The Farmer's Automobile.

Progress, Volume VI, Issue 3, 2 January 1911, Page 498

The Farmer's Automobile.

The purchase of large numbers of automobiles by farmers is declared by The Iron Age (New York) to be one of the most significant incidents of the year. The farmer's motor-car, says this paper, instead of being an expensive toy, like the city man's, is an economy —an investment bringing adequate and satisfactory return. To quote: "To the average man in the city the automobile is merely a luxury, and a very expensive one. What he is obliged to pay simply for storage is a formidable item. Accidents on crowded streets are frequent and costly. Repair men are quick to take advantage of a customer who is unfamiliar with machinery. It is probably not unfair to say that there are now in use in the large cities more automobiles than there are people who can really afford the outlay for a mere luxury. "In the country, however, the city man's toy becomes an economic inventment, which brings satisfactory returns on its cost. The farmer's time is valuable. Nature allows him only a few days in which to harvest any particular crop, and his season is correspondingly short in planting and seeding. In a critical period, when conditions are most favourable for planting or harvesting, the time that the automobile saves in necessary errands makes it an economic agency of production. The mere saving of time, however, is only a small part of the usefulness of the automobile in the country. A few years ago there was much pessimistic talk about the tendency of farmers to 'retire' and live in small towns on the rent received from their land. The automobile is now keeping the owner on his land. His family, who wanted to live in town for social advantages, has discovered that it is more satisfactory to enjoy the full income of the farm and own an automobile which can run to the city in the time that would be spent in walking a few blocks than to pay rent and other expenses of living in town. The rural mail delivery, the telephone, and the automobile- give to the family in the country, owning a good farm, the command of social advantages that are enjoyed by only a few of the people who live in cities. The field of trade that has thus been opened to the automobile manufacturer is almost unlimited.

"The remarkable success of the auto-mobile-makers in selling their product to the farmers may suggest an opportunity to manufacturers in many other lines who have overlooked the possibilities of agricultural trade. The American farmer of to-day is not the man of even twenty-five years ago. In the period that followed the Civil War, until about 1890, the area under

cultivation increased more rapidly than population in the United States. Overproduction during this period caused a disastrous decline in prices, which was accelerated by a large expansion of wheatgrowing in Russia, Argentina, and India. Since 1890 population in the United States has increased faster than the area under the plough, and during the past fifteen years the farmer has profited by an almost continuous advance in the average of agricultural prices. The demand for farm products is increasing more rapidly than the supply, and the farmer will profit more and more for this condition in years to come. Farmers who have paid cash for automobiles this year may have needed credit on a £3 road-cart twenty years ago, and they will be equally liberal in the future in patronizing manufacturers or merchants who can offer them substantial value for their money."