In the late 1800s, in the upper midwest, oxen that were no longer needed for pulling loads of logs, the pine forests having been logged off and rapidly converted into farm land, were turned into farm draft animals. Conversion from oxen to horses came a little after that and big powerful horses were used for farm work for many years, finally coming to an end after WWII. The first tractors were steam traction engines that were used to power and pull the great threshing machines and saw mills of that day. J.I.Case and Meinrad Rumely were early pioneers but there were many others. Some of these traction engines were used to pull plows on the prairie soils of the lower midwest with limited success. Rumely designed, built and sold through their dealers a new type of non-steam tractor that they called the "Oil Pull" which was smaller and more adaptable to farm work. John Deere tried to design a smaller tractor they called the Dain model after the engineer who designed it but it was too expensive. They then purchased the Waterloo Boy Tractor factory and marketed that for about $1400. Charles Hart and Charles Parr, two ag engineers, marketed their Hart-Parr tractors, eventually purchasing the Oliver Chilled Plow Company in New York and moved their operation from Janesville, Wis to Charles City, Iowa where everything they produced was eventually sold under the Oliver nameplate. It took one man, however, to convert the farmer from horses to tractors. He had already developed the mass production techniques necessary to convert people from horses to cars and now he did it with tractors as well. His intent was to provide the farmer who owned 60-80 acres with a tool that would remove the drudgery of walking behind a team of horses all day and allow him more time to be with his family. Over 500,000 of these little tractors were produced at about $750 a pop. This caused other tractor manufacturers to compete or go belly up. The net result was a massive conversion from horses to tractors, slowed only by the limitations imposed by WWII, and now, the farmer could get a lot more work done. This meant he could own more land. Farms became progressively larger and larger to the point where less than 5% of the population produces over 95% of the food products as opposed to 50% of the population producing food for themselves and the other 50%. That's right. 100 years ago, 50% of the population lived on farms producing food. Now, less than 5%. That freed up many minds and bodies to do other things. It caused a mass migration from farm to city and instead of constantly thinking about raising food crops, we have reached a point where hardly anyone even thinks about it. We have come to take a plentiful supply of high quality, relatively cheap food for granted. This means more prosperity for everyone and it happened in a span of about 60 years. An advancement in the human cause unequalled anywhere, anytime in history.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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