AGRICULTURE: From Men to Machine

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Now join hands and circle to the left

With the tractor in the lead . . .

Swing along to the engine's roar,

See how Fast-Hitch lets you do more...

Hitch that blister, disk and plow

Right from the seat, you all know how.

Outside Chicago last week, to the fiddled squeak of Turkey in the Straw, International Harvester Co. showed off a new kind of square dance that will tour the country-fair circuit later this summer. Performed by four new Harvester tractors, the dance is designed to show just how fast the machines can hitch up to various farm implements, with the help of a new hydraulic coupling device. With Harvester's new coupler, farmers do not have to dismount from their tractors to hitch or unhitch plows, harrows, weeders and other Harvester implements; working from the tractor seat, they can do the job in seven seconds.

Harvester's Fast-Hitch coupler is the most important of a complete new line of farm implements on which the company has spent about $150 million in the past two years. Included in the line are a variety of implements formerly usable only with the biggest tractors and now redesigned in smaller sizes.

Lightened Load. The new machines are clear proof of Harvester's confidence that the farm-equipment market, transformed by the shift from men and horses to machines, is still far from filled.

In 1910, there were 24.2 million horses and mules on U.S. farms v. a mere 1,000 tractors. Now the horse and mule population is down to 5,600,000,* along with a drop in manpower, while the number of farm tractors has soared to 4,400,000, supplying more than 80% of the power for field work on U.S. farms. Other farm machines have scored similar gains. In 1940, there were 190,000 combines on U.S. farms; now there are almost a million. The number of corn pickers has jumped from 110,000 to 588,000, hay balers from 25,000 to 240,000. Between 1940 and 1952, U.S. farmers bought $22.2 billion worth of machinery, and economists expect purchases to stabilize at around 8% of farm income, or an estimated $2.5 billion in 1953.

Two Billion Man-Hours. Farm mechanization got a big lift from World War II's huge food demand, and the skyrocketing cost of farm labor—up 300% since 1939 v. a 100% rise in the cost of machinery. It has amply paid off. Items:

¶ Tractor equipment saves farmers an estimated 2 billion man-hours a year.

¶ A 12-ft. grain combine harvests 30 or more acres a day, cuts labor by 85%.

¶ A mechanical cotton picker will do as much work in one day as 40 men, cut picking costs from as high as $52.55 to $18.70 a bale.

¶ A milking machine will save up to 30 man-hours per cow in a year's time.