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One needs costly labor, teams no end of them breakers, and big gang-plows. The farmer who has nerve enough drills his last dollar into the soil in spring, but if he means to succeed it costs him more than that. He must give the sweat of his tensest effort, the uttermost toil of his body all, in fact, that has been given him.
They talk here of steam-plows and steam-wagons for common roads, and I have no doubt the steam-plow will be first practically and generally used, so far as the United States are concerned, in these Californian valleys, where I have seen furrows two miles long, and ten eight-horse teams following each other with gang-plows. Withal, they are somewhat ruthless in their pursuit of a wheat crop.
This power is readily available at any desired point, and for all kinds of work; becoming the magic motor by which we operate trains of trolley cars, for handling grain, hay, corn and all heavy crops; great gang-plows, rollers, harrows, cultivators, planters, drills, reapers, threshers and motor wagons; all so perfectly constructed and so easily controlled; that with them a woman, fittingly dressed and gloved, protected from the heat of the sun by a canopy, comfortably seated on cushions and springs, may accomplish the roughest and heaviest kind of farm work, without fatigue or discomfort.
Help will be hard to get, so he'll sell his British Columbia timber rights and buy a forty-horse-power gasoline tractor. He will at least if gasoline gets cheaper, for with "gas" still at twenty-six cents a gallon horse-power is cheapest. But during the breaking season in April and May, one of these engines can haul eight gang-plows behind it.
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