Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

nd. The second shipment of 25 Fordson-Oliver outfits, together with one Ford touring car, left New York harbor Dec. 23, 1922. Because of experiences with the earlier shipment, the repair supplies were slightly changed to accommodate local conditions, which made the total cost of this shipment delivered at Odessa $14,660.74. Later additional repair parts were sent upon request from Mos- cow to the amount of $2,297.30. The grand total outlay for the two shipments of tractors, plows, repairs, etc., amounts to $30,796.94. Of this amount $14,960.87 was contributed specifically for the tractors, the remainder was supplied from the general fund, with the prospect that this would be returned from the grain raised by the 304 FEEDING THE HUNGRY A.M.R. on land plowed and sowed by the tractors. A further addition to this fund is anticipated from the final sale of the tractors to villages and communities. New adjustments to situations as they arose from industrial or political conditions were almost without end in such a country as we found Russia at the time of the relief operations. Relative to the tractor work we note the following as some of the many that deserve considera- tion in order to give the reader a more realistic view of the situation. But just as no two seasons were exactly alike, so we must remember that conditions and methods differed with localities as well, in the vast area that came into consideration, from the Crimea in the South to the Orenburg District in the Northeast, adjoining Asia. During the first season of the tractor plowing the Soviet Government supplied the gas and oil, and also the seed grain, while the A.M.R. furnished the tractors and paid for the repairs and the labor; for the second season the government refused to furnish gas, oil or seed grain, so the A.M.R. furnished these, in addition to what it had done before, without cost to the farmer. For the fall of 1923 it was decided that the farmers themselves, who enjoyed the benefit of the plowing, should share in the expense. After September 1, 1924, the farmer was asked to pay for the previous year’s cost of the fuel and oil and of sharpening the shares. By this arrangement the farmer had one year’s credit, and paid from 33 to 50 cents per acre, while the A.M.R. bore the cost of about 70 cents per acre. Under these terms Bro. Yoder reports that in the fall of 1923 they plowed 9176 acres for the farmers, at a cost of $3782.61 to the farmers and $6381.48 to the A.M.R. Since the tractors plowed deeper than was plowed with horses this proved quite profitable to the farmers for the next season, for when the drought and heat came the grain in the shallow plowing dried up, RECONSTRUCTION WORK IN RUSSIA 305 while that on the tractor plowed ground brought fair returns. In the spring of 1924 four tractors were set to work under special terms as an experiment, in order to test the real practicability of tractors under