Back to the farm

There has been widespread recognition of the drift of young men from agriculture to the more attractive industrial field. Financial betterment has without doubt been the chief incentive, but there is a fascination in electrical work which has had an important bearing upon the movement. Engineers who have accumulated sufficient wealth to enable them to purchase and operate a large farm, have in some instances found rest and recreation in the actual practice of agriculture. Conditions are changing, however, and it appears possible that in the future small farms will be merged into such large tracts that their most efficient and economical operation will demand electrical distribution. The difficulty of obtaining farm hands who are able and willing to milk, has reached a point where dairies are being abandoned, and the land used for other purposes. For at least fifty years inventors have toyed with the problem of a successful milking machine. The press agent of the New York Electrical show announced such an exhibit, prefaced by the statement that thousands of people in New York City had never seen a cow, and thousands more had never seen a cow “get milked”. But electricity is by no means confined to this restricted field of farm work. A plant in a small town in Ohio furnishes current to milk cows, thresh grain, cut fodder, fill silos, husk corn, grind feed, pump water, saw wood, separate cream, churn butter, wash clothes, light barns and houses. Telephone and signal bells have become ordinary conveniences, the use of motors for field work will certainly increase, and in locations where water power is available, there would seem to be ample opportunity for the young electrical engineer to utilize his genius in adding to the growing prosperity of the scientific farm.