The planning of the tractor really antedated that of the motor car. Out
on the farm my first experiments were with tractors, and it will be
remembered that I was employed for some time by a manufacturer of steam
tractors--the big heavy road and thresher engines. But I did not see any
future for the large tractors. They were too expensive for the small
farm, required too much skill to operate, and were much too heavy as
compared with the pull they exerted. And anyway, the public was more
interested in being carried than in being pulled; the horseless carriage
made a greater appeal to the imagination. And so it was that I
practically dropped work upon a tractor until the automobile was in
production. With the automobile on the farms, the tractor became a
necessity. For then the farmers had been introduced to power.
The farmer does not stand so much in need of new tools as of power to
run the tools that he has. I have followed many a weary mile behind a
plough and I know all the drudgery of it. What a waste it is for a human
being to spend hours and days behind a slowly moving team of horses when
in the same time a tractor could do six times as much work! It is no
wonder that, doing everything slowly and by hand, the average farmer has
not been able to earn more than a bare living while farm products are
never as plentiful and cheap as they ought to be.
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