VOL. 1  NO. 1

    THE IOWA FARMSTEAD

1920

THE AUTOMOBILE ON THE FARM

 Read Before the Harrison County Farmers.

Logan, Iowa

   Just now a great deal is being said about the great number of automobiles sold to the farmers.  When the farmer buys an auto, its because he has found it a paying investment.  It saves his horses, which are high priced, saves time and labor and those are his two most valuable commodities.  It affords recreation for his wife and family.  It’s a means of keeping the boys and girls on the farm.
   Very often much time may be saved by having an automobile.  For instance:  It’s haying time, everybody is in a hurry.  The mower is broken.  It may be 5 or 10 miles to town for repairs.  The farm team if taken from the field could scarcely make the trip in half a day.  Right here is where the auto is a great saving.  The “gude wife” can lay aside her breakfast work for an hour and enjoy and hour’s ride and be greatly rested for the rest of the day’s work that is before her.  They are in town by seven.  Repairs are brought home by eight.  Soon you are in the field and cutting hay by the time the dew is off.  This is what I call business with a lot of pleasure attached.
    We can haul our cream, butter and eggs to town.  We can detach the rear seat and take a few sacks of wheat or a plow to be sharpened.  We can bring back a barrel of salt, a sack of sugar.  Of course there are a

few months in the year the farmer cannot use his auto and that is winter time.
   Generally in the long summer day the chores are finished an hour before dark.  This is the time for the boys and girls to go for a ride.  Maybe to town on some errand, sometimes to a neighbor’s many times no stops are made at all.  Such rides as these are the ones that bring sweet sleep and pleasant dreams to the farmers’ family.
   We farmers do not buy automobiles for pleasure alone, which is all our city people can get out of a machine.

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