More Tractors Wanted

Secretary of Agriculture Wickard is worried about the coming shortage of tractors. There is talk in Washington of a ration plan for heavy farm machinery. Military needs are gobbling so much steel that next year there will not be enough tractors to go around: merely to replace those worn out, 125,000 new ones will be needed. If the U.S. population of horses and mules continues to dwindle at its present rate, at least another 50,000 tractors will be needed. (In 1940, tractors on farms increased by 218,000.)

Total number of work horses and mules has been dropping about a third of a million a year. Even if breeding is encouraged, it will take several years to up the trend.

In Chicago this week, amid bellows, oinks, neighs and baas, with the skirl of a bagpipe band, exuberant farmers gathered for the 42nd International Livestock Exposition. Rising demand for their products made farmers feel better than they have felt in years. The numbers of U.S. cattle, sheep and hogs, especially hogs, have shot up in the past five years from 160 to 180 million.

But horses and mules are another matter. Government and farmers alike know they cannot return to the munching, nonmechanical drowse of yesterday's barnyard. The draft and the siphoning off of farm labor by defense industry will call for still more mechanized farming. But at Chicago the shortage of horses and farm machinery was something that farmers still refused to worry about. At this point only the Government was worried.

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