The Woman on the Farm at Last Enjoying the Benefit of Labor-Saving Machines
This small mounted kerosene engine runs the washing machine, pump, cream separator and churn. It is easily drawn about from place to place by hand where its energy is needed to lighten the housework.
“I found that the good man of the house had his own electric light and water plant, run by kerosene engines, that his cows were milked automatically, that he pulled his plows, harrows, drills, manure spreader and binder with a kerosene tractor, that his hired men went about the farm doing everything as they rode on some machine, that he went to church and town in an automobile, and that he delivered the products of his farm to market with a motor truck. Everything was managed like a factory. Things went forward with order and with assurance. Everyone was busy and happy.”
This is an optimistic picture of one of our best farms, but compare it with the best that could be found only a few hundred years ago. The best farmer of those days held all the land for miles around and lived in a castle in the middle of it. The castle was dark and cold and was made of rough stones fitted together. The poor farmers were serfs and came two or three days out of a week to their master’s house to work. Those were the great days of their lives, for then they ate of the master’s food.
Food—that was the problem of those long tired years which dragged through the ages, when nearly everyone was a farmer, and a farmer with crude tools held in his hands. Time was when practically the whole world went to bed hungry and rose again in the morning craving food, just as half the millions of India do today because they do with their hands what a machine should do.
The Motor Truck May be Used by the Farmer Even in Hilly and Mountainous Places
This photograph was taken near the summit of Pike’s Peak.
People in the hungry, unfed ages grew so used to privation that even the philosophers accepted sorrow and woe as a matter of course and dilated upon their virtues for chastening the human soul. “It is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of mirth,” said one of the prophets, and such words brought comfort to the hungry, miserable millions who had to mourn and go hungry whether it was to their advantage or not.
