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part is a separate departmental undertaking and each part as it is finished joins the conveyor system which
leads it to its proper initial assembly and eventually into the final assembly. Everything moves and there is no
CHAPTER XIV 92
skilled work. The capacity of the present plant is one million tractors a year. That is the number we expect to
make--for the world needs inexpensive, general-utility power plants more now than ever before--and also it
now knows enough about machinery to want such plants.
The first tractors, as I have said, went to England. They were first offered in the United States in 1918 at $750.
In the next year, with the higher costs, the price had to be made $885; in the middle of the year it was possible
again to make the introductory price of $750. In 1920 we charged $790; in the next year we were sufficiently
familiar with the production to begin cutting. The price came down to $625 and then in 1922 with the River
Rouge plant functioning we were able to cut to $395. All of which shows what getting into scientific
production will do to a price. Just as I have no idea how cheaply the Ford automobile can eventually be made,
I have no idea how cheaply the tractor can eventually be made.
It is important that it shall be cheap. Otherwise power will not go to all the farms. And they must all of them
have power. Within a few years a farm depending solely on horse and hand power will be as much of a
curiosity as a factory run by a treadmill. The farmer must either take up power or go out of business. The cost
figures make this inevitable. During the war the Government made a test of a Fordson tractor to see how its
costs compared with doing the work with horses. The figures on the tractor were taken at the high price plus
freight. The depreciation and repair items are not so great as the report sets them forth, and even if they were,
the prices are cut in halves which would therefore cut the depreciation and repair charge in halves. These are
the figures:
COST, FORDSON, $880. WEARING LIFE, 4,800 HOURS AT 4/5 ACRES PER HOUR, 3,840 ACRES
3,840 acres at $880; depreciation per acre .221
Repairs for 3,840 acres, $100; per acre .026
Fuel cost, kerosene at 19 cents; 2 gal. per acre .38
1 gal. oil per 8 acres; per acre .075
Driver, $2 per day, 8 acres; per acre .25 --- Cost of ploughing with Fordson; per acre. .95
8 HORSES COST, $1,200. WORKING LIFE, 5,000 HOURS AT 4/5 ACRE PER HOUR, 4,000 ACRES
4,000 acres at $1,200, depreciation of horses, per acre. . . . 30 Feed per horse, 40 cents (100 working days) per
acre . . . . . 40 Feed per horse, 10 cents a day (265 idle days) per acre. . . 2.65 Two drivers, two gang ploughs,
at $2 each per day, per acre. . 50 ---- Cost of ploughing with horses; per acre. . . . . . . . . . . 1.46
At present costs, an acre would run about 40 cents only two cents representing depreciation and repairs. But
this does not take account of the time element. The ploughing is done in about one fourth the time, with only
the physical energy used to steer the tractor. Ploughing has become a matter of motoring across a field.
Farming in the old style is rapidly fading into a picturesque memory. This does not mean that work is going to
remove from the farm. Work cannot be removed from any life that is productive. But power-farming does
mean this--drudgery is going to be removed from the farm. Power-farming is simply taking the burden from
flesh and blood and putting it on steel. We are in the opening years of power-farming. The motor car wrought
a revolution in modern farm life, not because it was a vehicle, but because it had power. Farming ought to be
something more than a rural occupation. It ought to be the business of raising food. And when it does become
a business the actual work of farming the average sort of farm can be done in twenty-four days a year. The
other days can be given over to other kinds of business. Farming is too seasonal an occupation to engage all of
a man's time.
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As a food business, farming will justify itself as a business if it raises food in sufficient quantity and
distributes it under such conditions as will enable every family to have enough food for its reasonable needs.
There could not be a food trust if we were to raise such overwhelming quantities of all kinds of food as to
make manipulation and exploitation impossible. The farmer who limits his planting plays into the hands of the
speculators.
And then, perhaps, we shall witness a revival of the small flour-milling business. It was an evil day when the
village flour mill disappeared. Cooperative farming will become so developed that we shall see associations of
farmers with their own packing houses in which their own hogs will be turned into ham and bacon, and with
their own flour mills in which their grain will be turned into commercial foodstuffs.
Why a steer raised in Texas should be brought to Chicago and then served in Boston is a question that cannot
be answered as long as all the steers the city needs could be raised near Boston. The centralization of food
manufacturing industries, entailing enormous costs for transportation and organization, is too wasteful long to
continue in a developed community.
We shall have as great a development in farming during the next twenty years as we have had in
manufacturing during the last twenty.
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CHAPTER XV
WHY CHARITY?
Why should there by any necessity for almsgiving in a civilized community? It is not the charitable mind to
which I object. Heaven forbid that we should ever grow cold toward a fellow creature in need. Human
sympathy is too fine for the cool, calculating attitude to take its place. One can name very few great advances
that did not have human sympathy behind them. It is in order to help people that every notable service is
undertaken.
The trouble is that we have been using this great, fine motive force for ends too small. If human sympathy
prompts us to feed the hungry, why should it not give the larger desire--to make hunger in our midst
impossible? If we have sympathy enough for people to help them out of their troubles, surely we ought to
have sympathy enough to keep them out.
It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary. To make the giving unnecessary we must look
beyond the individual to the cause of his misery--not hesitating, of course, to relieve him in the meantime, but
not stopping with mere temporary relief. The difficulty seems to be in getting to look beyond to the causes.
More people can be moved to help a poor family than can be moved to give their minds toward the removal of
poverty altogether.
I have no patience with professional charity, or with any sort of commercialized humanitarianism. The
moment human helpfulness is systematized, organized, commercialized, and professionalized, the heart of it is
extinguished, and it becomes a cold and clammy thing.
Real human helpfulness is never card-catalogued or advertised. There are more orphan children being cared
for in the private homes of people who love them than in the institutions. There are more old people being
sheltered by friends than you can find in the old people's homes. There is more aid by loans from family to
family than by the loan societies. That is, human society on a humane basis looks out for itself. It is a grave
question how far we ought to countenance the commercialization of the natural instinct of charity.
Professional charity is not only cold but it hurts more than it helps. It degrades the recipients and drugs their
self-respect. Akin to it is sentimental idealism. The idea went abroad not so many years ago that "service" was
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