Power farming was
scarcely known, for the English farms were not, before the war, big
enough to warrant the purchase of heavy, expensive farm machinery, and
especially with agricultural labour so cheap and plentiful. Various
concerns in England made tractors, but they were heavy affairs and
mostly run by steam. There were not enough of them to go around. More
could not easily be made, for all the factories were working on
munitions, and even if they had been made they were too big and clumsy
for the average field and in addition required the management of
engineers. We had put together several tractors at our Manchester plant
for demonstration purposes. They had been made in the United States and
merely assembled in England. The Board of Agriculture requested the
Royal Agricultural Society to make a test of these tractors and report.
This is what they reported:
At the request of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, we have
examined two Ford tractors, rated at 25 h. p., at work ploughing:
First, cross-ploughing a fallow of strong land in a dirty condition, and
subsequently in a field of lighter land which had seeded itself down
into rough grass, and which afforded every opportunity of testing the
motor on the level and on a steep hill.
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