which
not only relieves the boy of the most back-breaking labor but gives him
the keen delight of _controlling power_,--a mighty fascination for every
normal boy.

The most recent publication of a great farm machinery trust entitled
"Three Hundred Years of Power Development," dismisses electricity as
impracticable for farm uses because of its expense; and says of wind
power: "This power at best is unreliable and usually unavailable when most
needed." Yet the writer has discovered a 1,120-acre farm in North Dakota
where electricity is generated by wind, and wind power is stored in
electricity at a very slight cost, and it meets many of the mechanical
needs of this prosperous farm. So far as known this is the first instance
of a _storage-battery electric plant upon a farm, the battery being
charged by wind power_! The ingenious older son, now a graduate of the
State School of Science, experimented with this plan all through his
boyhood and is now securing patent rights to protect his invention.[19] He
discovered from the U. S. Weather Bureau reports the mean wind velocity
which could be depended upon at Mooreton, N. D., and built his windmill
accordingly. An ingenious automatic regulator protects the battery from
over-charging. The electricity provides 75 lights for house, barn and
other farm buildings; power for wheat elevator, all laundry machinery,
washing, ironing, centrifugal drying; cream separater and other dairy
machinery; electric cook stove, et cetera, in the farm kitchen; electric
fans for the summer and bed warmers in the winter; electric pumps for
irrigating, and even an electric vulcanizer for repairing the auto tires!
This is the way one farm boy succeeded in harnessing the fierce prairie
winds and compelling them to do his drudgery.

_The Social Effect of Lessened Drudgery_

To the mechanic the story of agricultural machinery suggests the miracle
of the conquest of nature by human ingenuity and perfected mechanical
skill. To the economist it suggests fascinating new problems of production
and consumption, and the new values of land, labor and capital. To the
speculator it means a greatly enlarged field for manipulation and wilder
dreams of profit. But to the country lover rejoicing in the new rural
prosperity it first of all suggests that from thousands of progressive
farms has the curse of drudgery been lifted.[20]

Hard, grinding, back-breaking labor, often with surprisingly meager
returns, and in