TOO COSTLY MACHINERY

Otago Witness, Issue 1589, 6 May 1882, Page 6

TOO COSTLY MACHINERY

We often hear complaints from sensible farmers (says an American agricultural paper) who ' do not object to necessary expenses, but who feel provoked at the machines for farm work which some of the manufacturers send out. Cheaper implements are desired. The charge is made, and with much force, that many of the styles of ploughs, harrows, cultivators, seedsowers, grain-drills, and rollers, are too highly finished and too elaborately fitted up for plain field work and hard usage. Inventive genius has done so much in improving the implements the farmer uses, 'that no one wishes to hamper or decry invention or progress. But the charge is quite often made that many of the ' attachments ' and so-called ' improvements ' are of little benefit, except to increase the price of the machine. Manufacturers ! must aim at simplicity and strength, joined to adaptability to the purpose . needed.' ' An improvement is not' merely a new way of doing given work, but a better and oheaper way. The most expensive of a dozen different styles of gang-ploughs may,

so far as material goes, bo well worth the price asked, but the cheapest one of the whole dozen ,' may, all things considered, be the best ,for the farmer to purchase. In fact, one of the hardest of the many problems the farmer has to decide . for himself, relates to the purchase of the necessary machinery, which, in these days, is a heavy item of expense.