“Or portrait painting,” laughed Rita Wainwright with a significant glance at Mr. Deacon.
“Or musical criticism,” Lute remarked, with no glance at all, but with a pointedness of present company that brought from O’Hay:
“Or just being a charming young woman.”
“What price for the outfit?” Jeremy Braxton asked.
“Right now, we could manufacture and lay down, at a proper profit, for five hundred. If the thing came into general use, with up to date, large-scale factory methods, three hundred. But say five hundred. And write off fifteen per cent, for interest and constant, it would cost the farmer seventy dollars a year. What ten-acre farmer, on two-hundred-dollar land, who keeps books, can keep a horse for seventy dollars a year? And on top of that, it would save him, in labor, personal or hired, at the abjectest minimum, two hundred dollars a year.”
“But what guides it?” Rita asked.
“The drum on the post. The drum is graduated for the complete radius— which took some tall figuring, I assure you—and the cable, winding around the drum and shortening, draws the tractor in toward the center.”
“There are lots of objections to its general introduction, even among small farmers,” Gulhuss said.
Dick nodded affirmation.
“Sure,” he replied. “I have over forty noted down and classified. And I’ve as many more for the machine itself. If the thing is a success, it will take a long time to perfect it and introduce it.”