Work 
cannot be removed from any life that is productive. But power-farming does 

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The Tractor and Power Farming  •  185
mean this—drudgery is going to be removed from the farm. Power-farming is 
simply taking the burden from flesh and blood and putting it on steel. We are 
in the opening years of power-farming. The motor car wrought a revolution 
in modern farm life, not because it was a vehicle, but because it had power. 
Farming ought to be something more than a rural occupation. It ought to be 
the business of raising food. And when it does become a business the actual 
work of farming the average sort of farm can be done in twenty-four days a 
year. The other days can be given over to other kinds of business. Farming is 
too seasonal an occupation to engage all of a man’s time.
As a food business, farming will justify itself as a business if it raises food 
in sufficient quantity and distributes it under such conditions as will enable 
every family to have enough food for its reasonable needs. There could not be 
a food trust if we were to raise such overwhelming quantities of all kinds of 
food as to make manipulation and exploitation impossible. The farmer who 
limits his planting plays into the hands of the speculators.