THE HORSELESS FARMER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3129, 7 August 1922, Page 8

THE HORSELESS FARMER.

If all the farm boys are leaving the farms to work in the city factories, it mav be they arc doing so because the factories have to make so many machines and appliances for the fairmers, savs an American weekly. Of course everyone realises that the American farmer'is increasingly making use of the products of inventive genius, but for the first time, the National City Bank of New York notes in its Trade Record, the 1920 Federal census presents figures on the number of automobiles, motor trucks, telephones and farm tractors in use on the farms of the country, and the number having “water piped into the house.” These figures, it i s remarked, indicate that the automobile and telephone are now a big factor in farm life, not merely as a comfort a|id convenience, but as an actual aid in business. The Trade Record sums up the census figures as follows’: — The number of telephones, by which the farmer may communicate with Iris local trade centre or with the great cities in which the prices and markets foil* Iris products are determined, is officially stated at 2,498,493 in 1920, while another authority puts the total number of phone® in all the United States “without regard) to ownership” at tho end of 1920 at 13,411.379, which suggests that nearly one-fifth of the phones in tin United States are now in the farm home and farm business service; while 38 per cent .of the reporting farms were equipped with telephone service in 1920. The automobile statistics are also extremely suggestive. They show, the number of automobiles on farms in 1920 at 2.146,362, while figures compiled by Automobile Industries put the total of automobiles in use in all the United States in 1920 at 7,904.000, suggesting that the farmers owned in Unit year considerably more than onefourth of the automobiles of the country, to say nothing of the 139,000 motor trucks and 246,000 farm tractors reported in operation on the larnis in 1920. Over 30 per cent, of the reporting farms in 1920 utilised automobiles. Still another evidence of the disposition of the farmer to utilise machinery in increasing iiis business activities is found n the fact that the value of bis “farm implements and machinery” reported in 1920 was nearly three times as much as in 1910. live times as much as in 1890. It is not surprising, then, in view of the increasing use by the farmer of theso time and labor-saving devices, flic telephone, the automobile, the motor truck and the farm tractor, coupled with the enormous increase in Iris farm implements and machinery, to find that the census reports a decrease of I t per cent, in the value of horses, while all otlier classes of farm animals increased in value in the same period.