AGRIMOTOR NOTES.
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Farm Tractors Regarded from the View-point of the User. and Potential User.
MR. S. F. EDGE, at the recent meeting of the British Association at Cardiff, read before the Engineering Section a paper on farm tractors, to which-we briefly referred in our last issue. Mr. Edge stated that he had had 20 years' experience with farm tractors, having used (and carefully considered, in that period, the work of) all types, commencing with the original Ivel tractor, which was introduced and manufactured by the late Dan.Albone, of Biggleswade. Looking back over those two decades, he now claims to see clearly the outstanding reasons for the relatively slow progress of the tractor in the esteem of agriculturists. The first was the lack of sufficient power. Although the first tractors developed 12 h.p. nominally, that power was little more than was given by a good team of horses, whereas it sounded as if it represented considerably more. The early trials and demonstrations of the Albone tractor were made on good, light land at Biggleswade, where a, two-furrow plough did excellent work, but on heavy land it was found that the tractor could not pull the plough, and purchasers were (perhaps unreasonably, but certainly not unnaturally) disappointed.
The Early Mistake of Claiming Too Much.
The Albone tractor should have been effered for cultivating, grass-cuttin, reaping and binding and so forth—work well within its capacity. In that case, the tractor would have leapt into popularity with all who could afford it. The lesson to be learnt from this is that which can be learnt in almosVevery phase of pioneering, viz., to start with something up the sleeve. Customers would then find that they could get better work out of the machine than. the manufacturers had' demonstrated, and all this makes for adveitisement and popularity. Again, 20 years agot horseflesh, horsemen's labour, and feed. were all infinitely cheaper than they are now, and the price of corn was so low that the farmer found little inducement to plough any but his best-land for corn growing, whereas, With different conditions, the farmer, who will, in future, enlist the tractor's aid, can plough his heavy land in summer and thus grow
corn at a profit which he could never make with horseploughing.
For his own work, with fields ranging from five acres upward, Mr. Edge finds that a tractor able to pull three furrows is desirable. This, combined witla self-lifting plough, reduces his.labour question-go a minimum. Incidentally, thealabour question on our farms is, and will be, best solved by trying to arrange that the maximum amount of work shall be done by each man, so that every man employed can earn remuneration far above that of the ordinary run of agricultural workers. The need-is to attract to the land-A high grade of intelligence, possessed by men who will not see in every la,boluLsaving device$something^ introduced with the idea.of..doing them out ora living. The, use. of machinery on our farms -must steadily tend to kin these ideas of work conservation, if only by .developing the mental fibre of one's good men, and conStantly attra,cting to the land better and better brains.
A Three Furrow Machine the Best.
Mr. Edge's experience teaches him, therefore, that a ploughing machine naust,be sufficiently powerful to pull three furrows. In practice, the two-cylindered, horizontal-engined tractor works most days of the year, and Mr. Edge's experience is that at present the four-cylindered, fertical-engined tractors that he has used have not, given as good service as have the slower-running, horizontal-eng-ined machines. Fbr all that, he looks forward:Jo the time when even six; cyliridered tractors will be -used on fields and six.cylindered lorries on the roads. He stated that he had not yet had, on any of his farms, a tractoi which is as well made from the points of material and construction as$a,,first-class motor lorry chassis but the tendency now is to swing to more power an to better material and workmanship, whilst farmers Would gradually get accustomed to paying better prices.
At present, we have far too many tractors on the market which give a splendid first year's work With hardly an involuntary stop, but with an unhappy bill of breakages in each successive year. Many of the inopportune stoppages that result need neverhave occurred if 'a reallyeompetent, mechanically-minded. man had been in charge of each machine. Ninety per cent, of tractors are used by people with but the merest smattering of knowledge concerning them. For all that, everything must be done to encourage the production and the use of the best machines, thus encouraging the farmer to expect and to secure greater freedom from trouble.
With regard to the different types of tractors, Mr. Edge spoke in favour of the self-contained motor plough, like the Crawley and the Moline, for ploughing only, and of the rather heavy, two-cylindered tractor,. such as the Titan, for ploughiug and deep cultivation. For mowing and reaping he preferred a _faster machine, such as the Austin, Fordson, Wallis or International Junior. Three men with such machines are equal to at least five with horse wagons and pitchers. It is not alone the labour-saving that is so great, but the time-saving, and this means so
much in our climate, especially capricious when we are haymaking and harvesting. Mr. Edge stated that he fancied himself that as time passes, machines used for -haulage and field machines will get wider and wider apart and that less demand will exist for and less effort be made to supply, a machine to do every class of farming work. He concluded his paper by affirming his faith in mechanical power for the farm, as offering the only means by which we could, in the future, grow corn, at a profit in this country. He has proved for himself that the tractor makes it possible to cultivate land on which horses cannot be used because of the cost of horse tillage, and, furthermore, the tractor permits cultivating to be done in dry, hot weather, when horses are physically unable to do more than merely the minimum amount of hard work.
Mr. Edge's ,paper was exceedingly well received and appreciated AGRIMOL