Written by Brian on 21 April 2011
Late-styled Oliver 70 tractor on factory rubber tires
The end of the Second World War in September of 1945 brought about sudden changes in the farm equipment market. During the war, farm equipment companies all across the United States had been severely restricted in the amount of farm tractors and equipment they had been allowed to make. With the end of the war, these companies were scrambling to re-tool for civilian production.
Through out the rural areas of the United States, farmers, who had been unable to obtain any new farm machinery during now flooded their local farm equipment dealers to buy new farm equipment as it became available. One of the farmers seeking to modernize his farming operation with new farm equipment was a particular farmer in Nevada Township, in southern Mower County, Minnesota. As noted earlier (see the previous article in this series of articles “Oliver Farm Equipment in Mower County, Minnesota [Part II]: Soybeans”), out Nevada Township farmer had in the spring of 1945, joined the growing number of farmers across the United States who were planting soybeans. Experiments in raising soybeans had been going on for many years prior to the war. However, only with the massive new demand for plastic for the production of cowlings, turrets and windscreens for modern aircraft for the war effort, did the simple little soybean become a large nationwide farm product. Accordingly, the price of soybeans rose from its pre-war level of around 90¢ per bushel to a high of $2.10 per bushel in November of 1945. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Brian on 21 April 2011
Oliver Farm Equipment in Mower County Minnesota (Part 2 of 6 Parts): Soybeans
by Brian Wayne Wells
with the assistance of Paul William Cook
As noted previously, Mower County in Minnesota is located on the border of Minnesota and Iowa. (See the previous article in this series called “Oliver Farm Equipment (Part I): Suffolk Sheep Raising.”) One of the middle
Oliver-Superior Model 9B corn planter adjusted for soybean planting
townships in western Mower County is Nevada Township. (Ibid.) Also as previously noted, in 1941 Nevada Township was the home of a particular farmer, who worked a 160-acre diversified a farm with his wife and their two sons. The typical diversified farm was a farming operation that developed income from a number of different sources, crops, (like corn), along with animals (perhaps raising and selling hogs, raising a flock of laying hens for eggs and/or milking cows to sell the milk). The idea of diversification was that if one of the products raised on the farm was in a price slump the other products raised on the farm might rescue the owner of the farm by providing some income to allow the family to survive the price slump.
Additionally, as previously noted, in 1942, our Nevada Township farmer added a new product to his diversified farming operation. In 1942, the United States of America was in its first year of involvement in the world war. Both of his sons were now away from the farm serving in the Pacific theater in the war. He was back to handling the farm alone just as he had done when his boys were children. Farm prices had risen across the board, but the war created both disadvantages and opportunities for the American farmer. Raising sheep for meat had been one of those opportunities. The price of mutton and lamb had risen in 1941 as the Britain began to buy United States lamb and mutton to replace the product they could no longer get from Australia. This sudden rise in sheep prices encouraged our Nevada Township farmer to obtain a small flock of Suffolk sheep for his own farming operation. As sheep prices continued to rise because of the the war and United States government buying of lamb to support its armed forces which were stationed around the world, other farmers sought to obtain or expand their own flocks of sheep. Our Nevada Township farmer found that he could make more money by registering some of his best ewe lambs and best young rams with the National Suffolk Sheep Association and selling them to other farmers for breeding stock, rather than taking them to directly to market. Our Nevada Township farmer could make $6.80 per hundred weight (about $9.00 lamb on a 130-pound lamb going to Hormel’s meat market in Austin. However, he could make three times that amount by holding back the ewe lambs which had the best breed characteristics and selling them as breeding stock to other farmers.
Breeders were always trying to improve the breed characteristics of their flocks. Toward this end breeders might purchase good quality purebred ewes to improve the breed characteristics of their flock. However, by purchasing a single purebred ram, sheep farmers knew that they could influence half the genes of their flock, because a single ram would be the sire (father) of all the lambs born to the flock. Accordingly, breeders would pay even more for a young ram than they would for individual ewes. Thus, organized ram sales became popular as an annual event. Usually these rams sales were held in early June each year. One of the nation’s foremost ram sales was the Midwest Stud Ram Sale held in Omaha, Nebraska. Our Nevada Township farmer drove his 1939 Chevrolet Model JD ¾-ton truck to Omaha with a few sheep to sell. Sales of the best young purebred rams and ewes was, he felt, maximized and fully diversified the profit that he received from his flock of sheep. As noted previously, the profits that he had received from his flock of sheep had allowed him to purchase a used 1935 tricycle-style Hart-Parr/Oliver Model 18-27 (dual wheel) tractor at an auction in February of 1943.
Only in 1944 did the price of lamb decline. This decline in the sheep market was the result of the army’s decision in mid-1944 to drop the unpopular “Mutton Stew and Vegetables” unit from the C-ration menu and replace it with the “Beef Stew and Vegetables” unit. (See the C-ration entry under Wikipedia on the Internet.) The effect of this decline in the price of sheep was felt immediately as farmers, reduced the number of sheep on their farm or sold off their flocks entirely.
In 1945, the number of sheep across the whole state of Minnesota stood at 995,000 head. In Mower County the sheep population was 17,500 head in 1945. The number of sheep in neighboring Fillmore County, to the east of Mower County, stood at 30,500 head. In 1946, the number of sheep in the whole state of Minnesota the number of sheep fell to 846,000 head as the total number of sheep in Mower County fell to 15,000 head and fell to 26,000 head in Fillmore County. In the post-war years the population of sheep in Minnesota continued to decline and hit a bottom in 1950 with only 571,000 sheep in the entire state of Minnesota, 10,300 head in Mower County and 18,400 head in Fillmore County.
However, as the war progressed, another farm product was continuing to increase in importance—the soybean. Our Nevada Township farmer started to hear about soybeans as a profitable farm product over WCCO radio out if Minneapolis. Research into the soybean had been going on since the early 1900s. This research discovered a great uses for the simple soybean. (See the unpublished article, called “Soybean Farming with a Farmall H in Butternut Valley Township” written by Brian Wayne Wells regarding soybean processing in Mankato, Minnesota. This article can be seen on this website.) However, a real economic market for soybeans had never been found until the recent World War. Now soybeans were used to make plastics which were used in the cowlings and wind screens of the thousands of aircraft that were being turned out by American industry for the war effort. In 1940, nation-wide production of the soybeans was limited to just 78,045,000 bushels. However, by 1943, that production figure had grown to 190,133,000 bushels. Right here in Mower County, Minnesota, our Nevada, Township farmer had seen his neighbors increase their soybean acreage from 17,800 acres in 1941 to 38,000 acres in 1944.
Farmers were not reducing the number of acres they devoted to corn. Indeed, the number of acres of corn planted in Mower County rose from 88,100 in 1941 to 121,000 acres in 1944. Where were all these extra arable acres coming from? To be sure, farmers were now placing in production land they had previously considered unprofitable land. It was part of the national patriotic drive to plant crops from “fence-row to fence-row” to help the war effort. However, it was also true that farmers were raising less hay and oats than they used to raise. In Mower County, farmers devoted 100,300 acres to oats, in 1942 oat acreage in the county fell to 89,000 acres in 1942 and fell still further to 61,800 acres in 1944. Similarly, the acreage devoted to hay fell from 87,100 acres in 1940 to 54,900 acres in 1943. Both hay and oats are raised as animal food on the average Midwestern farm—a primary food for horses. Consequently, the reduction of acreage allotted to hay was the result of farmers mechanizing the power source in their farming operations and reducing the number of horses on their farms. Of course, farmers still needed some hay and oats for the other livestock they raised on their farms, but clearly, Mower County farmers were growing less hay and oats and turning to soybeans as a replacement crop on their farms.
Our Nevada Township farmer had watched soybean production in Mower County set new historical records of production each year from 1941 until 1943 . However, despite the continuing rise in the market price of soybeans, he had not started planting soybeans on his farm. His mind had been already occupied with his current diversification—into sheep raising. Sheep raising was the bird in the hand. The promise behind the raising of soybeans was the two birds in the bush. Our Nevada Township farmer felt in the spring of 1944 that he should clasp closely onto the bird in the hand and neglect the two in the bush. However, throughout 1944, the price of soybeans continued its slow steady to climb upwards, reaching $2.05 per bushel as a monthly average for each of the months of October, November and December 1944. So large was the demand for soybeans that, no glut on the market was created when yet another nationwide record—192,121,000 bushels of soybeans came onto the market in late 1944. Indeed, this large supply of soybeans did not even dent the high prices that soybeans were bringing.
The high price of soybeans in 1944, finally, caused our Nevada Township farmer to change his mind. He decided to plant soybeans on his farm in the spring of 1945. Many of his neighbors reached the same decision. Accordingly, in the spring of 1945 Mower County farmers planted a record 51,500 acres in soybeans—up from 38,000 acres in 1944. This was an increase of 35.5% in soybean acreage in just one year.
Like corn, soybeans was a “row crop.” Soybeans would be planted in rows 40 inches apart, just like corn. Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer could use his old horse-drawn Oliver-Superior No. 9B corn planter to plant the soybeans. Ever since he had obtained his first tractor in February of 1940—a used 1937 Hart-Parr/Oliver Model 28-44 tractor “3-5 plow tractor”—our Nevada Township farmer had been busy shortening the tongues on a lot of his horse-drawn farm equipment so that he could use the tractor doing as much of the field work on his farm as possible. (See the first article in this series called “Oliver Farm Equipment in Mower County Part I: Purebred Suffolk Sheep Raising” published on this website.) Accordingly, he had shortened the hitch on his old Model 9 corn horse-drawn corn planter. With minimal adjustments to his 9 corn planter he now could use the corn planter to “drill” soybeans in 40 inch rows.
One of these minimal adjustments was to obtain planter plates for the bottom of the seed containers which would allow the planting of soybeans in a continuous stream in the rows rather than “check” planted in hills within the rows, like corn. The soybean plants did not have to be spread 40 inches apart in “hills” within the rows like corn. Thus, he would not have to stretch the check wire across the length of the field as he did when “wire-check” planting his corn. Instead, soybeans were “drilled” into the rows. Rather than releasing seeds into the open trench only when the planting units were “tripped,” he could simply adjust the No. 9 planter so that reach planting unit on the No. 9 planter would “sow” a continuous stream soybeans into the small trenches that were opened by the two furrow openers on the planter. In this way the seeds and later the soybean plants might be only four inches apart within the row.
Our Nevada Township farmer needed to purchase a new pair of planter plates for the No. 9 planter. He did not have the plater plates that would allow the No. 9 planter to drill soybeans. These new planter plants were specifically designed for drilling soybeans. They would temporarily replace the plates he currently had which were only for planting corn. The planter plates were circular cast-iron plates that were placed at the bottom of the two cylindrical seed “boxes” or seed containers on the No. 9 planter. On planting day, the seed boxes were filled with seed. As the planter moved across the field the furrow openers at the front of each planting unit on the No. 9 planter would open a trench in the ground about 2 inches deep. The wheels on the planter would power a shaft connecting both planting units on the No. 9 planter. This shaft would turn the planter plate at the bottom of each seed box. As they revolved, the slots on the edge of the planter plate would select individual seeds from the seed box and drop them in a tube which led to the lower part of each planting unit. There the seeds would be released into the small trench that had been opened by the furrow openers. Corn plates selected individual seeds at a rate that would allow only three seeds to be selected for every 40 inches of progress the No. 9 made as it moved across the field. Because soybeans were planted only 4 inches apart, soybean plates would need to supply 10 soybean seeds for the same 40 inches of progress that the planter moved across the field. The plates needed to turn faster and gather more seed. Thus, a different style of planter plate was needed for the No. 9 planter for use in soybeans.
Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer began to contemplate making a trip to his local Oliver dealership—the Thill Implement dealership located in Rose Creek, Minnesota—to purchase these new plates. He knew that he should make this trip early in the year. Ever since United States’ involvement in the war, he had learned that nothing should be taken for granted. Nothing was predictable. Simple parts like new plates for a planter may have to be ordered. This would take time. He wanted all his equipment ready when the field work started. He could not afford delays while he waited on parts. Besides in March of 1945, he and his wife were anxious to find a reason (any reason) to get off the farm for a little while.
The winter of 1944-1945 had been basically snowless until a series of snow storms in mid-January, 1945 combined to deposit about 4-to-8 inches of snow on the ground. Cold temperatures which persisted mid-until March of 1945 would not allow the snow to melt. Thus, chores like the daily hauling the manure to the field had become cold, laborious jobs even using one of the tractors. (In addition to the 1937 Model 28-44 standard tractor, our Nevada Township farmer had obtained a 1935 tricycle-style Hart-Parr/Oliver Model 18-27 (dual wheel) tricycle-style tractor in late February of 1943. [See the prior article in this series called “Oliver Farm Equipment in Mower County Part I: Purebred Suffolk Sheep Raising” published on this website.] It was the Model 18-27 (dual wheel) tricycle-style “row crop” tractor that allowed our Nevada Township farmer to mechanize every field task on his farm and eliminate the need for horses on his farm.)
Fighting the snow and trying to keep up with the chores on his farm all winter had given our Nevada Township farmer and his wife a bad case of “cabin fever.” Accordingly, when the weather became unseasonably warm in late March, 1945, and the snow had melted, our Nevada Township farmer and his wife were more than willing to leave the farm for a short while. They got into their old 1941 Chevrolet Special Delux Sport Sedan and drove the 12 miles north to visit his local Oliver Farm Equipment dealership—Thill Implement of Rose Creek, Minnesota. Rose Creek (1940, pop. 261) was located in center of Windom Township. Windom Township was the township located immediately adjacent to Nevada Township’s northern border.
The Thill Implement dealership had been originally founded by John Peter and Marie (Lindsay) Thill in 1938. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 17, 1895, John Peter, at the age of seven-years of age, had moved with his parents, Nicholas and Margaret Thill, in 1903, to a farm located in Windom Township about three (3) miles north of Rose Creek. Growing up on this farm, John Peter had met Marie Lindsay. In 1916, they had fallen in love and were married. They started a family on January 1, 1918 with the birth of Robert Lindsay Thill. In 1921, a daughter, Dorothy Thill was born to the couple and, finally, in 1925, a second son, John (Jack) Thill Jr, was born.
John Peter and Marie established their own farming operation and operated the farm through the hardest years of the Great Depression and when the economy started to recover in 1938, John thought he saw an opportunity to gain some extra income by starting a farm tractor dealership in the town of Rose Creek. Mechanical power on farms was in its infancy, but tractors were already replacing horses on farms at a furious rate. It already seemed that tractor power was the wave of the future. Perceiving a large demand for Minneapolis-Moline corn shellers, John Peter Thill obtained a franchise from the Minneapolis-Moline Company of Hopkins, Minnesota. However, John Peter soon obtained second franchise from the Oliver Farm Equipment Company of Charles City, Iowa, because he had been very impressed by the easy draft of Oliver plows.
In its first year in business, Thill Implement had no building for its dealership. Thus, Thill Implement dealership began as a few new tractors parked under a under a shade tree in Rose Creek. Only in 1939 was John Peter able to obtain an old grocery store building in Rose Creek, and convert it to a dealership building. At the same time as he operated the dealership, John Peter Thill also continued his farming operation. It was this farm that caused a close relationship to arise between Thill Implement and the Oliver Farm Equipment Company.
The Oliver Farm Equipment Company had been formed in a merger of four companies in 1929–the Hart-Parr Tractor Company of Charles City, Iowa, the American Seeding Company of Richmond, Indiana, the Oliver Chilled Plow Works of South Bend, Indiana and the Nichols and Shepard Company of Battle Creek, Michigan. Since 1929, more companies had been purchased by and merged into the new Oliver Company. Thus, by 1939, the Oliver Company was a large sprawling corporation with factories spread all across the nation.
Among the oldest and most distinguished of these companies under the Oliver corporate umbrella was the Hart-Parr Tractor Company. The Hart-Parr Company had been the first company to mass produce an internal combustion engine-powered farm tractors starting in 1903. Following the merger in 1929, the new corporate headquarters for the sprawling Oliver Farm Equipment Company was established in Chicago, Illinois. However, much of the research and management staff dealing with tractor production remained in Charles City, Iowa, the old home of the Hart-Parr Company. Indeed much of this staff was composed of former Hart-Parr employees and, whatever isolated tractor manufacturing operations were contained in other companies involved in the merger (Nichols and Shepard for an example) were eventually consolidated in Charles City.
The Charles City plant was located 35 miles south of Rose Creek. Actually, the driving distance to Charles City was 43 miles because John Peter Thill could drive 6 miles west on County Road #4 to pick up U.S. Highway #218. But the drive was pleasurable because once having reached U.S. #218 was the remaining drive to Charles City was on a smooth concrete paved road. The new Thill Implement dealership was fortunate because of this close proximity to Charles City, Iowa. Over the years, Thill Implement developed a strong relationship with the managerial staff at the Charles City plant. The benefits of this relationship flowed both ways. The Charles City engineering staff found that they could count on John Peter readily agreeing to offer land on his farm on which to test their new Oliver tractors. John Peter agreed to allow these tractor tests and demonstrations to be conducted on his farm because of the public attention these tests and demonstrations attracted. This public attention was the best possible advertisement for Thill Implement.
Recent public attention by area farmers was directed toward the demonstrations of “row crop tractors.” These row crop or tricycle style tractors were specifically designed for cultivation of corn and other row crops. This was the last remaining field task on the average Midwestern farm that was still done by horses. The entire line of tractors offered to the farming public by the Hart-Parr Tractor Company had been “standard” or “four-wheel” style tractors. These standard tractors had wheels set at fixed tread widths. Thus, the tractors were suited for every farm field job except cultivation of row crops. However, Hart-Parr had been researching and developing a tricycle-style “row crop” tractor at the time of the merger in 1929. In 1930, Hart-Parr (now the Oliver Company) introduced their new Oliver /Hart-Parr Row Crop Model 18-28 tractor. This was the Oliver Farm Equipment Company’s first row crop tractor. This tractor had adjustable tread width for the rear wheels and a single front wheel. The front wheel attached to a single bolster, like a child’s tricycle. This “fifth-wheel” type of steering by means of a single bolster allowed the tricycle–style tractor to turn very sharply in the field while cultivating corn and/or other row crops.
Substantial changes were made to the Model 18-28 tractor and the following year, in 1931, a new improved Oliver Model 18-27 tricycle style tractor replaced the 18-28 Hart-Parr Row Crop tractor. This new Model 18-27 was designated “dual wheel” to emphasize its most obvious difference from its single-front wheeled predecessor. The 18-27 (dual wheel) tractor featured differential foot brakes for each rear wheel. These differential brakes allowed the tractor operator to apply the brake to the appropriate wheel to assist in turning the 180° turns at the end of the rows while cultivating corn and other row crops. The 18-27 (dual wheel) also featured a full pressure oiling system and a oil filter. This helped prolong the life of the four-cylinder engine. The 18-27 (dual wheel) remained in production from 1931 until 1936. The peak of annual production of the tractor was reached in 1935, when 748 individual Model 18-27 (dual wheel) tractors were turned out at the Charles City plant. It was one of these 748 tractors that our Nevada Township farmer had purchased as a used tractor in late-February of 1943. In 1936, the Model 18-27 (dual wheel) row crop tractor was replaced with the Oliver Model 80 row crop tractor. (When the new four cylinder Model 80 tractor was tested at the University of Nebraska from May 16 through May 26, 1938, using low-octane distillate fuel, the results showed that the Model 80 delivered 23.32 horsepower [hp.] to the drawbar and 35.24 hp. to the belt pulley. [See C.H. Wendel, Nebraska Tractor Tests: Since 1920 (Motorbooks International Pub.: Oseloa, Wisc., 1985) p. 95.])
The unstyled Model 80 was a new tractor, but it was Oliver’s other new (and smaller) row crop tractor that was to become especially important to Thill Implement and other Oliver dealerships across the Midwestern section of the United States. In 1935, the Oliver Company, introduced their new, revolutionary and very popular smaller tractor—the Model 70 . The Model 70 was offered in a variety of formats—the “standard” style, the “industrial” style and row crop style. However, the most common format of Model 70 was the row crop version. Externally, the Oliver Model 70 was unique among tractors on the market. The tractor was painted dark green with orange accents and red wheels. When introduced in 1935, the Model 70 had been “styled” with a sheet metal hood, grill and side curtains covering the engine entirely. During the initial period of production, the Model 70 was offered to the public equipped with a Waukesha four-cylinder engine.
However, in 1937, the Model 70 was further improved and “streamlined. The streamlining gave the Model 70 an even more sleek appearance. The new improved Model 70 was offered to the public with optional rubber tires, electric start and electric lights. However, the must unique feature of the new 1937 Oliver Model 70 was the tractor’s new 6-cylinder engine. The new 6-cylinder engine featured in the new Oliver Model 70 had been researched and developed by the Oliver Company, itself. The engine was now in full production at Oliver’s South Bend No. 2 Works in South Bend, Indiana. When this new six-cylinder Model 70 was tested at the University of Nebraska from August 23 until August 29, 1940, the new 6-cylinder engine in the Model 70 delivered 22.72 horsepower (hp.) to the drawbar and 30.37 hp. to the belt pulley. (See C.H. Wendel, Nebraska Tractor Tests: Since 1920 [Motorbooks International: Oseola, Wisc., 1985] p. 128.)
From the very first, row-crop style Model 70 tractors led all other models of Oliver tractors in sales. The tricycle style row crop version of the Model 70 itself, actually, outsold all the other styles and models of Oliver tractors. During the first two years of production the 4-cylinder Model 70, Oliver made and sold 684 row crop versions of the Model 70 in 1935 and 8,042 row crop versions in 1936. When the new 6-cylinder Oliver Model 70 was introduced in 1937, sales of the row crop Model 70 rose to 10,915 Model 70 row crop tractors. By contrast, only 14 Model 80 tractors were built and sold in 1937.
When the Thill Implement opened in 1938, the national economy was just recovering from the recession of 1937-1938. This recession had caused a downturn in business nationwide. This business slowdown also affected the Oliver Farm Equipment Company as the company produced only 780 Model 70 row crop tractors in 1938. However, Thill Implement was able to sell enough of these popular tractors to weather the recession. In 1939, with the recession over, the Oliver Company produced 7,860 Model 70 row crop tractors. Thill Implement supported itself on the back of strong sales of the Model 70 until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor involved the United States in the Second World War. From that point on production of the Oliver Model 70 dwindled to only 1,070 row crop tractors in 1943. Not because of any lack of demand for the Model 70, rather the decline in production was caused by the scarcity of raw materials for making the tractor. All raw products for civilian production were now being severely restricted by the United States government and directed to production for the war effort. Thus, production of tractors and large farm implements by all farm manufacturers was severely curtailed by the war effort. During the middle of the war, even the manufacture of repair parts were restricted by the war effort and it was hard for farmers to obtain any repair parts from their local dealerships. Farmers found that even parts for the tractors and farm machinery they already owned were in short supply.
Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer did not know what to expect when he visited Thill Implement in February of 1945. He did not know whether the corn planter plates he wanted would be in stock or whether he would have to order the parts and then wait on the delivery of the parts some weeks in the future. However, our Nevada Township farmer was pleasantly surprised to learn that now in the spring of 1945 with the end of the war was in sight, the United States economy had grown to the level that it was able to meet the vast demands of the war and simultaneously meet some of the demands of civilian economy. Thus, while in the spring of 1945, new Model 70 tractors remained in very short supply, our Nevada Township farmer was assured that Thill Implement had the planter plates in stock. The salesman behind the repair parts counter at Thill Implement took no more than a couple of minutes to walk back into the parts bins behind the counter and emerge with two of the particular planter plates for the Oliver-Superior Model 9 planter which he had requested. The salesman reminded our Nevada Township farmer of another part he would need to convert his corn planter into a soybean drill. This was a small link that connected between the frame of the planter and the tripping mechanism on the planter. This link would disable the tripping mechanism so that the shaft turning the soybean plates would operate continuously. This would allow the soybeans to be drilled in a steady stream along the row rather than being planted in hills planted in the row.
The salesman related that there had been big demand for these soybean plates and the link over the last few weeks. Because of this demand, Thill Implement had ordered and received a large number of the soybean planter plates and conversion parts for all of the older Oliver-Superior planters. It seemed that everyone was planting soybeans this year. Indeed, the salesman reported that he had heard over KATE radio from nearby Albert Lea, Minnesota, (the county seat of neighboring Freeborn County) that preliminary news reports of spring planting in Freeborn County from the Extension Service of the United States Department of Agriculture found that soybean acreage was up by 20% this spring over the year before. (In Mower County the results would eventually reveal a more staggering figure. The Mower County Extension Service would report that the number of acres planted in soybeans in Mower County in the spring of 1945 would be up 35.5 % over the previous year.)
Having obtained the proper planter plates for his Model 9 planter, our Nevada Township farmer was ready for the spring field work well before the winter weather warmed sufficiently for him to get into the fields. Warmer than usual weather in late-March helped dry and warm the soil in his fields. Thus, spring field work could begin in April, earlier than usual. The oats were drilled first. However, this year, our Nevada Township farmer drilled only part of the field in oats. Since obtaining the Oliver Row Crop Model 18-27 (dual wheel) tractor, two years before, he had totally mechanized the power sources on his farm. Although he had retained one team of horses on his farm out of a feeling of tradition, he really had no need to employ horses in any aspect of his field operations—including the cultivation of row crops. Thus, with far fewer horses on his farm he no longer needed a large quantity of oats on the farm as he had done in the past. Accordingly, the remainder of the oat field was worked up and left unplanted for the time being. This was the area on the farm where he would plant the soybeans.
Before planting his new crop of soybeans, however, he needed to plant his corn. Corn was traditionally planted prior to soybeans. While corn can be planted in ground that is between 50º to 55ºF in temperature, soybeans required soil temperatures of 55ºF to 60ºF in order to prosper. It turned out that there was no need to worry, this year. The sunshine of early May, 1945 warmed the ground sufficiently, such that our Nevada Township farmer could start planting his soybeans immediately after he had finished planting his corn in mid-May.
Dramatic world news was broadcast in May of 1945, as Germany surrendered and the war in Europe came to an end. This was good news, but our Nevada Township farmer and his wife still had their eyes on the war in the Pacific, where both of their sons were serving. The war in the Pacific was still in progress. For him and his wife the really big news, they wanted, was to hear that the war in the Pacific had ended. This would mean the safe return of their two sons. However, our Nevada Township farmer could not help being anxious over the end of the war. What would happen to the prices of both corn and soybeans with the return to peace. In particular, he wondered if it was the wrong time to expand into soybeans—a crop that seemed to be so closely tied to war production. Still he had already obtained the soybean seed from the Hunting elevator in Lyle, Minnesota. It was too late to turn back now. He might as well proceed as planned and accept the risk.
Consequently, after wire-check planting his corn, our Nevada Township farmer unscrewed the thumb screw in the back of both planter seed boxes and tipped the boxes forward. The cylinder-shaped seed boxes were hinged in the front, which allowed the box to be tipped forward until all the contents of each seed box could be poured out. This way he removed the seed corn that had been left in the boxes at the conclusion of the corn planting. Then, he removed the corn seed plate at the bottom of each seed box and replaced the corn plate with the new soybean plate that he purchased at Thill Implement. Next, he had attached the small metal link he had purchased from Thill Implement which converted the planter into a soybean drill by disabling the tripping mechanism on the planter. This link held the tripping mechanism in abeyance and allowed seeds to flow down both planter units continuously, rather than being released periodically along the row only when the planting unit was “tripped.” This way the soybeans would be drilled into the rows rather than planted in hills within the rows like the corn. Finally, our Nevada Township farmer greased the moving parts of the planter at every location where there was a grease zerk. Thus, the planter was all ready to go the next morning, when he completed the milking and the other morning chores.
All he needed to do was to climb up into the operator’s seat of the Model 18-27 and drive the tractor and planter to the field. The long dry spell at the beginning of May had allowed our Nevada Township farmer to get all his corn planted and now it looked as though weather would continue to hold while he planted his soybeans. Indeed in the back of his mind was a worry that the dry weather spell might portend a dry growing season.
The sacks of soybean seed he had purchased were accompanied by a small packet of “inoculant.” The inoculant was a black powder which acted as a natural fertilizer for the soybeans, encouraging early sprouting and growth of the soybeans after the seed was in the ground. On planting day, our Nevada Township farmer poured the seed out of the sacks into his “triple box” wagon. Then he opened the packet of inoculant and poured the contents of the packet over the pile of soybeans in the wagon. Then he shoveled the soybeans to mix the inoculant evenly throughout the entire pile of soybean seed. He hitched the wagon to his 1937 Hart-Parr/Oliver Model 28-44 tractor and drove it to the oat field. The oats, with only a month’s worth of growth so far, appeared like a light green fuzz just visible on the surface of the ground– on the portion of the field that had been drilled in oats, but they had not yet completely covered the ground with green color. Our Nevada Township farmer parked the wagon and the Model 28-44 tractor at the end of the field on the portion of the field where the new growth of oats were starting to grow. Then he walked back to the homestead and started up his other tractor—the Oliver Row-Crop Model 18-27 (dual wheel)—and hitched this tractor up to his Oliver/Superior Model 9 corn planter.
Once in the field, he pulled the planter up to the rear of the wagon and loaded each seed box with soybeans. Then he lined the planter up with the end of the field and released the row marker on the side of the planter. This row marker was set to make a small mark in the dirt as he moved along. He would follow this mark with the front wheels of his tractor on his return trip across the end of the field. In this way he could be sure that the spacing between all the rows remained at 40 inches. He would drill eight rows of soybeans across the end of the unplanted portion of this field. These eight “end rows” would allow him room to turn around at the end of the field when cultivating the soybeans. Before he went very far, however, he dismounted the tractor seat and went around behind the planter and uncovered a portion of the rows he had just planted. He checked to see if the seeds were actually being correctly planted in the rows. He found that everything was performing the way it should and the soybeans were being planted about two inches under the surface and the seeds were being placed about 4 inches apart within the rows.
Before making his first trip across the length of the field, our Nevada Township farmer “topped off” each seed box with soybean seed. He wanted to be sure he could make a full trip across and back without running out of seed. Additionally, while he was at the far end of the field he wanted to drill eight more end rows across the far end of the field as he had done at this end of the field. He knew that the seed in each seed box would be used up at a much faster rate than when he had planted his corn. Then he released the row marker on the side of the planter facing the unplanted portion of the field. When he returned from the other side of the field he would be using the row marker on the opposite side of the planter. Then he would fill the seed boxes and proceed again to cross the length of the field. In this manner he completed the planting of his first soybean crop.
In late-May, after the soybeans had been planted, there were several light rains. None of the rains, individually, delivered more than ¾ of an inch of rain and taken together all the rains were still insufficient for the crops, especially the corn.
Cultivation of the corn and soybeans to prevent weeds from competing with the crop for moisture and soil nutrients is important in any year. However, this year, with less moisture to go around, cultivation of the row crops was even more crucial. Unlike corn, however, soybeans did not have to be “cross cultivated.” Our Nevada Township farmer tried to cultivate his corn lengthwise and then cross wise and then re-cultivate lengthwise. He tried to cultivate the soybeans twice. Among the periodic rains of mid-June through early-July, none really measured up the good soaking series of rains that were needed to give a boost to the row crops. All the crops suffered from a lack of rain. However, the corn seemed to be the hardest hit by the drought conditions. The individual corn plants began to appear as little spike plants as the leaves of the individual corn plants curled up to preserve moisture under the hot July sun. The soybeans were somewhat stunted in their growth. Yet the individual soybean plants seemed to be bearing up better under the dry conditions.
Normally, the soybeans grew to about three feet in height and bushed out to cover completely the 40 inch space between the rows. This year as the dry season continued the soybeans were not as luxurious as Mower county farmers had seen in the past, yet by late-July of 1945, the soybeans were starting to flower. Our Nevada Township farmer ceased his cultivation of the soybeans just as flowering of the soybeans began. Disturbing the soybeans at this stage with further cultivation, risked knocking off a great number of flowers on the individual soybean plants. Less flowers would mean less seed pods, which would greatly reduce the per-acre yield of the soybean crop. Consequently, our Nevada Township farmer stopped cultivation of the soybeans when before flowering started. From that time on the soybeans were on their own in competing with the weeds. Only one good rain occurred in August, 1945, as the dry conditions continued throughout the whole month. By early September of 1945, the soybeans leaves had changed color to brilliant yellow as the crop began to ripen.
September of 1945, brought the long awaited news that the war in the Pacific had ended with the surrender of Japan. Our Nevada Township farmer’s two sons would soon be heading home. It was great news. However, our Nevada township farmer had some trepidation to see what the end of the war would mean for farm crop prices. Corn prices had already fallen from their wartime high of $1.22 per bushel in May of 1945 to $1.16 per bushel in September of 1945. Our Nevada Township farmer was pleasantly surprised that prices had not fallen more during that time. However, he suspected that prices were being buoyed by the prospect that there would be a poor harvest of corn in the fall of 1945 because of the drought during the growing season. His own corn looked pretty bad. However, soybean prices, on the other hand fell off by only a nickel from their steady wartime price of $2.10 per bushel in September of 1945 to $2.05 per bushel in October of 1945. Our Nevada Township farmer noticed that the soybeans appeared in better condition as the harvest neared.
The first killing frost of the season occurred in the last days of September, which caused the leaves on the soybean plants turn brown and then to fall off the plant altogether. With no leaves, the plants were just sticks protruding up out of the ground to a height of about two feet. Off these sticks were branches of the original plant. Every branch was heavy with dark brown pods. Each pod generally held three soybeans. The dark brown color of the pods indicated that the soybeans were ready for harvesting. Inside the pods, the soybeans were drying more and more as each day passed during the hot dry summer growing season. The optimum moisture content for harvesting of soybeans was 14%. Harvesting soybeans at a higher moisture content would risk mold on the soybeans. These soybeans were called “rubbery” soybeans because of their rubber-like consistency. Rubbery soybeans would develop mold and spoil before they could be sold. Harvesting soybeans at a lower moisture content than 14% would cause a great number of the individual soybeans to split in two during the harvesting process.
Our Nevada Township farmer had no combine of his own to harvest the soybeans, so he hired a neighbor to come over and combine the soybeans for him. The neighbor had obtained an Oliver Model 10 “Grainmaster” combine prior to the war. With no combines available during the war, this neighbor had virtually, the only combine in the neighborhood. The neighbor had almost no competition for the custom combining soybeans around the neighborhood. Consequently, this neighbor was now kept very busy doing custom combining of soybeans around the neighborhood and he had a long list of customers. Our Nevada Township farmer would have wait for the combine to arrive on his farm. This put him in a bind. He knew that it was necessary that he get as much of his soybean crop harvested before the soybeans dried out to 12% moisture content or less. At 12% moisture content the mere threshing of the soybeans would cause excessive splitting of the soybeans. Split soybeans could not be processed as efficiently as whole soybeans. Consequently, he would be “docked” in the price he received at the Hunting Elevator for his beans if there was an excessive amount of splitting in the crop that he delivered to the elevator.
The danger was that, as he waited for the combine to arrive on his farm, the soybeans could dry out to only 8% to 10% moisture content. At this level of dryness, soybeans would tend to split in half with any form of rough handling. So, here he was, stuck waiting for the custom combine to arrive on his farm. He felt he was losing money on his new crop with every day that passed.
While he waited, our Nevada Township farmer made arrangements to have his corn picked. As usual, this was done by another neighborhood farmer who had a corn picker who performed custom corn picking in the neighborhood. There were many such farmers in the neighborhood, who were available for custom corn picking. Thus, it was much easier to get the corn picked without the long wait. Consequently, our Nevada Township farmer was able to harvest his corn and get it in the crib in October before the soybeans were harvested. As predicted, the corn was a poor crop. Since 1938, farmers in the area had been using “certified hybrid” seed which was purchased from seed corn dealers rather than some of their own shelled corn to plant in the spring. The result had been an improvement in the number of corn plants that sprouted from each hill and an increase in the size of the ears that were produced by those corn plants. This meant an improve yield of bushels per acre in production on the average farm in Mower County. Consequently, whereas prior to 1938, farmers in Mower County had averaged about 34.1 bushels per acre, in the years from 1938 until last year, 1944, Mower County farmers had averaged 45.4 bushels per acre. This was the “new norm” and represented a 33.1 % increase in yield per acre or more simply a one-third increase in profits for the average farm because of the use of certified seed corn.
As he counted up the 1945 corn harvest, however, our Nevada Township farmer found that the yield of corn in 1945 was considerably less than normal. Across Mower County the average yield of corn per acre in 1945, was only 32 bushels per acre. This was 29.1% less than the new norm yield. Corn was usually stored in the corn crib on the farm until February of the next year when it had a chance to thoroughly dry in the cold winter air. Usually in February the corn in the crib would be shelled out and sold to the Hunting Elevator. Accordingly, the income from corn was usually obtained in February. Usually, this was one of the big payoffs from his farming operation. The income derived from corn was used to pay off big annual debts in the farming operation. This year, our Nevada Township farmer knew that this substantial income received in February would be reduced by about 30%. That created a big hole in the family finances. Under usual circumstances, one might expect that the scarcity of corn coming onto the market as a result of the poor harvest, might drive the price of corn up. In such a case the farmer might be able to recover more income because he would receive more for each bushel of corn he sold, even if he had less than the normal number of bushels to sell to the elevator. However, in 1945, the reduced demand for corn as the United States armies came home and the fact that the drought conditions was a local phenomenon rather than a nationwide epidemic meant that the price of corn did not rise. Our Nevada Township farmer was faced with the fact that he would have 30% less crop to sell and he would receive any additional money for that crop on a per bushel basis than he had the previous year.
Finally in November of 1945, the combine arrived on the farm of our Nevada Township farmer. Our Nevada Township farmer could finally harvest his first soybean crop. Earlier in November of 1945 the weather had turned colder than usual and the ground had frozen. Furthermore, an inch and a half of snow fell in the early November. Luckily, however, the weather warmed enough to allow the soybeans to be harvested by the middle of November. By this time our Nevada Township farmer’s two sons had made it back to the United States from the war in the Pacific. They were now back on the farm and were able to help get the crop harvested and hauled straight to the Hunting Elevator. On top of the problem of dried and split soybeans, our Nevada Township farmer also worried about the timing of his crop coming to the Hunting Elevator. He was worried that the price of soybeans would fall as more and more of the soybean crop came onto the market across the nation. WCCO radio out of Minneapolis/St. Paul had reported that the 1945 harvest of soybeans appeared to be a new record harvest. (This report would later be substantiated by the Department of Agriculture, who would officially report that 193,167,000 bushels of soybeans would be harvested in 1945, setting another new record for the fifth straight year.) Our Nevada Township farmer worried that the price of soybeans would fall as more of this large harvest came to market. If the price fell too much, he would have to store the soybeans on the farm to wait for a higher price. He needed to get as much for the soybeans as he could to offset the losses he expected in February from the sale of his corn.
The Model 12 Grainmaster combine, used by the neighbor, was a large combine, weighing 5,950 pounds. This combine was really just a portable threshing machine with a ten-foot cutter bar protruding out the right side of the combine. At ten-feet (120 inches), the cutter bar was wide enough to comfortably harvest three rows of soybeans (planted in 40 or 42 inch rows) with each pass across the field. This was the configuration of the Model 12 combine in the field. However, the combine in this configuration was too wide for transport down the road or even through the narrow gates into the fields of the typical post-war farm. Thus, the cutterbar/feeder was built to be detached from the combine. Mounted on its own auxiliary transport wheels, the cutterbar/feeder could be towed behind the combine for transporting down the road and through the gates of the individual soybean fields. This meant that as the neighbor transported the Model 12 combine from farm to farm in the neighborhood, he appeared somewhat as a train moving down the narrow country roads of Nevada Township.
To pull the combine the neighbor used his own 1936 Hart-Parr/Oliver Model 70 Row Crop tractor. This tractor was the early “streamlined” Model 70’s which contained a Waukesha-made four-cylinder engine. The neighbor had purchased this Model 70 as a used tractor from Thill Implement of Rose Creek. This particular tractor was fitted rubber tires front and rear, which was a convenient feature for a tractor involved in custom farming. Model 70 tractors fitted with rubber tires at the factory were usually also fitted with the optional six-speed transmission including a road gear allowing the tractor to cruise along at 13¼ miles per hour (mph). This speed certainly hastened the tractor’s ability to move from farm to farm as he towed the Model 12 Grainmaster combine around the neighborhood to harvest the soybean crop. Additionally, rubber tires on the tractor were becoming a necessity. The steel lugs on steel-wheeled tractors naturally tore up and ruined the surfaces of graded roads. As a consequence, county and local governments were starting to ban all tractors with steel lugs from operating on the public roads.
When the neighbor pulled into the farm of our Nevada Township farmer with his “long train,” he immediately headed out of the yard and down the lane to the soybean field. He pulled the long train into the soybean field where, he began to unhooked the cutterbar/feeder from the rear of the combine and moved it around to its operating position on the right side of the combine. This whole process of setting up the combine was conducted right on top of the soybean plants located near the gate of the field. Our Nevada Township farmer cringed as he saw the maneuvering around was running down some of the soybean plants. Disturbing these dried soybean plants allowed some of the dried pods to crack open and the soybeans inside to fall out onto the ground. This was a waste of the crop that would reduce the per acre yield of the soybean harvest, but it seemed unavoidable.
Once the cutterbar/feeder was attached to its operating position and all the chains, belts and rubberized aprons were back in place, the neighbor started the four-cylinder Continental engine on the Grainmaster combine. Once the engine was warmed up he engaged the clutch on the combine and everything on the combine can alive and began to work.
The neighbor adjusted the combine header to a height as low to the ground as possible so that the cutter bar would “shave” the ground leaving a stubble of no more than 1½ inches above the surface of the ground. He wanted to get all the soybean pods into the combine—even the lowest hanging pods, which may only be about 2 inches above the ground. The frozen ground was actually a help in this attempt to get as close to the ground as possible. The skids under the cutterbar/feeder would ride along harmlessly on top of the frozen ground. Had the ground not been frozen, the skids and the cutterbar might have plunged into the soft ground. Dirt and mud would then have been picked up and gotten into the combine.
Over the cutter bar of the Grainmaster combine was a reel which consisted of five (5) “bats” that were long enough to reach entirely across the cutter bar. The cylindrical reel rotated a little faster than the anticipated forward speed of the combine. As the reel turned each of the five bats would sweep down over the cutter bar and bend the soybean plants over the cutter bar as they were being cut. This would assure that all of the cut beans plants would fall safely onto the header where a series of rubberized canvas aprons (or drapers) would carry the soybean plants across the platform of the header and up the to the feeder where they would then be fed into the cylinder where the actual threshing of the crop took place. For harvesting soybeans, the neighbor had slowed the speed of the cylinder down from around 1400 revolutions per minute (rpm), the speed used for threshing wheat and/or oats, to a speed of 700 rpm for gentle threshing of the soybeans. Once threshed the soybeans fell through the grain screens to the grain pan at the bottom of the No. 12 Grainmaster combine. There an elevator would pickup the soybeans and carry them to the top of the 50 bushel grain tank located at the very top of the combine. This grain tank was a gravity flow tank. Therefore the tank needed to be located above the level of wagons or grain truck beds. As a consequence, the grain tank gave the No. 12 combine a very high profile. Indeed, the overall height of the combine from the ground to the top of the grain elevator was in excess of 12 feet. Usually a very high shed with a high door needed to be built to house the No. 12 Grainmaster combine on farm of every farmer that owned one of these tall combines.
Once in operation in the field, the No. 12 Grainmaster offered unsurpassed efficiency in the threshing and separation of all crops including soybeans. However, getting the field “open” enough for efficient operation was another matter. First the end rows of the near end of the field had to be combined. The neighbor steered the Model 70 tractor so that the front wheels rolled down the pathway between the first two rows nearest the fence. The left rear wheel of the tractor passed along in the space between the first row and the fence. During this first pass across the end of the field only the third, four and fifth rows of soybeans were harvested. The first two rows nearest the fence were not harvested, but rather were straddled by the tractor pulling the combine. The soybeans in these rows were disturbed which resulted in further losses of soybeans on the ground as the tractor and the hitch of the combine passed over the dried soybean plants. Once he reached the side of the field with the front end of the tractor almost touching the fence along the side of the field, the neighbor needed to back the tractor and combine up and turn it around so that he proceed the opposite way across the end of the field. The process backing the large bulky combine around meant that some more soybean plants were run over by the tractor and combine.
On the return trip back across the field, the neighbor was able to harvest the two rows near the fence, the same rows he had driven over on the first turn across the end of the field. He reached the other side of the field and turned around to harvest the three remaining rows of the end rows on the near end of the field. Once all the end rows were harvested, our Nevada Township farmer could drive his Model 28-44 Oliver tractor and his double box wagon onto the stubble of the near end of the field. Before attempting to combine the long lengthwise rows of the soybean field, the neighbor pulled the combine over near the wagon and stopped. He, then, dismounted his tractor and walked back to the grain bin of the combine and lowered the chute of the combine over into the wagon. He then raised the lever of the door of the grain tank and all the soybeans began flowing out of the grain tank and dropping into the wagon box. The neighbor wanted to empty the 50-bushel grain tank before he headed across the length of the soybean field. Once reaching the far end of the field, the neighbor would harvest the end rows of the far end before returning to the near end again. He wanted to make sure he started out with an empty grain tank to be sure that he could make it all the way back with out overflowing the grain tank.
As he headed out across the length of the field, he, again, steered the tractor down the first two rows and harvest only the third, fourth and fifth rows from the fence. After combining the end rows on the far end of the field, the neighbor made his way down the opposite side of the field harvesting the third, fourth and fifth rows from the fence on that side of the field. With a very full grain tank he made it once again to the near side of the field. After emptying the grain tank again he reversed his direction around the field and harvested the two rows nearest the fence that he had run over with the tractor on his first lengthwise round of the entire field. Now with plenty of room to turn around at both ends of the field the neighbor could complete the harvesting of the soybean crop at top efficiency, without running down any more rows of soybeans. With every return to the near end of the field, the neighbor would empty his grain tank before heading out again on another trip across the field.
Much as he had worried over the price of soybeans, our Nevada Township farmer was pleasantly surprised to find that the price of soybeans had not fallen. Indeed the price of soybeans in November had risen to $2.10 per bushel. Consequently, our Nevada Township farmer hauled his whole soybean crop straight from the field to Hunting elevator in Lyle, Minnesota. He and his sons were busy hauling the wagon loads of soybeans out of the field with the tractors. In the yard, the wagon was hitched to his car the soybeans were driven to Lyle. To prevent the any delays in the harvesting, our Nevada Township farmer also made arrangements with a couple of neighbors with trucks to help haul the crop straight from the field to the Hunting elevator.
Our Nevada Township farmer and his neighbors found that the amount of their soybean crop had been reduced somewhat because of the dry weather conditions during the growing season. However, this reduction in yield for soybeans was not as serious as it was for corn. The average per acre yield of soybeans fell to 12 bushels per acre in Mower County as a whole. This was not as high as the 14 bushels per acre in 1944, nor as high as the 15 bushels per acre county-wide average in 1943. However, both 1944 and 1943 had been exceptional years for growing soybeans. In each of those years, Mower County farmers had set a new record for production of soybeans. Since 1941, the average soybean yield per acre in Mower County had been 13.25 bushels per acre. Accordingly, despite the dry growing season, the 1945 soybean harvest was only 9.4 % less than the normal harvest. Clearly, soybeans could sustain dry weather condition better than corn. This decline in the yield did not prevent Mower County farmers from setting another new record for total production for the third year in a row, with 618,000 bushels of soybeans produced in 1945.
Furthermore, as noted above, when our Nevada Township farmer sold his soybeans he received about $2.10 per bushel for his soybeans. Thus, the soybean crop largely filled the hole in his yearly budget created by the poor corn harvest.
Thus, soybeans had saved the day on our Nevada Township farmer’s farm. In 1945, soybeans proved their worth as a cash crop on a diversified farm—a cash crop which could save the family budget when the major cash crop failed. In his very first year of raising soybeans our Nevada Township farmer had seen the advantage of diversifying his farming operation to include the cash crop of soybeans. Diversification of his farming operation had worked the way it was supposed to work.
Written by Brian on 21 April 2011
Oliver Farm Equipment in Mower County, Minnesota (Part I):
Suffolk Sheep Raising
by Brian Wayne Wells
with the assistance of Paul William Cook
Mower County, Minnesota is located on the southern border of the State of Minnesota, adjacent to the State of Iowa. In 1941, Mower County was a predominately rural county. Topographically, Mower County is located in a transition area. Starting in western Mower County and extending into Freeborn County to the west the land becomes very flat. However the land in eastern Mower County and extending east into Fillmore County the land becomes increasingly more hilly. Additionally, the soil itself in the eastern part of Mower County is sandy and is not as rich as the darker humus soil in the western part of the county.
Located in the extreme southwest corner of Mower County was Lyle, Township. Immediately, to the east of Lyle Township was Nevada Township. In 1941, on one particular farm in Nevada Township, lived a man and his wife and one adult son. Our Nevada Township farmer had lived on this farm all his life. Indeed, his parents had owned and operated the farm before him. As he had come of age on the farm, he had gradually taken over more responsibility for the farming operation from his parents. In 1924, he had married his wife and together they had moved into the same large house with his parents. In 1925, when his wife had become pregnant with their son, his parents had decided to officially retire and move into Austin, the county seat of Mower County. Austin (1940 pop. 18,307) was located in the middle of Austin Township, northwest of Nevada Township and straight north of Lyle Township.
Like many farms in the Midwestern United States, the 160-acre farm on which our Nevada Township farmer and his family lived was “diversified farm.” Diversified farming operations were those farming operation that raised a variety of crops and animals rather than specializing in only one crop or one type of livestock. Faced with the typical market fluctuations for the various farm commodities, our Nevada Township farmer, like other diversified farmers sought to avoid “putting all his eggs in one basket.” Rather than growing only one cash crop or raising only one type of livestock on the farm, our Nevada Township farmer raised corn, soybeans, oats and hay. And he milked dairy cows raised pigs, and had about 200 laying hens in his chicken house. In this way, he hoped that if there was a “softness” or decline in the price of one of these commodity markets, the other commodities would help him maintain a near stable cash income for the year. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Brian on 21 April 2011
The Electric Wheel Company of Quincy, Illinois (Part 2 of 2 parts)
by Brian Wayne Wells
At about the time of John Stillwell’s death in 1935, the Electric Wheel Company had just begun exploring the implications of the introduction of pneumatic rubber tires to farm tractors and farm machinery. Pneumatic rubber tires had been popular on automobiles nearly from the beginning of the production of automobile. However, rubber tires did not find their way onto farm tractors and/or farm implements until 1929, when the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company of West Allis, Wisconsin introduced their new Model U farm tractor and All-Crop Harvester combine. Both the tractor and the combine were shown to the public for the first time mounted on pneumatic rubber tires. Allis-Chalmers had worked together with the French and Hecht Company (F. & H.) to bring about this introduction of rubber tires to the farm market. Naturally, then, F. & H. received the supply contract from Allis Chalmers to produce all the wheel rims that Allis-Chalmers needed for the tractors and All-Crop Harvesters that they made which were fitted with rubber tires. Just as naturally, then, F. & H. designed a wheel rim for the rubber tires that would inherit a great deal from the steel round spoke wheels that incorporated many of the same features that were part of the steel wheels that they were already mass producing. Thus, the F.& H. wheel rim for rubber tires was of the same “staggered” round-spoke design that was just like the F.& H. steel wheel.
The staggered round-spoke design of F.& H. steel wheel was not original to the F.& H. Company. F.& H. had inherited the design of their staggered round-spoke steel wheel from the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company. Indeed, the wheel was actually known, in some circles, as the “Bettendorf Wheel.” William Bettendorf had obtained a patent on this wheel in 1887. Following 1887, some improvements had been made to the Bettendorf wheel. However, most of these improvements were made to the wheel by the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company before, the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company was sold the F.& H. Company. One of these improvements to the Bettendorf wheel was the “staggering” arrangement of the round spokes on the hub of the wheel. Originally, the round spokes of the Bettendorf wheel had extended from the center of the metal “tire” around the outside of the wheel straight down to the center of the hub of the wheel. When side pressure was applied to the wheel the spokes might easily buckle. Staggering of the spokes meant that while all the spokes would continue to be attached to the center of the metal tire around the outside of the wheel, the spokes would alternately be attached to either the inside or the outside of the hub of the wheel. This created a triangular arrangement of the spokes on the wheel which greatly strengthened the Bettendorf wheel against side stress. This staggered arrangement worked well for farm implements, wagons and other “towed” farm equipment. The arrangement even worked well for steam engines and the heavy slow-moving tractors that were common in the early part of the twentieth century. Following the introduction of the Fordson in 1918, “automotive” type steering became the widely accepted as the most popular type of steering for the “standard” tractors of the 1920s. Although subject to side stress on the front wheels of the standard tractors was not a significant problem because the automotive style steering provided a pivot point for each wheel in the front of the tractor. Side stress on the front wheels became an issue only with the introduction of the tricycle-style Farmall tractor in 1924.
Introduction of the Farmall tractor created another revolution in agriculture similar to the revolution created by the introduction of the Fordson tractor, which has been described above. Standard tractors, like the Fordson, were able to perform all farm chores except cultivation of row crops (typically corn) which were grown in the Midwestern states of the nation. Even though employing a standard tractor on the farm, the Midwestern farmer was required to keep some of his horses in order to do the cultivating of his row crops during the summer. The tricycle-style tractor was specifically designed for the task of cultivation of row crops. Soon all the leading tractor manufacturers were producing their own tricycle-style “row crop” tractors.
To facilitate the cultivation of row crops the tricycle style row crop tractor was designed with a narrow front end in which both front wheels were placed together on the same bolster. Steering of the tricycle style tractor was accomplished by a return to the fifth-wheel type of steering with a single pivot point for both front wheels—just like a child’s tricycle. The fifth wheel type of steering allowed the front wheels of the tricycle style of tractor to be turned 90° from the straight line of the tractor. This allowed the tricycle style tractor to negotiate the sharp 180° turns at the end of the corn fields required to cultivate adjacent two rows in the corn field. Turned to nearly 90° from the straight line of the tractor both front wheels would tend to bulldoze the soft soil of the corn field as the tractor attempted to make the sharp turns at the end of the rows. This created a great deal of side stress to the front wheels of tricycle style tractors, especially when one considered the additional weight on the front wheels when the gangs of the front-mounted cultivator were raised to accomplish the turn around.
Still the problem of side stress was not as bad as it would become in the late 1930s with the introduction of another revolution in farm machinery—the rubber tire. As noted above, the Allis-Chalmers Farm Equipment Company, working together with the F.& H. Company, introduced rubber tires on farm machinery. Consequently, the typical steel rim on which the pneumatic rubber tire was mounted, was a round-spoke style rim.
Side stress on front wheels of tricycle tractors presented serious issues when tractors began to be fitted with rubber tires on the front wheels for a number of reasons. First there was the additional weight of rubber tires as opposed to steel wheels. Wheels with rubber tires are heavier than steel wheels. Then there was the problem that the side stress applied pressure on the ends of each spoke at the point where each spoke was attached to the outer rim. In repeated operations in the field, one or more of the round-spokes would weaken and break loose at this point. Having broken entirely the round spoke would then puncture the inner tube of the rubber tire and cause a flat tire. This problem was reported back from the field and was recognized as a major design error or weakness of the round spoke wheel rim. (This problem with the weakness of spoked rims on tricycle style tractors from the 1930’s is discussed in the articles called “Farming with a Styled Model WC” contained in the July/August 2007 issue of Belt Pulley magazine and is mentioned in regard to a Farmall F-30 tractor in the article called “Pig Farming [Part 2]” in the September/October 2008 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.)
Clearly the F. & H. Company had been warned that they needed to redesign their rims for rubber tires. However, because of the conservative nature of their management, the F. & H. Company did not enter into an expensive re-design of its main product. Chad Elmore’s article, cited above, notes that the main reason for this reluctance may well have been the fact that there were too many companies in the small market of making steel rims for rubber tires. No single company could make sufficient profit and, thus, have enough capital to dedicate sufficient resources to financing a drastic redesign of their wheel rim. There were a number of reasons which supported the F. & H. view of the rubber-tired market. Even though growing, the market for rubber tires on tractors and farm equipment was, in the late 1930s, still a small market. The majority of farmers buying tractors in the late 1930s still preferred the basic tractor with steel wheels rather than the more expensive optional rubber tires. Furthermore, the problem of side stress was confined to only those wheel rims that were mounted on the front of tractors and really only a problem with tricycle style tractors. Consequently, F.& H. management probably felt that any re-design of the wheel rim for this small section of the limited market rubber tire market would not likely be worth the investment and expense. They probably, felt that the F. & H. Company could safety surrender that small part of the market for wheel rims, in order to save the money of a redesign of the wheel rim. F.& H. could still sell their round spoke rims to farm equipment manufacturers for mounting on the rear of farm tractors and on pull-type farm implements where side stress presented no problem. F.& H., therefore, relinquished this small, restricted section of an overall limited rubber tire rim market in hopes of saving money.
There were, however, some companies that were willing to risk capital to seek a re-design of the wheel rim for rubber tires which could deal with the side stress when mounted on the front of row crop tractors. One of these companies was the Peru Plow Company of Peru, Illinois. Founded in 1851, the Peru Plow Company was the oldest wheel company in the United States. Ironically, the Peru Plow Company might have been the dominate wheel manufacturer in the United States had history followed a slightly different course. Before starting his own company in 1886, William Bettendorf had been employed by the Peru Plow Company. Indeed, he had largely developed his design for the “Bettendorf Wheel” while he was working at the Peru Plow Company. Had he remained with the Peru Plow Company, it might have been Peru Plow that occupied the position of dominance in the wheel market rather than the F.& H. Company. Now in the late 1930s, Peru Plow recognized that a redesign of the rim for rubber tires was needed and they began to explore the possibility of a disc-type wheel for rubber tires as a way of solving the problem of the design weakness of spoke type wheels. However they were not alone in researching a disc type wheel.
With the F.& H. Company abdicating their position of leadership in producing wheel rims for rubber tires on the front wheels of row crop tractors, the Electric Wheel Company saw an opportunity opening up for them in the wheel rim market. Thus, in the in the spirit of the late John Stillwell, the Company set about aggressively trying to take advantage of this opportunity. Eventually, the Electric Wheel Company introduced into the market a new “disc type” wheel rim for mounting rubber tires. Replacing the spokes of the centers of these rims, the Electric Wheel Company avoided the main problem of the spoke style wheels. When mounted on the front of a tricycle style tractor the disc-type rims might still bulldoze dirt when turning sharply in the soft ground of corn field. The disc rim might even bend under the consistent sharp turning which occurred during cultivating season. However the disc would not puncture the tub of the tire as the spokes of a spoke wheel might do after continual use.
The leading tractor manufacturers of the United States were not slow to see the advantages of the new disc type wheels. Immediately, both Allis-Chalmers and Deere and Company cancelled their contracts with F.& H. for spoke style rims on the front wheels on their new tractors. Both companies, then, signed contracts with the Electric Wheel Company to supply their new disc-type “pressed steel” wheel rims for the front wheels of their new rubber-tired and “styled” tractors that they introduced in 1938 and 1939 respectively. As a result the Electric Wheel Company gained immediate market share from the F.& H. Company directly as a result of these contracts with John Deere and Allis Chalmers. The Electric Wheel Company continued to increase market share in the tractor wheel market as more and more farmers bought farm tractors with rubber tires in 1940 and 1941. Furthermore, the Electric Wheel Company also developed a large foreign market for their wheels, especially in Latin and South American countries.
In the production of the new disc type wheels, the Peru Wheel Company came to occupy a distant second place to the Electric Wheel Company in the disc wheel rim market. The Peru Wheel Company was in a very weak condition. Having survived the worst years of the “Great Depression” of 1929-1933, the Peru Wheel Company was badly hurt by the smaller recession of 1937. By 1940, the condition of the Peru Wheel Company became so tenuous that the management of Peru Wheel Company determined that the best course for the company was a drastic reorganization of the Company. Accordingly, a new corporate entity was inaugurated in Peru, Illinois, called the Peru Manufacturing and Warehouse Company. This new entity leased the property in Peru, Illinois, that belonged to the Peru Wheel Company and took over the more profitable portions of the business, i.e. the manufacturing of wagon beds, farm trucks and grain tanks. The Peru Manufacturing and Warehouse Company also entered into the warehousing and storage of industrial equipment at the factory site in Peru, Illinois, and also started exploring the uses of the by-products of a new farm crop—soybeans. By 1941 all that remained of the old Peru Plow Company was the core business of wheel manufacturing. It was this portion of the business that was most in trouble and so the new corporate entity now attempted to sell off this unprofitable portion. Accordingly, the management of the new company began to look for a buyer of the wheel business. The corporate entity that expressed the most interest was the Electric Wheel Company.
Accordingly on May 1, 1941, the wheel-making portion of the Peru Company was purchased by the Electric Wheel Company. Some of the management of the old Peru Plow Company, was invited to come to Quincy, Illinois to join the management of the new company. Richard Newcomb Stillwell was to remain as president of the new Electric Wheel Company. However, Daniel W. Voorhees, from Peru Plow was, however, appointed Executive Vice-President. John Brinson Stillwell, Richard’s younger brother, was appointed Secretary of the new Electric Wheel Company. However, both D.C. Selheimer and J.C. Stefan from the Peru Plow Company were brought into the new Electric Wheel Company as the production manager and the sales manager, respectively. Frank F. Alexander from Quincy became the Vice-President in Charge of Sales. George L. Luthy (President of the Commercial Merchants National Bank in Peru) was elected to the Board of Directors on the new Electric Wheel Company. Additionally, F.M. Seaton from Quincy became the assistant secretary and William T. Lechtenberg from Quincy, was asked to continue as shop superintendent of the Electric Wheel Company.
The various legislative measures passed by the United States Congress at the suggestion of President Roosevelt helped ease the economy out of the Great Depression. Together these measures are referred to as the “New Deal program. The New Deal brought permanent changes to the United States industry. One of the measures passed by the Congress was the Wagner Act of 1935. The Wagner Act of 1935 set up a process by which employees in private industry could organize themselves into a union for collectively bargaining of their pay and working conditions. After the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Wagner Act there was a widespread movement in the American Labor toward collective bargaining. The period of time just prior to the war proved to be a period of great expansion in the history of the Electric Wheel Company. Like the workers in other companies the employees of the Electric Wheel Company felt they were entitled to share in the good times and successfully organized the under the United Auto Workers union of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.).
Suddenly, on December 7, 1941, the United States was plunged into another world war. “Strategic” raw materials for civilian use became strictly limited—especially rubber. Nearly all rubber and other raw materials were being channeled into military production in support of the war effort. Accordingly, the production of rubber tires for civilian automobiles, farm equipment and farm tractors was severely restricted. The small amount of tractors and farm equipment that was manufactured during the war was mounted on steel wheels. Return to the production of steel wheels did not make up for the loss of market sustained by the Electric Wheel Company. The diminishing market in the early months of the war created a hardship for the Electric Wheel Company. Although the company did not realize it at the time, the Electric Wheel Company was soon to enter into another period of expansion. It started with the Electric Wheel Company successfully bidding on a series of government war contracts. Once again, as in the first world war, the Electric Wheel Company, once again, re-tooled for the war effort—making gun carriages for the military. However, this time, the Electric Wheel Company also was contracted by the United States government to make “bogie wheels” (small idler wheels) for use on the thousands of military track driven tanks and track-driven armed personnel carriers made for the war effort.
As a part of the war effort, iron was rationed to the Electric Wheel Company sufficient to fill these military contracts. The iron shipped from the steel mills of Joliet Illinois and Gary, Indiana in the form of “ingots” which would be re-melted and poured into molds at the foundry located at Electric Wheel Company’s Quincy Works. Steel also arrived at the Quincy Works in form of sheets which could then be cut and pressed into the disc centers of the bogie wheels and other wheels that they were making for the war effort. Shipping and transportation of the all this steel by rail was expensive. The Electric Wheel Company explored other means of shipping the heavy loads of steel to Quincy. The summer time tow barge traffic up and down the Mississippi River and the Illinois River offered the perfect alternative to expensive rail traffic—at least for summer time. Joliet, Illinois, was on the navigable portion of the Des Plaines River. The Des Plaines River emptied into the Illinois River at a point 15 or 20 miles down river from Joliet. The Illinois River was navigable along its entire length to its mouth located on the Mississippi. Therefore, all steel ordered from the Joliet Iron and Steel Works in Joliet, Illinois. (The steel foundries of Joliet, Illinois are featured in the 1993 movie Rudy and is pictured, along with the prison also located in Joliet, in the 1980 movie Blues Brothers.) Because of the navigability of the Des Plaines River and the Illinois River, steel could be transported entirely by water from Joliet, Illinois to Quincy. Thanks to the canal built in 1900 that had linked the Chicago River with the Des Plaines River (which had the effect of causing the Chicago River to change its course and flow backwards), Chicago and Lake Michigan were connected by water to the Mississippi River. Thus, the Electric Wheel Company could also order steel from the United States Steel Company in Gary, Indiana, and could transport this steel entirely by water from Gary, Indiana, to Quincy, Illinois. Using this river system the Electric Wheel Company, was able to drastically reduce its costs of shipping, at least in the summer time. During the winter, the Electric Wheel Company returned to the more expensive railroad form of transport for the raw steel they needed for their manufacturing operations.
When the Second World War came to an end on September 2, 1945, the war contracts were cancelled abruptly on that date. However, the United States economy continued to hum along, based on the government purchasing for the Marshall Plan and for the rebuilding of Europe, Germany and Japan. There was no post-war recession at the end of this war as there had been at the end of the First World War.
In the post-war era, there was a tremendous pent-up demand for products that the American public had not been able to buy during the war. This huge demand far outstretched the supply of these products as industry struggled to re-tool from wartime production back to peace time production. Like other U.S. companies the Electric Wheel Company was hurriedly trying to retool back to production of its core products—disc type wheels for farm tractors and farm implements. There were some post-war contracts that the Electric Wheel Company obtained which did not require retooling of the Quincy Works. The Caterpillar Company of nearby Peoria, Illinois, signed a contract to purchase for the same type of bogie wheels that the Electric Wheel Company had been making through out the war for tanks and other track-driven machines for the U.S. military.
In the post-war period, rubber tires once again became available. Following their retooling, the Electric Wheel Company began once again making the disc-type rims for mounting rubber tires on farm tractors and farm implements. Prior to the recent war, the disc-type wheel rims had already proved themselves able to deal with side stress much better than the spoke-type wheel rims for wheels on the front of tricycle-style farm tractors. Furthermore, disc-type “pressed-steel” wheel rims for rubber tires had always been cheaper to produce than spoke-type wheel rims. Rather than the labor intensive construction of spokes and attaching the spokes to a hub and then to the outer portion of the rim, the disc centers of Electric wheels were merely “pressed out” from raw pieces of sheet metal, with huge mechanical pressing machines at the Quincy Works. Many new advances in the industrial technology had occurred during the war. The pressing machines at the Quincy Works had become much heavier than in the pre-war period. This allowed the Electric Wheel Company to make wheel rims in much larger sizes and to make those wheel rims much more cheaply.
Following the war, it made sense that the disc-type rims would once again be preferred on the front wheels of tricycle-style farm tractors. However, fowe ver, However, or other applications, like wheels on towed farm implements, where side stress was no real problem, there was no reason to believe that spoke-type wheel rims would not continue to dominate that market. Indeed, it was expected that spoke-type wheel rims would continue to dominate in that market. However, the Electric Wheel Company had a pleasant surprise in the post-war era.
Disc-type wheels rims began to be viewed as “modern.” While the spoke-type wheel rim came to be associated with the pre-war era. Thus, when the typical post-war buyer of farm machinery went into a farm machinery dealership, the buyer tended to be more attracted to farm machinery that was mounted on disc-type wheel rims rather than round spoke wheel rims, even though their was no functional reason why disc-type wheels should be preferred for all those applications which involved no side stress on the rim.
This unconscious prejudice on the part of the post-war buying public, suddenly and unexpectedly provided the Electric Wheel Company with a real advantage in the farm implement wheel market. Indeed, this prejudice is alluded to in the Chad Elmore article, cited above, when he notes that the Electric Wheel Company, was “producing modern (current author’s emphasis) disc wheels.” (Belt Pulley, November/December 1999, p. 36.) This simple, almost inadvertent, use of this single adjective–“modern”–in a single sentence in the article, reflects with a great deal of accuracy the post-war view that round-spoke rims were simply out of date, esthetically. As a consequence, the Electric Wheel Company gained even more market share in the post-war era.
Symbolic of the demarcation line that the war formed between the “old fashioned” spoke-type wheel rims and the “modern” disc-type wheel rims, is the fact that all through the pre-war era Allis-Chalmers had offered their All-Crop Harvester pull-type combine to the farming public with rubber tires mounted on F. & H. round spoke wheel rims. However, when rubber tires became available again after the war, the All-Crop Harvester was immediately fitted with rubber tires mounted on disc-type wheel rims from the Electric Wheel Company. The same was true of the John Deere Model 12A combine and the Massey-Harris “Clipper” combine. Although the International Harvester Company (IHC) made their own cast iron drop center wheel rims for the front end of the tractors they manufactured, IHC dropped production of their own rims for rubber tires on farm implements they made. Up to 1940, IHC had been making their own drop-center spoke-type wheel rim for rubber tires on their farm implements like the Model No. 8 Little Genius plow and the No. 12A two row potato digger. (The author believes that IHC may have actually ended production of their own spoke-type wheel rims in 1940 and for a short time in 1941 may have signed a contract with the French and Hecht Company to supply wheel rims for rubber tires for Little Genius plows which were mounted on rubber tires during 1941.)
In all these cases, the pull-type implement had been offered to the public in the pre-war era on rubber tires mounted on spoke-type wheel rims. (Most often these spoke-type wheel rims were F.& H.-made round-spoke wheel rims.) Now after the war all these implements and many others were being offered to the public only on rubber tires mounted on Electric Wheel Company disc-type wheel rims.
There was no functional reason why these pull-type farm implements could not continue to use round- spoke wheel rims as they had before the war. It was merely a matter of esthetics that caused the farm equipment manufacturers to choose disc type rims for their implements. The public simply saw round-spoke wheel rims as “old fashioned.” Accordingly, any implement that appeared in the post-war era with round spokes would make the implement itself appear “old fashioned.” By merely switching to disc type wheel rims, however, the whole implement would suddenly appear to be much more modern.
So stark was the this line of demarcation from round spoke wheel rims to disc-type wheel rims for implements that restorers of farm equipment, in the present day, can rely upon this observation from a distance to determine whether a particular implement was made in the “pre-war” or in the “post-war” era. (The only obvious exception to this line of demarcation in farm implements appears to have been the various sizes of post-war Massey-Harris Model 28 trailing moldboard plows which continued to use round-spoke rims for rubber tires in the post-war era.)
The Electric Wheel Company rode this rising tide of demand for their disc-type wheel rims. Instead of a post-war recession, the main worry of economists following Second World War was the period of spiraling hyper-inflation that had been unleashed as supply struggled to keep up with demand following the sudden lifting of wartime price controls. Only in 1948, did supply catch up with demand. Only then did prices begin to stabilize and inflation abate. Stable prices and low inflation allowed worker productivity increase. The Electric Wheel Company’s contribution to this increase in productivity was partially embodied in the heavier, more efficient pressing machines which allowed the Company to increase size and variety of the disc-type rims that the company was able to make—and to make very cheaply. This new efficiency allowed the Electric Wheel Company to begin, in 1952, making large pressed wheel rims for the 36 inch and 38 inch wheels on the rear of the modern tractors, i.e. Oliver, Massey-Harris, John Deere and other farm tractor manufacturers. The tractor manufacturers found that they could not make the pressed steel wheels as cheaply as they could buy them from the Electric Wheel Company.
This nationwide increase in productivity meant real growth in the economy, which then resulted in a long period of prosperity that lasted throughout most of the 1950s. Prosperity throughout the decade was spurred by rising consumer demand within the United States. During the 1950s, the Electric Wheel Company was still being managed by the same “younger generation” that was brought into the Company by John Stillwell in the early 1900’s. This younger generation was now in their sixties and seventies. Little provision had been made for training the next generation of corporate managers for the company. When 61-year-old Richard Newcomb Stillwell stepped down as President in the mid-1950s, he was replaced by the 73-year-old Frank Fleming Alexander.
In the new prosperous decade, many Americans moved off their farms and took jobs in the industrial economy. This became known as the “urbanization of America.” In the 1950’s the newly urbanized populous began to earn a good living working 8-hour days, with evenings and weekends off and with accrued vacation days as a regular benefit of their place of employment. There suddenly was plenty of time for recreation and travel vacations. Thus, in the 1950s, many American families began to buy boats for fishing and water skiing. Trailers for hauling the boats also became a big market and the Electric Wheel Company was contracted by boat and trailer companies to supply the small steel rims for the wheels on those boat trailers. To keep up with the rising consumer demand, the Electric Wheel Company was now employing about 650 to 700 employees at its Quincy Works.
However, the Electric Wheel Company also missed a major market in the United States. A big part of the rising tide of consumer demand throughout the 1950 was a demand for new automobiles. The automobile industry had turned to the use of disc type wheel rims in the 1940s. However, the Electric Wheel Company was unable to break into this market and provide wheel rims to the automobile companies. In this inability to break into the automotive market, the Electric Wheel Company was a victim of its own success. The Electric Wheel Company had advanced the technology of making wheel rims to the degree that disc-type wheel rims of any size were very easy and inexpensive to make. Consequently, the automobile manufactures, generally, preferred to make their own wheel rims rather than contract with the Electric Wheel Company to supply the rims they needed. Consequently, the Electric Wheel Company’s core business remained limited to producing wheel rims for the agricultural implement market. Given the rising urbanization of America, this put the Electric Wheel Company on the wrong side of a growing demographic. Far-sighted corporate executives could see a continued dependence only on the agricultural market would only lead to a shrinking profits. Accordingly, the executives of the Electric Wheel Company began to feel that it was a good time to diversify its operations. One corporation that expressed interest in the merging with the Electric Wheel Company was the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio.
Firestone was one of the nations’ leading manufacturer of tires (second only to the Good Year Tire and Rubber Company also of Akron, Ohio). Firestone had for many years been the supplier of rubber tires for the cars produced by the Ford Motor Company. Additionally, Firestone was nation’s largest maker of wheel rims for the trucking industry. Firestone also made the outer rims for trucks. Naturally, Firestone had the large rolling machines to make these outer rims of many sizes. However, Firestone did not have the large pressing machines to make the disc-type pressed-steel centers for these outer rims. A merger with Electric Wheel would solve this problem for Firestone, because Electric Wheel specialized in making disc-type centers for wheel rims and the Company had pressing machines large enough to make the centers that Firestone required.
Merger negotiations between Electric Wheel and Firestone were announced to the public in May of 1957 and before the end of the calendar year, Firestone had bought out the Electric Wheel Company. Under the terms of the agreement, the Electric Wheel Company would become a division of the Firestone Company and would keep all its facilities at Quincy. Electric Wheel’s 65-year-old Executive Vice-President D.W. Voorhees became President of the new Electric Wheel Division replacing the 75-year-old Frank Fleming Alexander.
What limited attempts that were being made to prepare a younger generation of executives within the Electric Wheel Division was limited to the members of one family—the Voorhees family. D.W. Voorhees’ 39 year-od son, Daniel W. Voorhees Jr. became general manager of the Electric Wheel Division. Since March of 1951, D.W. Voorhee’s second son, William A. Voorhees, had been serving as an assistant to Plant Superintendent William T. Lechtenberg. Now with the merger with Firestone, the 66-year-old William Lechtenberg took the opportunity to retire and in June of 1957 the 30-year-old William Voorhees replaced him as factory manager.
No layoffs were anticipated nor made among the workforce at the Quincy Works as a result of the merger with Firestone. Indeed, the merger with Firestone brought advantages to Electric Wheel. Instead of being restricted to the declining United States agricultural market, Electric Wheel was now connected to the growing trucking industry. Electric Wheel had grown tremendously over its existence. However, the merger with Firestone brought the greatest period of expansion to the Quincy Works in the history of the Company. Upon conclusion of the merger, Firestone transferred some of its truck wheel rim making operation to Quincy, Illinois where it could be united with the wheel rim centers that Electric Wheel was making for those same rims.
To make room for these new operations, in May of 1959, the new management of the Electric Wheel Division undertook the construction of a new 100,000 square foot building on the grounds of the Quincy Works. With this new expansion, the Quincy Works now had 900,000 square feet of floor space under roof on the grounds. This compares with only 300,000 of floor space in 1940—three times the floor space in less than 20 years!!
By 1962, Firestone had obtained another contract to supply wheel rims to Caterpillar for the new generation of giant earth movers (“dirt buggies”) and road graders (called “road patrol” graders) that Caterpillar was now producing. D. W. Voorhees noted that this new product had come to Electric Wheel as a direct result of the merger with Firestone. This new contract resulted in another increase in the factory floor space at the Quincy Works in February of 1962. Additionally, this expansion resulted in the hiring of 100 more workers at the factory.
In August of 1957 a long period of economic expansion in the United States slowed as the nation’s economy entered into a recession. For eight months, from August of 1957 until April of 1958, the United States economy suffered sluggish economic activity and high levels of unemployment. Although the economy began to grow again after April of 1958, consumer spending continued to lag through the rest of 1958 as the public remained skeptical about the economy. Only when the realization finally set in with the public, that recession was actually over, did consumers start spending again. Sales of boats and boat trailers increased tremendously in 1959 and the following year, in 1960, sales of boats and trailers doubled in 1960. The management of the Electric Wheel Division realized that they could ill afford to let this market go unattended without obtaining their share of the sales in that market. Thus, paralleling another decision made about 60 years prior (in which Electric Wheel Company had decided to move from the manufacture of wagon wheels to become a manufacturer of entire wagons), the Electric Wheel Division decided, in 1962, to move from merely making the wheels for boat trailers to the making entire boat trailers.
Another residual benefit of the merger with Firestone was that the Electric Wheel Division began making brake bands for trucks. Thus, another 72,000 square feet of floor space was added to the Quincy factory complex to house the boat trailer and brake band operations. By the end of the fiscal year 1962, the Quincy Works employed 1,300 workers with a combined payroll of $6,985,000.00.
In 1963, D.W. Voorhees retired from the presidency of the Electric Wheel Division. He was replaced by his son Daniel W. Voorhees Jr., who had been the general manager of the Division. Replacing Daniel as the general manager of the Division was Daniel’s own brother William A. Voorhees. The Electric Wheel Division’s core business remained farm wagons, wagon boxes, boat trailers and wheel rims. However, the largest growing area of the business continued to be the manufacture of large rims for use on earth movers and other large construction equipment. In May of 1964, yet another 32,000 square foot expansion of the shipping/receiving and warehouse buildings at the Quincy Works was announced.
United States’ increasing involvement in the Vietnam War in 1964 became very apparent in Quincy, Illinois, as the Electric Wheel Division was awarded government/military contracts for production of track shoe assemblies for light tanks and tank recovery vehicles. However, the contract specification for these wheels and assemblies required the tank wheels and track assemblies contain more aluminum than the tank wheels and track assemblies of the past. Modern tanks needed to be lighter than in the past to allow the tanks to be airlifted and dropped into area where required. The armed forces were involved in a new type of highly mobile warfare in Vietnam.
Because of the need for a precision in the alloy ratio in the iron/aluminum parts that Electric Wheel was now making for these military contracts, the chemical testing laboratory at Electric Wheel Division was enlarged in March of 1966. The chemical laboratory at the Quincy Works performed physical tests and metallography on both the raw products coming into the factory and the finished products leaving the factory. Tests were conducted on “grey metal” and other products at the Quincy Works. “Grain growth,” “stresses” and “hardness” of the various metals were measured in the chemical laboratory. The Electric Wheel Division was now employing 1,900 workers at a total payroll of $9,390,000.00.
At the same time, in March of 1966, the Electric Wheel Division was required to upgrade its manufacturing base by installing three new 1,250-ton capacity pressing machines just to keep up with the demands of Caterpillar and other construction equipment manufacturers for newer and larger wheels rims. Each one of these new pressing machines stood 33 feet tall and weighed 286,000 pounds. In preparation for the installation of each pressing machine, a hole was punched through the floor of the factory and a pit seventeen (17) feet deep was dug out of the earth under the hole in the floor. Then the pit was filled with 500 yards of concrete. This would provide a proper footing to for the huge pressing machine. Only when this concrete footing had totally dried out or “cured” completely, could the pressing machine be installed in its place in the factory.
On January 31, 1967, the Quincy Herald-Whig related that Daniel W. Voorhees Jr. resigned as President of the Electric Wheel Division to accept another management position with Firestone in Akron, Ohio. Replacing him as President of the Division was his own brother, William A. Voorhees. The management of the Electric Wheel Division bragged at that time that the Division had tripled in size since the merger with Firestone in 1957.
In recognition of the growth of the operations at the Firestone sought to make appropriate changes in the management to reflect this new larger status and also took the opportunity to bring in some Firestone people into the management of the Division. In June of 1970, Robert F. Kuntz was brought in from the Firestone facility at Ravenna, Ohio to become factory manager at the Quincy Works. Kuntz had a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Tri-State College in Angola, Indiana. The Quincy Herald-Whig of June 7, 1970 reported that Kuntz would replace Aaron E. Bergstrasser who was being “transferred to other management duties” at the Quincy Works.
The United States economy was went into an eleven (11) month recession extending from December of 1969 until November of 1970. Following this recession there was a period of inflation and rising consumer prices. The work force at the Electric Wheel had shrunk from a high of 1,900 employees in 1964 down to 1,300 employees in 1972. These cut backs and the inflation created dissatisfaction among the workers of the Electric Wheel Division, because their salaries that were not keeping up with the cost of living. Serious contractual disagreements arose during the negotiations between the UAW and the Electric Wheel Division over the collective bargaining agreement. In mid-April of 1972, the 1,200 members of the United Auto Workers at the Quincy Works walked off the job. Pay, which had been severely eroded in recent years, was the main bone of contention in the negotiations that led up to the strike. However, a strong second issue in the strike was the requirement of mandatory overtime that the company used a great deal as a stop-gap measure to avoid hiring new employees at the Quincy facility. The strike was to last until July 5, 1972 before an agreement was reached between management and labor over these contentious issues.
Following the two-and one-half month strike, Firestone decided that they wanted to bring in some more of their own management to the Electric Wheel Division. Accordingly, in July of 1972, Firestone brought in Leon R. Brodeur from Firestone’s Foam Products Co. located in Providence, Rhode Island to replace William A. Voorhees as “President” of the Electric Wheel Division. At the same time in July of 1972, Firestone brought back to the Quincy Works someone who was quite familiar to the citizens of Quincy—Virgil Krueger—to be factory manager of the Quincy Works. Virgil Krueger was appointed to the position of factory manager to replace Robert F. Kuntz who was retiring. Virgil Krueger had been born to Edgar and Marie Krueger of Quincy, Illinois, on November 17, 1921. He had graduated from high school in Quincy in 1939. He was first employed by the engineering department of the Electric Wheel Company in 1940. From 1960 until 1969, Virgil Krueger held the position of manager of tooling for Electric Wheel. In 1969, he had been appointed as plant manager for the Firestone Steel Products Company in Spartanburg, South Carolina. So coming to Quincy in 1973, was like returning home for Virgil Krueger.
Also in 1972, a 29 year-old man by the name of Michael A. Wolf joined the Electric Wheel Division as the material control manager at the Quincy Works. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Wolf received a Master’s Degree in business administration from the University of Dayton in 1971. In the six years that he worked in Quincy, Illinois for the Electric Wheel Division, Michael was rapidly promoted through a number of positions as sales manager, factory manager and in 1976 Wolf became the manager of manufacturing for the Electric Wheel Division.
Over the fifteen months from June of 1972 until August of 1973, the new management of the Electric Wheel Division brought the Division back up to full production with a work force now grown to 1,500 employees. Still problems with the work force remained. Forced overtime was becoming a universal way the management sought to avoid hiring more employees. An incredible 800 grievances had been filed by the employees involving mandatory overtime and other work site disagreements.
In fiscal year of 1973, the Quincy Works of the Electric Wheel Division was a big part of the regional economy of western Illinois. Occupying 88 acres in the Ellington Township neighborhood of Quincy, the Electric Wheel Division used $115,000 worth if Illinois coal at Works and spent $190,000 on natural gas. The Division used 1.6 million gallons of water per day at the Works. This figure represented almost 20% of the total capacity of the Quincy City Water Board and 20% of the capacity of the new sewage treatment plant that the City of Quincy had just built. The Electric Wheel Division paid $159,000 to the City of Quincy in fiscal year 1973 for these water and sewage services. Additionally, the Division was paying off a special assessment of $2 million dollars to the City of Quincy for it share of this new sewage treatment plant.
In October of 1973, Virgil Krueger replaced Leon R. Brodeur as president of the Electric Wheel Division. Leon Brodeur became Firestone’s vice-president for diversified products. Replacing Virgil Krueger in the position of factory manager was Kermit J. Risley. Kermit Risley was originally a Firestone management employee who had joined the Electric Wheel Division on December 15, 1958. Prior to coming to the Electric Wheel Division, he had worked as production department manager for the Firestone’s Los Angeles facility and as methods and standards manager at the Firestone Salinas, California, facility. Since March of 1973, he had been serving as the manager of the foundry at the Quincy Works. One of the first tasks for the new management of Electric Wheel was to resolve the 800 grievances with the work force that had been accumulated.
In the December 9, 1973 issue of the Quincy Herald-Whig newspaper, President Krueger reported that in 1973, the Electric Wheel Division had set a new all-time record of $60 million in sales. Based on this profitable year, Virgil Krueger sought to create better labor/management relations by:
1.) Allotting $1 million more dollars to increase the fringe benefits of the employees of the Division;
2.) Spending an additional $380,000 to improve working conditions at the Quincy facility;
3.) Instituting a new human relations program which would encourage more informal communications between employees and their supervisors on how to improve productivity at the Quincy Works. Specifically, the Division established a “suggestion system” which paid employees for their ideas on how to improve production. In the last six months of 1973, for instance, the division had paid out $6,000 to individual members of the work force for suggestions that were estimated to save the Division $34,000 annually in the future.
President Krueger acknowledged that mandatory over-time continued to be a problem because even with 1,550 employees and a current payroll of about $15.2 million in 1973, the Electric Wheel Division remained about 150 employees under staffed. Explaining that the Electric Wheel Division was a wide ranging enterprise operating under the same corporate umbrella, President Krueger noted that the Electric Wheel Division was, in reality, “seven (7) different production identities,” all of which were located at the same Quincy Works—manufacturing 165 different sizes of wheels and rims for agricultural industries with 55 different styles of discs for those wheels to meet the needs of various individual corporate customers. All in all, the Division manufactured wheels in 4,000 different assembly styles. Sections of the Quincy Works continued to make front idler wheels for Caterpillar crawlers; brake bands for many types of trucks and other vehicles; wheels for earthmoving and other off-road rubber tired equipment and hubs and spindles for agricultural equipment and farm wagons.
Mandatory overtime, President Krueger stated, was used to cover the additional work during the busy times in any one of these seven major areas of production. The busiest season of the year always seemed to fall in the summer just when the production employees would be planning their summer family vacations. However, year after year, mandatory overtime prevented the employees from actually taking those family vacations. To avoid using mandatory overtime, the Division would have required the hiring of 150 new employees in the spring and then the required laying off in the fall. Troublesome as it was, President Krueger pointed out that mandatory overtime in the summer was less painful to workers than mandatory layoffs. Further expansion of the Quincy Works would provide permanent work for 150 new workers might have been might be a way out of the quandary of choosing either mandatory overtime or annual mandatory layoffs.
However, this avenue of escape was also closed to the Electric Wheel Division. The Division was hemmed in by its location in suburban Quincy. Housing developments had sprung up around the Quincy Work’s 88 acre site, cutting off the Division’s ability to expand further. In recent years, the Electric Wheel Division had found it increasingly difficult to persuade Quincy City and Adams County zoning officials to close streets around the Quincy factory located in preparation for any expanding of the Quincy Works.
Given this situation, the Electric Wheel Division was secretly looking for a way to move some of the production operations out of Quincy. Indeed, President Krueger indicated as much in December of 1973 when he commented “We are looking elsewhere to move products out of our plant. We will not reduce our workforce.” Six months later on July 23, 1974, the official announcement was made that the Electric Wheel Division would start construction of a new factory on a 45 acre site in the industrial park of Abilene, Kansas. All manufacture of the “Electric” farm wagons would be moved to the new factory in Abilene. The growing market for the Electric wagon gear was expected to create a need for production of 150,000 wagon gears in 1974. Building of the Abilene Works would allow the Electric Wheel Division room for expansion of the Division’s productive capabilities to meet any new needs in the future. Additionally, construction of the new facility at Abilene would allow for a safer and environmentally cleaner design of the worksite. New Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) requirements could be designed into the new Abilene facility much more cheaply than by retrofitting the same changes into the old Quincy plant. Also, pollution controls at the new Abilene Works would not only meet, but would exceed all federal, state and local environmental laws. Employment-wise, expansion into the Abilene Works would have not result in layoffs in the workforce at the Quincy Works. Indeed, the expansion to Abilene, would resolve the continuing nagging problem of mandatory overtime.
President Krueger reported that Abilene, Kansas had been chosen as the best location for the new plant because of Abilene’s close proximity to the farm wagon market and because of the ample labor supply in the greater Abilene area and the transportation facilities located in Abilene.
As promised, there were no required changes in the workforce in Quincy as a result of the building of the new facility in Abilene. No employee was required to move from Quincy, Illinois to Abilene Kansas, in order to keep their job. However, some employees at the Quincy Works sought promotion and advancement within the company by making the move to Abilene. One such employee was Aaron E. Bergstrasser. Until June of 1970, Aaron Bergstrasser had been employed as the factory manager of the Quincy Works. Over the last four years, however, he had been serving as an ad hoc status carrying out a number of management duties. Now in 1974 at the age of 56 years, Aaron Bergstrasser sought a position in Abilene with an income that would boost his salary in the few years before he retired. Consequently, he and his family moved to Abilene and obtained a house at 1706 Mulbury, Route 1, in Abilene, where he continued to live until retirement. Indeed, enjoying the warmer climate of Kansas, Aaron continued to live in Abilene even after retirement.
The oil crisis of 1973, the forming of “OPEC” (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) in response to United States’ military support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War of September, 1973 and the resulting high gasoline prices all across the United States, caused the United States economy to slide into another economic recession in October of 1973. This recession was a long recession which lasted until April of 1975. Profits of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, as a whole, were hampered by the business downturn and fell to $23,078,000 for the six months from November of 1974 until April of 1975. Sales for the same period fell to $1,735,082,000. However, the economy eventually recovered such that Firestone was able to report in May of 1976, that for the period of time from November of 1975 until April of 1976, Firestone profits had risen to $58,410,000 on the back of sales of $1,830,147,000.
The Electric Wheel Division knew that recovery was back when the Division obtained its largest contract yet from the Caterpillar Tractor Company from Peoria, Illinois. Rising production at the Caterpillar factory had required more idler wheels than ever before.
Caterpillar preferred that the Electric Wheel Division continue to as its major supplier of idler wheels. Accordingly, Caterpillar signed this very large contract with the Electric Wheel Division. However, to fill this contract, Electric Wheel Division needed to further enlarge its production capabilities. Caterpillar’s factory at Peoria was only 130 miles north and east of Quincy. The idler wheels were currently shipped from Quincy to Galesburg, Illinois on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (C.B.& Q.) railroad and then on to Peoria, Illinois again on C.B.&. Q tracks. The shipment rode C.B.& Q. trains the whole way to Peoria without the need for any transfers to other railroads. Transferring the manufacture of the idler wheels to the new Abilene, Kansas facility was not a profitable consideration because of the distance the idler wheels would have to shipped. Therefore, expansion of the Quincy Works was once more required.
On August 7, 1977, the Quincy Herald-Whig newspaper reported that Firestone had approved a $5.1 million expansion of the Electric Wheel Division Quincy Works. Plans for the expansion called for the City of Quincy to permanently close 28th Street between Cedar Street and Spruce Street. Despite a petition signed by 85 residents of the neighborhood, objecting to the proposal to close 28th Street, the Quincy City Council voted to approve the closure of the street at its August 1, 1977 regular meeting. The planned expansion of the Quincy Works went ahead as planned—200 new employees were added to the payroll at the Quincy Works.
On February 26, 1978, the Quincy Herald-Whig ran a headline “Electric Wheel Advances Keep Firm Running.” One of the new products reported on by the newspaper in this article was a new five-foot wheel that still being tested for “strength, stress, endurance, eslasticity and longevity.” The wheel was being planned for a tire that would be 59 inches wide. It was the largest wheel made in 1977.
Suddenly, on February 18, 1978, tragedy struck as President Virgil Krueger unexpectedly died at the age of 58 years. On February 28, 1978, Firestone, picked John Speer, the manager of the Firestone Steel Products Division to fill the vacancy as President of the Electric Wheel Division. Born on March 23, 1931, in Monroe, Michigan, Speer graduated with a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio and then graduated with a Master of Science degree from Case-Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He joined Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in 1958 as a technical service engineer. In 1961, Sperr was moved the quality control department at Firestone’s Akron Plant No. 2. In 1965, John Sperr became manager of production scheduling at the Akron plant and in 1973 Sperr became the plant manager of Firestone’s Decatur, Illinois plant, before becoming manager of the Firestone Steel Products Division in 1975.
From 1981 to 1982 another recession hit the economy of the United States of America. The effects of the recession were quite harsh on the operations at the Quincy Works. Diminished demand for farm and construction equipment lead to layoffs of the work force at the Quincy Works. By 1982, the workforce at the Quincy plant numbered only 400 persons.
Due to the recession and a series of strikes that affected the farm implement manufacturing industry, Firestone decided, in 1982, to shut down all operations of its Electric Wheel Division located in Quincy, Illinois. It was expected that the workforce, except for the idler wheel operation, would be totally laid of by the end of March of 1983 and the idler wheel operations would be closed down by June of 1983.
However at the last minute on March 4, 1983, the Titan Proform Company Limited of Toronto, Ontario, Canada purchased the Quincy Works factory. Titan announced their intention of suspending operations at the Quincy Works only until July of 1983, when they hoped to re-open operations at the Quincy factory site under the new corporate name of Can-Am Company of Quincy, Illinois. The Can-Am Company, had a vision and had set about consolidating all the small loose ends of businesses involved in steel wheel and rim manufacturing under the same corporate umbrella. Once organized into the same corporate body, Can-Am Company anticipated redistributing wheel rim production between the different facilities now under its corporate organization. It was planned that the Quincy Works would employ between 500 and 800 workers at the Quincy Works manufacturing “power adjust wheels” for farm tractors.
In 1986, Can-Am purchased the steel wheel and rim business that formerly belonged to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. In 1988, the Can-Am Company purchased the former French and Hecht (F.& H.) Division of the Fruehauf Company and the F.& H. factory site located in Walcott, Iowa. Thus, old corporate competitors were linked together as the descendent of F.& H. and the descendent of the Electric Wheel Company were merged together under the same corporate/management umbrella. In 1990, the headquarters of Can-Am was moved to Taylor, Michigan and in 1991 Can-Am was restructured and combined with a number of small tire manufacturers into a new corporate entity called Titan Wheel Company. (In July, 1994, Pirelli/Armstrong Tire Company and their Des Moines, Iowa factory also became part of the Titan corporate structure.) Headquarters for Titan remained in Taylor, Michigan for a time, but was soon moved to Quincy, Illinois. In 2003, the F. & H. factory in Walcott, Iowa was closed and all operations were moved to the Quincy, Illinois, facility—into the same factory that had been the original Electric Wheel Company factory site.
In 2005, the Goodyear Tire Company and their manufacturing facilities at Freeport, Illinois, were bought out by Titan. Today, Titan International, Inc. is headquartered in Freeport, Illinois, and remains a major seller of tires and wheel rims for agriculture, construction and other off-the-road uses. As of February of 2010, the old Electric Wheel Company’s Quincy Works factory in Quincy, Illinois was still employing 850 employees making wheel rims under the name Titan International Inc. Thus, the successor of the Electric Wheel Company is still living the mission of John Stillwell, founder of the original Company.
Written by Brian on 21 April 2011
The Electric Wheel Company of Quincy, Illinois (Part 1 of 2 parts)
by Brian Wayne Wells
The Electric Wheel Company was not the inventor of the all-metal wheel for use on farm equipment. Rather it was William Bettendorf, working for the Peru Plow Company, who, in 1887, obtained a patent from the United States government for an all metal wheel. (See the fine history of F. & H. written by Chad Elmore called “Who Can You Thank for Your Tractor’s Wheels?” which was carried in the November/December 1999 issue of Belt Pulley magazine and the book, also by Chad Elmore called Peru Plow Works: Ninety Years of Farm Machinery in Peru, Illinois, 1851-1941 (Motorbooks International: Wausau, Wisc., 1996). This wheel with became known as the “Bettendorf wheel.” By 1890, the all-metal wheel for mounting on many horse-drawn farm implements that were becoming more common place on farms across the nation.
The Bettendorf wheel went into mass production only when William Bettendorf started his own company—the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company of Davenport, Iowa. By 1890, despite competition from the Peru Plow and Wheel Company and other small wheel manufacturers, the Bettendorf Wheel Company (which later became the French and Hecht Company) was the leading manufacturer of all-metal wheels. Still the market for all-metal wheels was still growing and attracting capital investment.
One person that saw a niche in this metal wheel market, was John A. Stillwell of Quincy, Illinois. Born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1861, John Stillwell was a man who was looking for an opportunity. He had charisma and was a natural-born salesman. He made friends easily and a way of instilling trust in everyone that came in contact with him. At the age of nineteen (19) years, he was employed as a salesman traveling throughout the Midwest on behalf of a retail merchant distributing company. During his travels around the Midwest, John Stillwell had met and formed close associations with a group of individuals that were attracted by John’s drive and ambitions to start a money-making concern. These men believed that John Stillwell was a young man destined to do well in the business world and they wished to “hitch their cart to his rising star.” John was not content working for another person. He had a dream of starting his own business concern and he had an idea.
John Stillwell believed that the rising industrialization in the United States and the resulting mechanization of agriculture in the nation was creating a huge opportunity for the manufacture of wheels for threshers, horse-drawn mowers, hay rakes, sulky plows, cultivators and all sorts of modern farm implements. The rising popularity of steam engines, John knew, would also increase the demand for steel wheels. This was not even to mention all the non-farm uses of steel wheels that were creating further demand.
John Stillwell knew there was a problem with all-metal wheels. The wheels were composed of various metal parts and these parts were made from different types of metal. Hubs of the all-metal wheels tended to be made of cast iron, while the spokes and outer rim of the wheel tended to be made of pressed steel. John Stillwell knew that the best and strongest method by which two metal pieces could be attached to each other would be to “weld” the two pieces together. However, two types of metal have two different melting points. Accordingly, the steel spokes of the all-metal wheel could not be “forge” welded to the cast iron hubs. Thus, the steel spokes on all-metal wheels were “pressed” into holes on the cast iron hub and then riveted to the outer metal “tire” or rim. However, John Stillwell had become acquainted with a new type of “electric welding” which had been developed by Elihu Thomson.
Elihu Thomson was an engineer and partner of Thomas A. Edison and co-owner, with Edison, of the General Electric Company. In 1887, Elihu developed a new “electric” or “arc” welding method. Arc welding unites two pieces of metal by means passing an electrical current through the metal parts. This electrical current created a great deal of heat along the edges of the two pieces of metal. The heat generated by the electric current created much more heat along the edge of the two pieces of metal than could ever be created in a forge. Thus, all those metals with melting temperatures so high that they could not be welded in a forge, could now be welded by arc welding. Additionally, metals with two different melting temperatures could be welded together by this electric welding method. John Stillwell felt that this electric welding could make a stronger steel wheel than the steel wheels that were merely pressed and riveted. “Electric welding” would eventually provide a name for Stillwell’s new proposed business—the Electric Wheel Company.
John Stillwell quit his job as traveling salesman and settled in the burgeoning town of Quincy, Illinois, with the idea of pursuing his dream of creating steel wheels by arc welding. Quincy, Illinois, in 1889, was an up-and-coming railroad town–the second largest city in the State of Illinois. Besides being a railroad hub, Quincy was also the center of cook stove manufacturing for the entire United States—being the home of at least nine different stove foundry companies. One of these stove foundries was the Comstock-Castle Stove Company. Until his death in 1874, the proprietor and major shareholder of the Comstock-Castle Stove Company was Enoch Comstock. Upon Enoch’s death, his only son, 34 year-old Charles Gilbert Comstock, took over responsibility for running the company. This move to the head of the company was only natural. After all, Charles Comstock had been working in for the company since he was 15 years of age. At the time of his father’s death, Charles was the bookkeeper of the company.
John Stillwell set about gathering together a group of investors for his new company. One of the largest obstacles facing the 27 year-old John Stillwell was how to persuade investors who were a generation older than him to invest in his business venture. For this reason, he was extremely fortunate in meeting the 34 year-old Charles Comstock. Charles was attracted to John Stillwell’s energy and drive. His enthusiasm was contagious and Charles Comstock was persuaded to become the first investor in the idea that would become the Electric Wheel Company. However, Charles Comstock also had the ear of other potential investors. One of these investors was currently an investor with the Comstock-Castle Stove Company—Samuel Hopkins Emery.
Samuel Emery was an attorney who had come to Quincy from Massachusetts in the 1850s. Although in 1889, the 49-year old Samuel Emery was one of the more recent investors in the Comstock-Castle Stove Company, he had, nonetheless, come to trust the business acumen of Charles Comstock. Over the years, Samuel Emery had invested earnings from his law practice in various businesses in Quincy. In addition, to the Comstock-Castle Stove Company, he also was an investor in the American Strawboard Company and the Quincy Paper Company. These were all investments in “safe” established businesses. However, John Stillwell was proposing establishment of a new business. Providing “venture capital” for a proposed business enterprise was always regarded as much more risky than investing in established concerns. However, Samuel knew that where the risk was greater, one should expect that the return on investment would also be greater if the business concern were successful. Samuel was also attracted to the enthusiasm of John Stillwell. In the end, however, he was persuaded to joint the new venture because it was endorsed by Charles Comstock. Samuel Emery was impressed most by the fact that Charles Comstock was investing his Electric Wheel Company venture. Accordingly, Samuel Emery agreed to become the second investor in the new business.
Charles Comstock, had over the years sought to diversify his holdings by investing in other local companies besides the family business—Comstock-Castle Stove Company. One of the other local companies, in which he had invested his money, was the Smith-Hill Foundry and Machine Company. His investments in this company had brought him in contact with Thomas Hill (one of the namesakes of the company). Mentioning John Stillwell’s proposal to Thomas Hill, Charles found that Thomas Hill was also interested in providing venture capital for the proposed new company. Accordingly, Thomas Hill became the third investor in the new company.
Meanwhile, Samuel Emery happened to mention John Stillwell’s proposal to a fellow investor in the Quincy Paper Company—Richard Foote Newcomb. The 51-year old Richard Newcomb was an experienced hand at business and investment opportunities. Richard Newcomb was not a native of Quincy, Illinois. Originally, born in Massachusetts, Richard moved to the Midwest after the Civil War. Settling first in Beloit, Wisconsin, he had started a wood pulp mill with some other investors. Feeling the need to break out and have his own company over which he could exercise more individual control, Richard sold his interests in the Beloit wood pulp mill to his brother, John Curtis Newcomb, in 1874 and moved to Quincy, Illinois. There he purchased another wood pulp plant located at South Front Street in Quincy. This pulp plant had previously been owned by the Gem City Paper Company. Richard became the sole proprietor of the Quincy wood pulp plant and in 1880 he re-incorporated the business as the Quincy Paper Company. The Quincy wood pulp plant was a supplier of both brown packaging paper to the United States market and “strawboard.” (“Strawboard” is another term for “card board.”) Under Richard’s sole management the Quincy pulp wood plant became the largest strawboard producing plant in the United States. Through his years of business experience in dealing with wood pulp, Richard Newcomb had developed many contacts in the paper industry and become an expert in the paper market of the upper Mississippi River Valley. Currently, Richard Newcomb was regarded as the “richest man in town.” In 1890, Richard Newcomb began building his dream house at the corner of 16th Street and Maine in Quincy, Illinois. When completed in 1891, the house had 33 rooms and 13 fire places at a total cost of $50,000.
Richard Newcomb was impressed by the young, dynamic, John Stillwell and his proposal for a new steel wheel company. However, the real persuasive factor for him was the fact that Samuel Emery was joining this corporate venture and investing his own money. Accordingly, Richard Newcomb also became an investor in the Electric Wheel Company. John Stillwell’s association with Richard Newcomb was important for another, more personal reason. He was starting to become very attracted to the oldest daughter of Richard and Anna Marie (Richie) Newcomb—Elizabeth Marie Newcomb.
With all the investors on board, John Stillwell, now had all the financial support that he needed to get his new company up and running. Consequently, on Sunday April 27, 1890, the citizens of Quincy read in their Quincy Daily Herald, that articles of incorporation for the Electric Wheel Company had been filed on April 24, 1890 at the Secretary of State’s Office in the state capital of Springfield, Illinois. Samuel Hopkins Emery Jr., Thomas Hill and Charles. G. Comstock were listed as incorporators of the new company. (Quincy Daily Herald, April 27, 1890 edition.) The incorporators supplied $25,000 of “start up” capital for the new company and then they hired John Stillwell as secretary and manager of the new company. John Stillwell was, thus, entrusted to manage the day to day affairs of the company. Immediately, he set about obtaining a factory facility located at Ohio Street and So. Fifth Street in Quincy. John, also, ordered a fifty (50) horsepower (hp.) stationary steam engine and a boiler from the Smith-Hill Foundary and Machine Company. This steam engine would supply the mechanical power that the factory needed. To convert the mechanical power into electrical power needed for the electric welding process, he also ordered some dynamos from suppliers in Boston, Massachusetts. He also ordered the all the Thomson electric welders that the new company would need from a supplier in Boston. By late May of 1890, the new company was up and running–making steel wheels for the agricultural market.
As expected, the Electric Wheel Company began supplying their steel-spoke wheels to some of the manufacturers of farm implements. However, even with an aggressive sales effort, the company obtained only a very small share of the steel wheel market. The steel wheel market was dominated by the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company of Davenport, Iowa. Later this Company became the French and Hecht Company. The French and Hecht Company seemed to “have a lock” on the whole market. The Electric Wheel Company made little progress during the first two years against this large corporate competitor. Still the Electric Wheel Company persisted in making its arc-welded spoke type wheel for makers of horse-drawn sulky plows and horse-drawn cultivators. Although still very small, the Electric Wheel Company’s market share was starting to grow.
Two years after the Electric Wheel Company had opened its doors everything seemed to be going smoothly for the Company. John Stillwell was ready to institute some changes in his life. He had fallen in love with Elizabeth Marie Newcomb. On December 21, 1892 they were married.
On February 23, 1893, two months after his marriage, however, the United States economy was hit by a severe economic downturn, when the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad went bankrupt. Corporate bankruptcies followed one after another in a cascade as the United States economy plunged into the worst recession in its history up to that time. Business and commerce slowed almost to a stop. The economic recession came to be called “the Panic of 1893.”
Hard times fell on the Electric Wheel Company, as it did for all corporations in the United States during the years that followed. Orders from regular customers for steel wheels dried up almost entirely. There was almost no income coming into the Company. The investors in the Electric Wheel Company worried about their investment money. Of course, they had plenty worry about. Even supposed “safe,” established companies were at risk of bankruptcy as the Panic continued to distress the economy throughout 1894. One of the Companies having trouble in 1894 was the American Strawboard Company. Stock values of the American Strawboard Company declined precipitously. Stockholders blamed the management. On February 2, 1894, a shareholders meeting was held in the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago. Shareholders at the American Strawboard meeting rebelled against the company management and demanded a change in the board of directors and the management of the company. They voted for an entirely new board of directors. One of the new directors elected to the board was attorney Samuel Hopkins Emery, one of the original investors in the Electric Wheel Company. The new board of directors of the American Strawboard Company was voted in with a mandate to make drastic changes in the management of the company. Once constituted, the new board of directors elected a new president. The president they elected was Richard Foote Newcomb, another of the original investors in the Electric Wheel Company and, now, John Stillwell’s father-in-law. By 1900, Samuel Emery had also joined the day-to-day management of the America Strawboard Company as a Vice-President.
Only in 1896, did the U. S. economy begin to recover. Bad as the Panic was for the Electric Wheel Company, there was a “silver lining.” Lasting for three long years, the Panic had the effect of wiping the board clean of past corporate relationships. Past sales relationships and contracts were long gone. During the three long years of business doldrums since the start of the Panic of 1893, a new generation of purchasing agents had been employed in the corporate customers in the steel wheel market. These new purchasing agents began to take a fresh look at all the suppliers in the market. It was the dawn of a new day in the steel wheel market as the United States economy began to recover in 1896.
All of the leading steel wheel manufacturing companies in the United States were starting over again—trying to sell their product, from scratch, to the new generation of purchasing agents of the various farm equipment manufacturers. No longer could the French and Hecht Company rely on their old network of corporate customers to occupy the dominate position in the steel wheel market as they had in years past. No one company dominated market share in the sales of steel wheels. Orders from customers for steel wheels were spread around among all the leading wheel manufacturers.
Thus, competition for customers between Electric Wheel Company and other steel wheel manufacturers started, once again, with abandon. Each manufacturer of steel wheels needed to attract a network of customers all over again. In this fresh competitive environment of 1896, the Electric Wheel Company had one big advantage. That advantage was John Stillwell, himself. With all his dynamism and energy, John Stillwell was, himself, able to outsell most other salesmen in the steel wheel market. In addition to his own skills as a salesman, John Stillwell had a talent for recognizing that skill in others. He consciously sought to attract young talented employees to the Company. One of the talented workers that came to work for Electric Wheel Company was Addison Niles Calkins. The 29-year old Addison had been working in Quincy as a patternmaker at the machine shop owned and operated by Henry Lechtenberg in the 1887 and 1888. However, his work at the machine shop did not stimulate his inventive mind. Thus, when an opportunity arose to go to work for the Electric Wheel Company in the 1890s, he jumped at the chance.
By hiring younger talented men like himself, John Stillwell impressed his own personality upon the Electric Wheel Company. The ethic of aggressive salesmanship became part of the corporate personality of the Company. Thus, the Electric Wheel Company became the most vigorous, aggressive and scrappy sales competitor in the steel wheel market. At this particular time the Electric Wheel Company sorely needed new blood in its management for two reasons. First many of the older generation investors and officers were passing away. Richard Newcomb, John Stillwell’s father-in-law died in 1904. Attorney/invester Samuel Emery died in 1906. Secondly, the growth of the Electric Wheel Company over its first two decades of existence required more management staff to handle the greatly widened responsibilities and the division of labor within the management of the Company.
In its annual year-end wrap-up of all the businesses in Quincy, the local newspaper the Quincy Daily Journal reported in its January 9, 1901 edition, that the Electric Wheel Company was now employing 100 workers. The Company had witnessed a large growth in the demand for their steel wheels among farm equipment manufacturers for use of Electric wheels on horse-drawn sulky plows and horse-drawn cultivators. The Quincy Daily Journal was able to report that in the same article, that demand for their wheels was so strong that the Electric Wheel Company (during its tenth year in existence) had outgrown its production facilities at Fifth and Ohio Streets. Accordingly, the Electric Wheel Company was already looking around for another factory site. Early estimates of the costs of any new plant would be $80,000.
The year-end report for the following year, carried in the January 25, 1902 edition of Daily Journal, reported that during 1901 corporate profits had increased by another 20%, reaching a total of $200,000 in 1901. The newspaper went on to report that during 1901 the Electric Wheel Company had, indeed, moved into a new factory located on a 10½ acre site near 28th and Cedar Streets in the Walton Heights district of Quincy. However, the costs of this new plant facility was only $50,000, considerably less than had been anticipated just the year before. The Electric Wheel Company now employed 125 workers at the new facility.
By 1900, the organization of the management of the Company had changed to meet the requirements of this new growth. John Stillwell had become President of the Electric Wheel Company. Whereas, previously, John Stillwell had served as the Company’s sole “manager” there were now a number of divisions within the Company each headed by a manager. There was plenty of room within the Electric Wheel Company for ambitious young men. John Stillwell promoted the now 35-year-old, Addison Calkins to the position of Superintendent of the whole factory.
Addison Calkins had an innovative and sharp mechanical genius. At the Electric Wheel Company, Addison was able to fully employ this talent on behalf of the Company. Working at the Electric Wheel Company was food for Addison’s creative and inventive nature. On October 26, 1917, Addison filed for a United States Patent on a radiator fan arrangement that he had developed. As an employee of the Electric Wheel Company, he assigned the patent to the company. The Electric Wheel Company put the patent to use as an improvement to their line of farm tractors which the Company had begun manufacturing in 1912.
After starting work at the Electric Wheel Company, Addison, encouraged his younger brother, Ira Raymond Calkins, to apply at the company for a position at the factory. Ira’s interests led him in a different direction than his brother, however. Ira started at the Electric Wheel Company working as a clerk in 1900 and soon showed a real talent for business management and finance. Consequently, John Stillwell soon promoted Ira to Corporate Secretary at the age of 33 years of age.
Sometime after the turn of the 20th Century, another promising young man, by the name of Frank Fleming Alexander, went to work for the Electric Wheel Company. By 1910, John Stillwell had promoted the 28-year old, Frank Alexander to the position of Assistant Manager for the Company. Shortly after he was hired, Frank encouraged his younger brother Robert Watt Alexander, to also come to work for the Electric Wheel Company. By 1910, Robert Watt Alexander had been promoted to be an Assistant Sales Manager for the Company. The results of this new vigorous reorganization of the Company drive spoke for itself, as the Electric Wheel Company began to gain market share.
It was a hopeful and optimistic time. Later, this period of time, from 1900-1917, would be referred to as “the Progressive Era.” John Stillwell and the new, young and vigorous management of the Electric Wheel Company were caught up in the spirit of these optimistic times. This younger generation of men led the Electric Wheel Company in new directions. The manufacture of farm tractors was one of those new directions.
At the opening of the twentieth century many other entrepreneurs were having the same idea. Thus, there was already a plethora of companies competing in the farm tractor manufacturing market. Nonetheless, experiments in designing and developing a farm tractor were begun by the Electric Wheel Company as early as 1904. Indeed, a prototype of a tractor was made by the Company in 1904. Like many of the internal combustion engine-powered tractors of the time, the prototype was a large and cumbersome machine.
However, engineers at the Electric Wheel Company had an inspirational idea. Rather than compete directly with all the companies manufacturing farm tractors, the Electric Wheel Company could find a niche in the market that was unoccupied. The new management of the Company saw the great number of stationary (“hit and miss”) engines already in use on farms around the nation. They saw these engines as a resource that could be exploited. If the Electric Wheel Company could make a four-wheeled platform or chassis onto which a farmer could mount his own single-cylinder engine, the company could fill a niche that existed in the tractor market. Whereas, many small farmers could not afford the expense of a complete farm tractor; the Electric Wheel Company felt that those same small farmers might be tempted by the chance to put their own stationary engine on a chassis and, thus, create their own farm tractor with an engine they already owned. The only additional costs to the small farmer would be the costs of the motor-less truck or chassis on which he could mount the engine that he already owned. Thus, the farmer would also be able to get more work out of an asset that he already owned. Accordingly, in 1908, the Electric Wheel Company developed their own four-wheeled motor-less truck chassis and began mass producing the chassis for sale to the farming public.
Production of the tractor chassis was not a large step outside the core business of the Electric Wheel Company. From the company’s point of view production of the tractor chassis was merely an extension to the Company’s mass production of tractor wheels. It was merely the next logical step for the Electric Wheel Company. The Company was blessed with an educated workforce that could adapt to changes and was encouraged to think for themselves and make suggestions on how to improve the products that Electric Wheel was manufacturing. In the years following the introduction of their motor-less tractor chassis, the Electric Wheel Company continued to attract talented, skilled and ambitious young men. Young men sought work with Electric Wheel because of the high pay and the Company’s reputation of encouraging and rewarding ambition and independent thinking. One of the many young men who sought employment at this time was Grover George Bergstrasser, who came to work for Electric Wheel as a machinist some time prior to 1917. Grover was a second generation immigrant. His father, Henry Bergstrasser, had been born in Darmstadt, Hessen Germany on January 19, 1965 and had immigrated to the United States in 1884 and had settled in Quincy, Illinois, where he opened a saloon.
Born and raised in Quincy, Grover thrived in the creative environment of the Quincy Works of the Electric Wheel Company. He was friendly and outgoing and developed into a natural leader. In 1919, ratification of the Prohibition amendment to the United States Constitution, forced Henry Bergstrasser to close his saloon. Later in the 1920s, Grover was able to get his father a job at Electric Wheel. The management at Electric Wheel recognized Grover’s talent as a team leader and this was the talent that the Company appreciated as much as his abilities as a machinist. Accordingly, by 1920, Grover, himself, had been promoted to the position of foreman in the “Wheel Dept.” of Electric Wheel. (Years later after the Second World War, Grover’s son, Aaron E. Bergstrasser, would also come to work for the Electric Wheel Company, where he would be promoted to the position of Factory Manager.)
After three (3) years of mass production of the motor-less tractor chassis, the Electric Wheel Company decided to produce the company’s own complete tractor—the Electric Wheel Company Model “O” Quincy All-Purpose Tractor. This tractor was originally rated as a 20-30 tractor, meaning 20 horsepower (hp.) from the drawbar and 30 hp. from the belt pulley. However, in 1912, the Model O was re-rated as a 15-30 tractor. Also the company introduced its first “track-type” or “caterpillar” tractor called the “Allwork” tractor in 1911. The Allwork tractor was a huge crawler-style tractor that delivered 30 horsepower (hp.) to the drawbar and 45 hp. to the belt pulley. This track-type tractor was intended for use on construction or in road building. With the growth of the “Good Roads” programs by state and local governments all across the nation in the late 1920s, the Electric Wheel Company saw an opportunity to introduce second and larger version of this track-type AllWork tractor—the Model 80 track-type tractor. Two features made the Model 80 track-type tractor a very forward-looking tractor. Firstly, the Model 80 was not designed as a “cross-motor” tractor. Most tractors made by Electric Wheel and, indeed, most tractors made by all other tractors manufacturers at the time were of a “cross-motor” design. The cross-motor tractor was designed with the engine positioned so that the crank shaft of the engine was parallel to the axles of the tractor. The Model 80 track-type tractor, however, was fitted with a Model W-K “in-line” four-cylinder engine made by the Waukesha Company of Waukesha, Wisconsin. The “in-line” engine design positioned the engine of the tractor so that the crankshaft of the engine was perpendicular to the axles of the tractor. The in-line design of farm tractors would soon become the universally adopted throughout the entire farm tractor industry. Thus, the Model 80 was a “forward looking” tractor because of its design.
Furthermore the Model W-K Waukesha engine fitted on the Model 80 track-type tractor was a very heavy-duty engine. This engine had a 6 ¾ inch bore and an 8 inch stroke and featured five (5) bearing surfaces on a huge crankshaft and could develop 110 hp. at 800 revolutions per minute (r.p.m.). This made the Model 80 a rugged tractor more like tractors that were made at a much later date.
In 1912, a new four-wheeled version of the “Allwork” Model 30-45 tractor was introduced, called the “Model 1” tractor. The Model 1 weighed 9,500 pounds. The Model 1 would remain in mass production until 1917. A smaller version of the Model 1, the “AllWork 14-28” tractor was introduced in 1917. Although regarded as a “small” tractor, the AllWork 14-28 still weighed 5000 pounds. The Model 1 remained a cross-motor style tractor with a four-cylinder engine rated as delivering 14 hp. to the drawbar and 28 hp. to the belt pulley. Each of the four cylinders on the Allwork had a 5-inch bore and a 6-inch stroke. (Later this Allwork tractor was re-tested and re-rated as delivering 20 hp. to the drawbar and 35 hp to the belt pulley.) Accordingly, the tractor was renamed the Allwork 20-35. The Allwork 20-35 weighed 5000 pounds and had a list price of $1,500.00 in 1917. In its first year, 1917, sales of this tractor reached 1,000 to 1,500 tractors. Unlike many other tractor manufacturers of the time, the Electric Wheel Company used very few “vendor produced” items in making their tractors. With the exception of the Model 80 tractor which, as noted above, was fitted with the Waukesha engine, the Electric Wheel Company made all its own tractor engines. Additionally, all clutches, transmissions and final drives used on the tractors were also made by the Electric Wheel Company.
In addition to making tractors for use on farms across North America, the Electric Wheel Company also established a new and separate division within their company in 1916 to sell a new device that would convert Model T into a usable tractor on the family farm. This new division was called the Pullford Division. (A picture and short article on the Pullford Division is contained at page 231 of C. H. Wendel’s book, The Encyclopedia of American Farm Tractors. It appears that the Electric Wheel Company create the illusion that the Pullford Division was a separate corporate enity. The article in the Encyclopedia of America Farm Tractors describes the division as the “Pullford Company” of Quincy, Illinois, as if it were not associated with the Electric Wheel Company at all. However, advertising brochures of the Pullford Division clearly show the Electric Wheel Works factory in Quincy on their last page.) The Pullford was an attachment that was made to the rear end and rear wheels of any Model T Ford car to allow the car to operate as a tractor in the fields on the farm. From the, time of its introduction, the Ford Model T in 1909, the Model T had been a huge sales success and dominated the automobile market. Accordingly, the Pullford was made only for the Ford Model T. It was expected that when the field work was done for the day the farmer could then remove the Pullford attachment from his Model T to take the family to town in the carr that same night. The price of the Pullford in $135.00.
Customer satisfaction with the Pullford was evident from the testimonials written to the Pullford division by various Model T owners. One such owner was W. E. Davis of Green City, Missouri, who wrote on August 3, 1917, that he had plowed 60 acres of land in 10 days at a cost of only 40¢ per acre with his Model T and his new Pullford. The Pullford Division continued production of the Model T attachment throughout the 1920’s. In 1928, when the Ford Motor Company replaced the Model T with the new Model A Ford, the Pullford Division of the Electric Wheel Company brought out a new Pullford attachment for the new Model A Ford car. In 1930, the price of the Model T Pullford attachment was down to $97.50. Later, when Chevrolet began to become a major competitor in the automobile market, Pullford introduced a new attachment specifically intented to be fitted on the 1926 through 1931 Chevrolet. In 1938, the price of a Model T Pullford was $117.50. The price of the Model A version was $122.50 and the price of the Chevrolet version of the Pullford was also 122.50 The Pullford proved to be an attachment which had a limited window of opportunity. As automobiles became more sophisticated and custom-styled after 1932, the Pullford could no longer be designed to fit these newer cars. However, the Pullford remained in production until at least 1940 because it was assumed that while farmers buy newer cars for their family vehicle, they might also continue use these older cars on their farms.
Both to market their successful Pullford and to market their line of farm tractors, the Electric Wheel Company developed a network of sales outlets through existing “shortline” farm equipment dealerships and hardware stores across the nation. In Canada, the Electric Wheel Company relied on the George White and Sons Company Ltd. of London, Ontario.
With the entrance of the United States into the European War in April of 1917, raw materials for the production of tractors was severely curtailed. As a result, production of all tractors by the Electric Wheel Company fell precipitously. Production of the Allwork Model 20-35, as an example, slipped to 500 tractors in 1918. However, during the war, the Electric Wheel Company had signed a contract with the United States Army to make artillery gun carriages for the war effort. On November 11, 1918, an armistice was signed which ended the First World War. With the end of the war, the military terminated its war contract with the Company. Because of the loss of income from the cancellation of the government contract, the Company needed to quickly re-tool from making gun carriages and turn again peace time production.
Naturally, the Electric Wheel Company started mass producing tractors again after the war. However it was a new world. Henry Ford’s entrance into the farm tractor market with his little Fordson tractor created a revolution with the farm tractor market. The Fordson weighted only 2,920 pounds. Nonetheless, the Fordson was fitted with a three-speed transmission and its “in-line” four-cylinder engine delivered 10 hp. to the drawbar and 20 hp. to the belt pulley. More importantly, the Fordson sold for the suggested retail price of $750.00 in 1918. Furthermore, in the succeeding years Henry Ford continually dropped the price of the Fordson, even more, in an attempt to obtain a larger share of the farm tractor market. Eventually, the Fordson was selling for $395.00. This price was well within the financial grasp of many small farmers. Many farmers who, ordinarily, would not have thought of buying a farm tractor, now flocked to buy a Fordson. The Electric Wheel Company’s Allwork Model 14-28 was the Company’s entry in the “small tractor” market. However, with a weight of 5,000 pounds and with only had two forward speeds of 1¾ miles per hour (mph) and 2½ mph, the “cross-motor” designed Allwork Model 14-28 could not hope to compete with the Fordson in sales. The revolution set off by the Fordson within the tractor market required all competing tractor manufacturers to redesign and mass produce their own new small model tractors. However, the International Harvester Company (IHC) became Ford’s most successful competitor in this price war in the small tractor market. With the passage of each month the farm tractor market was growing by leaps and bounds. By 1919, a total of 100,000 tractors were built and sold by IHC and Ford.
However, in January of 1920 the United States economy entered into a period of severe deflation which became known as the “post-war recession.” The deflation of farm commodity prices created hardships for the farmers of North America. Accordingly, tractor and farm implement sales slumped. Unemployment rose to a level of 11. 7%. The post-war recession was a double blow to the Electric Wheel Company. Not only was there a reduction in the company’s tractor sales, but there was a slum in the sales of wheels that Electric Wheel Company had been making to other tractor and farm equipment companies. The post-war recession lasted only about seven (7) months, ending in about July of 1921. The post-war recession had been short in duration but had been sharp and severe in intensity. Many companies did not survive the post-war recession. While the Electric Wheel Company suffered during the post-war recession, the Company did, at least, survive.
With the return of prosperity to the economy in the mid-1920s, the Electric Wheel Company expected that, finally, sales of their tractors would pick up again. In response to the increasing demand for smaller tractors, the Electric Wheel Company introduced its own “small” four-wheel tractor in 1920, called the Allwork II Model F 12-25. The Allwork II Model F 12-25 tractor was tested at the University of Nebraska from August 16, 1920 through September 15, 1920. These tests revealed that the Allwork II Model F actually delivered a maximum of 19.69 hp. to the drawbar and 28.86 hp. to the belt pulley. Accordingly, the Model F was re-rated and was renamed the Model G 14-28.
Currently, there appears to be only one Allwork tractor in existence that is actually restored back to operating condition. This particular Allwork is a 1923 Model G 14-28 tractor. The current owners are Fred Buckert and his son Dan Buckert of Hamilton, Illinois. Having been born and raised in Adams County, where the City of Quincy is located, both father and son Buckert had been interested in obtaining an Allwork tractor for about 25 years prior to 2006 when they finally obtained their Model 14-28. Restoration of the tractor had actually been started by the prior owner—an antique tractor collector in Henry, Illinois. Restoration of the tractor had progressed to the point where the entire tractor had been dismantled, but then the prior owner had died. The Buckerts purchased the dismantled tractor at the estate sale of the prior owner and proceeded to complete the restoration of the Allwork 14-28 tractor. While the Burkerts are aware of four other Model 14-28 Allwork tractors in existence (one in Kansas City and another in Iowa), as well as a Electric Wheel Company track-type Model EWC 80 crawler tractor in Indiana, none of these tractors is in operating condition. Only the Burkert’s Allwork is in operating condition. The Burkerts Allwork tractor can be seen each year at the Western Illinois Threshers show held annually in Hamilton, Illinois, on the first full weekend in August each year. A picture of the tractor can also be seen on the website of the Western Illinois Threshers Association.
The Electric Wheel Company retained the cross-motor design on all its tractors well into the 1920s when most other tractor manufacturers had already turned to the in-line engine design. Finally with the introduction of the Allwork II Model G tractor, the Company designed and built its first in-line engine. However, even at this late-date, the Electric Wheel Company was not signaling a switch over to the in-line design. The Company merely introduced its Model G tractor with its in-line engine, specifically as an “orchard tractor” for use in the orchards of California. With regard to its other tractors, the Electric Wheel Company insisted on sticking with the cross-motor design.
As a way of promoting the sales of their tractors in the immediate post-war era, the Electric Wheel Company entered a number of field demonstrations and/or plowing contests. Sometimes these field demonstrations were held on farms of the Purdue University Agriculture School in West Lafayette, Indiana. During these plowing events, the Electric Wheel Company began to form a relationship with the Oliver Chilled Plow Company. This corporate relationship would develop and grow. After the 1929 merger of the Oliver Chilled Plow Company with the Hart-Parr Tractor Company of Charles City, Iowa and a number of other farm equipment companies, this corporate relationship would result in the Electric Wheel Company having access to the Oliver sales and dealership distribution network.
In 1927, the cross-motor Allwork Model 14-28 was modified slightly to make the tractor deliver 16 hp. to the drawbar and 30 hp to the belt pulley. Still a cross-motor tractor, this new Allwork tractor was called the Model CA tractor. The engine on the Model CA featured five (5) bearing surfaces on its crankshaft—an unusually rugged design feature for the time. The Model CA weighed 5,200 pounds. Probably because of the Company’s association with the Oliver Farm Equipment Company at the various plowing events, the Electric Wheel Company adopted the Oliver nomenclature and designated the Model CA as a “three-plow tractor.” Suggested retail price for the Model CA was $1,395.00.
Two more cross-motor model tractors were introduced by the Electric Wheel Company in 1928. The Model D was based on the design of the Model CA but each piston of its four-cylinder engine had a 5¼ inch bore and a 6 inch stroke. With this larger engine the Model D was advertised as a “four-plow tractor” and sold for the suggested price of $1,825. Yet another tractor designated the Model DA, was fitted with a larger four-cylinder engine with a 5½ inch bore and a 7 inch stroke was also introduced in 1928. The Model DA was advertised as a “five-plow tractor” and had the suggested retail price of $2,500.
However, even with the return of prosperity, in the mid-1920s, the expected rise in sales of the various models of the Allwork II tractor did not occur. Indeed, 1917 proved to be the high tide of tractor sales for the Electric Wheel Company. Tractor sales never again approached the high level attained in 1917. Furthermore, tractor sales continued to slide throughout the prosperous “roaring 20s.” The Electric Wheel Company’s retention of the cross-motor design for their tractors may well have been responsible for the decline in sales. It is interesting to speculate what might have happened if the Electric Wheel Company’s had changed from the cross motor design to the more modern and popular “in-line” engine design that would become the universally accepted during the late 1920s. International Harvester had abandoned the cross motor design in 1923 with the introduction of the International Model 15-30 Gear Drive tractor. Both the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company and the Minneapolis Steel & Machinery Company (one-corporate part of the entity that would emerge in 1929 as the Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company) had always used the in-line engine design for their tractors. The other major part of that same merger, the Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company, had made the switch from the cross-motor design to the in-line design in 1922. Indeed, the last two major tractor manufacturers still using the cross motor design in the late 1920s were Hart-Parr/Oliver and Case and they both switched from the “cross-motor design to the “in-line” engine design in 1929. Unable to turn around the decade-long decline in sales, the Electric Wheel Company abandoned all production of tractors in 1929. The Company was forced to turn back to their core business—the production of wheels for farm implements. Luckily, changes which were underway in the wheel market in that would present a pleasant surprise to the Electric Wheel Company.
One section of the wheel market that the Electric Wheel Company had never been able to enter, was the wagon wheel market. Wagon manufacturers seemed “bound and determined” to retain the traditional large wooden spoke wheel on all the wagons they were making. The wagon manufacturers hung on to the large wooden spoke wheel despite the fact that wooden spoke wheels: 1) were more expensive to make than were all-metal wheels; 2) required a great deal more maintenance than all-metal wagon wheels; 3) would not last nearly as long as steel spoke wheels; and 4) could not be made in sizes smaller than 36 inches in diameter.
There were clear advantages to using steel-spoke wheels as opposed to the traditional wooden wheels. The art and science of making a wooden wheel usually involved the use of different types of wood for different parts of the wheel. A 1923 advertisement of the Electric Wheel Company noted that in their wooden spoke-type wheels, Wisconsin birch was used for the hubs, “straight grained oak” was used for the spokes and narrow pieces of white oak were bent around the outside of the wheel. Then a metal band or “tire” was pressed on the outside of the wheel which would hold the whole wheel together.
In use however, the wooden wheel would wear and dry out as the wagon was used. The wooden parts in the wheel would shrink as the wood dried. The metal tire around the outside of the wooden wheel would then become loose and threaten to fall off. The only fix for this problem is for a blacksmith to cut a small section out the metal tires and weld the tire back together again. The tire would then have a smaller circumference. However, when the metal tire was heated red hot it expanded. Then the metal tire would be hammered back on the outside of the wheel. As the red hot metal tire cooled it would shrink and fit tightly around the wheel again. As a temporary measure to tighten the tire on a wooden wheel, some farmers would wet the wooden parts of the wheel. The wetted wood would expand or swell and tighten the metal tire on the wheel again.
However, a wooden wheel could not remain wet for long periods of time for fear that the wooden wheel would rot. Consequently, the wagon with wooden wheels must be stored in doors out of the weather. By way of contrast, the all-metal wheel needed much less maintenance, operated in all kinds of weather conditions, and could be stored out of doors in all kinds of weather conditions. Furthermore, wood wears much faster than metal and, therefore, the wooden wheel has a much shorter life than all-meal wheels.
As noted above, wooden wheels are constructed by bending pieces of white oak into arcs and attaching them to the outer ends of the wooden spokes. However, there was a physical limit as to how sharply the white oak could be bent into arcs. The white oak pieces could not be bent sharp enough to make a wheel smaller than 36 inches. Traditionally, then, wooden wheels for wagons were 36 inches in the front and 42 inches in the rear. Whereas, wooden wheels could not be build in sizes smaller than about 36 inches in diameter, steel wheels, on the other hand, could be made in any size. The Electric Wheel Company advertised steel wheels as small as 24 inches in diameter for mounting on wagons.
Front wheels sized 36 inches or larger imposed severe limitations on a wagon’s ability to turn corners. Horse-drawn wagons were traditionally steered by “fifth-wheel” type steering. Fifth wheel type steering means that in negotiating a corner both wheels were pivoted at the same pivot point located at the center of the axle between the two front wheels. This pivot point was called the “king pin.” Obviously, then, on each turn with a wagon equipped with fifth-wheel steering, one of the front wheels would have to fit under the wagon box. Clearly, a 36-inch wheel would fit only partially under the wagon box as the wagon pivoted around the corner. This meant that sharp cornering with a wooden wheel wagon was impossible. However, smaller 24 inch steel wheels would fit entirely under the wagon box. This allowed the wagon to be turned at a 90° angle if needed for sharp cornering. As noted above, Electric Wheel advertisements often emphasized this feature of small steel wheels by showing steel wheel wagon gears with the front wheels turned at 90° angles to brag about the smaller steel wheel’s ability to fit entirely under the wagon box.
Furthermore, if smaller steel wheels were mounted on both rear as well as the front of the wagon gear or “truck,” a barge style wagon box with a “bed-over” configuration could be mounted on the wagon gear. Thus, instead of being limited to designing narrow wagon boxes which allowed room for large wooden spoke wheels on either side of the wagon box, the bed-over design allowed all four wheels of the wagon to fit neatly under a wider “barge-style” wagon box. These wider barge-style wagon boxes would hold more bushels of ear corn or grain.
Not only could steel wheels be made smaller in diameter than wooden wheels, but steel wheels could be made with wider metal tires. Whereas, metal tires on wooden wheels were limited to either a three (3) inch or a four (4) inch width, the Electric Wheel Company sold all metal wheels with metal tires up to six (6) inches wide. These wider metal tires on steel wheels were less likely to sink into soft ground. The result was an easier load for draft animals.
In the years since its original incorporation, the Electric Wheel Company sales staff had been attempting “get a foot in the door” of the wagon wheel market by stressing all these advantages. However, nothing seemed to work. Wagon manufacturers continued to resist even considering all-metal wheels for the wagons they produced. Sometime after 1905, John Stillwell had a thought. Perhaps, the best way to convince the wagon manufacturers of the advantages of the smaller steel-spoke wheels for use on wagon “gears” or wagon “trucks,” was for the Electric Wheel Company, itself, to become a wagon gear manufacturer. Accordingly, the Electric Wheel Company began the production of wagon gear or trucks for sale directly to the public.
Consequently, the Company began advertising wagon gears and grain boxes for direct to the retail farm public. By 1923, the Company had an entire line of wagon gears and wagon boxes available for sale. A 1923 advertisement for the Electric Wheel Company announced a new “Improved Bryson Farm Truck.” (The “Bryson” name was taken from John Stillwell’s own family. Indeed, John’s father was named Bryson Stillwell.) The Bryson Farm gear or “truck” had a 4000 pound capacity and was fitted with spoke-style steel wheels. The 1923 advertisement also listed a “Quincy” grain box that was available separately for mounting on any wagon gear. The Quincy wagon box was a “double box.” The traditional wooden bed or floor of the traditional wagon box is 38-inches wide by 10 ½ feet long. Attached to the sides of the bed and to the front and back are wide boards which allowed for a 13 inch “inside” height from the bed or floor of the wagon to the top of the boards. This was a “single” box. By attaching another set of 13 inch boards to the top edge of the single box, the inside height of the wagon box could be doubled to 26 inches. This was the double box.
In case, any potential buyer wanted to purchase only a wood-spoke type of wagon truck, the Electric Wheel Company obliged by offering, on this same advertisement, their own traditional wooden-spoked wagon truck called the “Gem City Wooden Wheel Truck.” (Gem City is the nickname for Quincy, Illinois.) This traditional wooden wheeled wagon gear also had a 4000 pound capacity. Also available was a wooden wheeled wagon gear and double box fitted with a teamster/drivers seat and brakes on the rear wheels. This horse-drawn wagon was named the “Calkins” wagon obviously meant for long distance road hauling. The “Calkins” wagon gear was named after the two brothers (noted above) that had joined the Company at a young age and had in the years since become part of the management of the Electric Wheel Company—Ira Raymond Calkins and Addison Niles Calkins.
Only after the economy started to recover from the 1921 recession did the Electric Wheel Company start to notice that wagon manufacturers were starting to buy more steel-spoke wheels for the wagons they were making. In the mid-1920s, the Electric Wheel Company was pleasantly surprised, in the mid-1920s, to find that they were finally obtaining a decent market share of the wagon wheel market. Manufacturers were finally beginning to consider replacing the large cumbersome wooden-spoke wheels with the smaller, but stronger using smaller steel spoke wheels on their wagons. The sales staff of the Electric Wheel Company now tried to persuade the individual wagon manufacturers that the Electric Wheel Company’s electrically-welded steel wheels were the best and strongest steel wheels of all the steel wheels on the market. Suddenly in the mid-1920s, the sales staff of the Electric Wheel Company found that the wagon manufacturers were starting to be more receptive to their sales pitches on behalf of the Electric Wheel Company. John Stillwell would like to have claimed credit for the fact that wagon manufacturers now seemed more willing to take a new look at the advantages of the steel spoke wheels for use on farm wagons than they had ever done in the past. However, there were changes occurring within the farm wagon market in the mid-1920s, that were working for the benefit of the Electric Wheel Company and the other steel wheel manufacturers. Following the World War, there was another new generation of corporate officers at the various wagon manufacturing companies. Once again, the playing field within the wheel market, was leveled, making it easier for aggressive competitors to gain market share. This new generation of corporate officers within the various wagon manufacturers were willing to take a fresh look at the advantages of smaller steel wheels for their wagons.
Once again, the Electric Wheel Company sales staff took advantage of this level playing field and sought to convince wagon manufacturers not only to buy steel wheels for the wagon gears they were making, but to prefer Electric wheels over all other steel wheels on the market. The success of the Electric Wheel Company in gaining a large foot hold in the wagon wheel market came at an opportune time, just as production of Allwork tractors was being terminated.
The opening of a large share of the wagon wheel market to the Electric Wheel Company was unfortunately timed because in October of 1929, an economic downturn in the United States economy began. This new economic crisis would last until 1933. The severity of the crisis would also be deeper and more intense than the Panic of 1893. Many companies went out of business during what would become known as the Great Depression. Once again, the Electric Wheel Company faced this time of extreme difficulty and survived. The sale of steel wheels to the wagon manufacturers may well have saved the Company during this time.
As noted above, the Electric Wheel Company had built up a relationship with the Oliver Chilled Plow Works during the plowing demonstrations in which the Company participated while demonstrating and advertising their AllWork tractors. This relationship now paid dividends in the mid-1930s as Electric Wheel began to make all-steel wagon gears and wagon boxes for the Oliver line of farm equipment under the the name “Oliver-Electric” wagons. These wagon gears were rated at a carrying capacity of 5,000 pounds, more than a 1,000 pounds heavier than the wagon gears the Company had been making as recently as 1923. In the late 1930s, these wagon gears were fitted with rubber tires and Timpken roller bearings and were fitted with automotive style steering rather than the fifth wheel type steering that had been used previously.
In 1935, the Electric Wheel Company suffered another personal loss when their founder. John Stillwell, suddenly passed away. It was John Stillwell’s spirited scrappiness that had made the company a success in the face of so many challenges. Replacing John Stillwell at the head of the Company was John’s eldest son, 41-year old Richard Newcomb Stillwell. Richard Stillwell inherited much of his father’s enthusiasm and guided the Electric Wheel Company into a new era.
Written by Brian on 21 April 2011
Fighting the Great Corn Borer Wars: The Harris Lawrence Post-War McCormick-Deering Little Genius Plow
by Brian Wayne Wells
Corn is the No. 1 cash crop on the farms of the United States. As the major cash crop on the average American farm, corn has played a major role in the prosperity, or the poverty, of family farms for generations in the United States. In the early 1900s, a threat to this vital crop appeared in the United States. This threat did not immediately appear menacing. Indeed, it was not perceived as a threat, at all, when it first arrived in Boston harbor aboard a ship load of broom corn from Hungary and Italy. This threat was the European Corn Borer.
As its name suggests the European Corn Borer is not native to the North America. However, once arriving on the shores of the New World, the Corn Borer found a fruitful environment in which to thrive—and thrive it did. The Corn Borer became a plague. This plague spread across corn fields of New England and New York and then was carried on fresh-water, Great Lakes, shipping to northern tip of “lower Michigan.” From here it spread across the heart of the “corn belt” of the Midwestern United States. Year after year the Corn Borer epidemic fanned out across Michigan and the other states of the Midwest—advancing from one county to another, cutting a wide swath of destruction in the corn fields of the Midwest.
During the Second World War there was a strong demand for corn, as the United States government attempted to feed armies stationed in the Europe and the Pacific. In answer to this wartime demand, farmers raised record amounts of corn. In 1942, Minnesota set a new record for corn production. (National Agricultural Statistical Service of the United States Department of Agriculture on the Internet.) In 1943, Minnesota farmers broke that record and set another new record for corn production. Incredibly, 1944 saw the establishment of yet another record year in corn production—three straight record setting years. The growing season of 1945 should have continued in this pattern. The weather and soil conditions cooperated just as they had in the previous three years. However, corn production for the State of Minnesota suddenly fell by 11.4% despite these favorable conditions. (Ibid.) The reason for this drop in production was the European Corn Borer. The Corn Borer had arrived in Minnesota. Corn production recovered somewhat in 1946, but the Corn Borer still left his mark on the reduced state-wide corn production. The next year, 1947, saw corn production fall again by 20.0%. To be sure, 1947 was a very wet growing seasons in some areas of the state. (Consistent readers of Belt Pulley magazine will remember the article called “The Case NCM Baler and a Family’s Crucial Year” contained in the January/February 1995 issue of Belt Pulley, which discussed the farming in Fillmore County, Minnesota during that extremely wet growing season in 1947.)
One of the methods by which the damage done by Corn Borers in any particular locality can be assessed by compare the corn crop of that locality with the soybean crop of the same locality for the same year. Since Corn Borers attack only corn plants and do not attack soybean plants, we can surmise that if there is a reduction in the corn yield in a particular locality and the soybean yield for the same locality is unaffected then the Corn Borer is to blame for the loss in corn yield. However, if the damage to the soybean yield is reduced to the same degree as the corn yield, then we can assume that the weather was the cause of the reduced yields. For example, while corn yields in Minnesota were decreased in 1947, state-wide production of soybeans in Minnesota actually increased.
Fillmore County, Minnesota (as described in the above-cited article) experienced extremely wet conditions in the 1947 growing season. The average corn yield in Fillmore County in 1947 was reduced by 6.3% from the previous year. Soybeans on the other hand experienced a shocking 29.4% decrease in 1947 as compared to 1946. Thus, the Corn Borer was not the cause of the losses in corn and soybeans in Fillmore County, Minnesota, it was the wet weather. A question might remain. Why did soybeans yields suffer greater losses than corn in Fillmore County. These results from Fillmore County, reveal that soybean plants are more susceptible than corn to an over abundance of rain. Moreover, the timing of the rain in Fillmore County may have affected soy beans more than corn. The article, itself, reflects that soybean planting (which generally follows corn planting because soybeans require warmer soil for planting) was drastically delayed in Fillmore County in 1947 because of the rain. Furthermore, late-planted soybeans would have suffered more from the early onset of winter in 1947, as was described in that article. Obviously, in 1947 the plague of the European Corn Borer was starting to cause major losses to the corn crop of Minnesota and the plague did not show signs of abating any time soon as the new year (1948) approached.
Each year in southern Minnesota, the Corn Borer mutated through two entire life cycles (or generations) each growing season. The Corn borers begin life as fully-grown larvae that emerge from winter hibernation in the ground in late April each year. The larvae immediately seek shelter in old corn stalks or plant residue on top of the ground. Inside the corn stalks the Corn Borer “pupates” or changes into a moth. The moth emerges from the pupal stage in May and flies off to find fresh corn plants. The moth is not often seen because they tend to be active only in the evening and/or night. The female moth lays her eggs on the under side of the leaves of the new corn plants. In about one week the eggs hatch and the new-born larvae begin to feed on the growing corn plant. They chew round holes in the leaves and move on to the stalk. The larvae bores into the stalk of the young corn plants and begin to eat away at the vessels inside the corn plant that carry water from the roots to the leaves and the developing ears of the corn plant. (It is this boring into the stalk that gives the Corn Borer its name.) The result of the Corn Borer attack is stunted growth and poor ear and kernel development of the corn plant. Estimates are that early Corn Bore infestation of just one larvae per corn plant can reduce corn yield in the fall by 8.3 bushels per acre. (The European Corn Borer page on the Iowa State University web site.)
In July, the larvae become full grown and enter into a dormant stage inside the corn stalk. There the larvae changes, or pupates, again, into a moth which flies away to another corn field and lays more eggs. These eggs hatch out into a second generation of Corn Borers in late July or August to attack the corn plants a second time. At this stage in the new corn field the corn will be more mature and may be entering full maturity with well developed ears. As the larvae of this second generation is born and attacks the corn plant, they eat away at the inside of the shank that holds the ear to the corn plant. This may result in the whole ear falling off the plant and onto the ground. The larvae may also burrow into the stalk, where the Corn Borer larvae can hollow out the inside of the corn plant. The hollow corn plant becomes so structurally weak that it can fall over in a mild wind. Consequently, the damage done to the corn plants by the second generation of Corn Borers is much more visible than that of the first generation. However, the amount of visible damage done by the second generation of corn Borers is really deceptive. Studies show that the actual damage of the second generation (on average about 3.4 bushels per acre) is actually less than the damage wrought by the first generation. (Ibid.) Corn Borers love the young “succulent” corn plants. The damage caused by a single larvae of the first generation, as noted above, can cause up to 8.3 bushels per acre. As the season stretches on and the corn plant continues to mature, the damage caused by Corn Borers becomes less. If the ear corn can reach the “denting” stage where the mature kernels on the corn begin dry out and a little depression or dent becomes visible on the top of each kernel, further damage by Corn Borers is almost non-existent. Consequently, the State of Minnesota Department of Agriculture and agricultural universities across the nation studying how to control this pest, began to concentrate on the early stages of Corn Borer development.
The development of the first generation of the next year, researchers understood, actually begins at that denting stage of the corn in the autumn of the previous year. When the Corn Borer larvae can no longer find and any young succulent corn plants on which to feed, the larvae know that it is time to hibernate. They burrow deep into the ground below the “frost line” where they will spend the winter. They spend the winter buried deep in the soil in “suspended animation” using very little energy. In the warm days of late April of the following spring, as the ground thaws, the Corn Borer larvae awaken from their hibernation and climb to the surface of the soil. Immediately after reaching the surface, the Corn Borer larvae search for a dead corn stalks in which to burrow and hide while each larvae transform itself into a “pupa” and then into a moth. This point researchers knew was the weak link in the chain of Corn Borer development. If the Corn Borer larvae reached the surface only to find no dead corn stalks, the larvae would soon die. Thus, the secret of Corn Borer control was to destroy or remove all the dead corn stalks from the surface of the corn field. Accordingly, in 1947, popular Republican governor Luther W. Youngdahl and long-time Democratic Farm-Labor Commissioner of Agriculture Rollef Alfred Trovatten announced a new state-wide program for control of the Corn Borer. The coming year—1948—was to be the “Year of Corn Borer Control.”
One of the counties in south central Minnesota that traditionally produced a great deal of corn was Sibley County, Minnesota. Sibley County, Minnesota, produced a record 4.4 million bushels of corn in 1946. Located in eastern Sibley County is Jessenland Township. To the north of Jessenland township is Washington Lake Township. Located on the boundary between Washington Lake and Jessenland Townships, in 1947 was a 110 acre farm owned by William Lawrence. The building site and 70 acres of the Lawrence farm was actually on the Washington Lake Township side. The other 40 acres of the farm was located across the road in Jessenland Township
The Lawrence family name had long been associated with Sibley County. Indeed, William’s grandparents, Andrew and Helena (Riehle) Lawrence had immigrated to the United States from Wuerttemberg County in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg in Germany in 1847 with a family of six children. Their oldest son was Andrew Jr. The growing family (there would eventually be eleven children in the family) settled in Perry Township, Brown County, Ohio. That same year another family immigrated to the United States from Wuerttemberg County and settled in Perry Township. This was the Leodegard and Frances (Hurst) Berger family. The Berger family consisted of four sons when they left Germany. However, a daughter, Bridget, had been born to the family on the ship during their journey to the United States. Sometime between 1855 and 1860, both the Lawrence and the Berger families left Ohio to settle in Jessenland Township in Sibley County, Minnesota. Here Andrew grew up and came of age. Gradually, he took over more responsibility of the farming operation from his parents. In 1865, Andrew Jr. married Bridget Berger. Over the years, Andrew and Bridget had ten (10) children of their own on the family farm. Their third child and oldest son was William Lawrence. William, in turn, married Minnie Fuhrman in early 1901 and had three children—Leo, born on September 4, 1901; Harris Vincent born on November 4, 1903 and Albin A. Lawrence born on December 30, 1908. By 1947, William Lawrence was 78 years of age. His oldest son, Leo, had married and moved off the farm in 1934. Although the farm was still in William’s name, the farming operation was being handled by his second son—Harris.
On their farm, the Lawrence family milked a small herd of dairy cattle, raised some hogs and some chickens. They also had some ducks and geese wandering around the yard eating any bugs and flies that they could find. To feed the cows and the horses they used for power on the farm the family raised oats and hay in the fields on the farm. They also raised corn. They shelled the corn in the winter of each year and after saving back enough of the corn to feed the chickens and the hogs through the next year, the family sold the remainder of the corn as a cash crop. The income received from the corn provided a large source of income for the family in the winter. They also raised wheat on their farm, which was sold as a cash crop. If the price were right the wheat could be sold each July or August right out of the field as soon as it was harvested. This, together with the hogs that were marketed in the summer, provided a substantial income to the family during the summer months. This arrangement and diversification of income was typical of the farming operations of southern Minnesota. In the years following the Second World War, the European Corn Borer arrived in Sibley County.
Since the end of the Second World War, Harris had begun to see evidence of Corn Borer destruction in his own corn fields. The destruction of his corn was not as severe as he had seen and heard about in other counties around the state, but the Corn Borer was a growing threat and by 1947, had caused a reduction of corn production in Sibley County of 7.2%. Harris knew that the Corn Borer was directly responsible for loss. Although Harris Lawrence raised no soybeans, his neighbors did and soybean production in Sibley County in 1947 had set a new all-time record—up by 29.3% over 1946. Clearly, the 7.2% loss in corn production in Sibley County in 1947 was due to the arrival of the European Corn Borer to the county and not from any adverse weather conditions. The losses were not as bad in Sibley County as they were in other areas of the state, but judging from the effects of the Corn Borer in other parts of the state, Harris thoroughly expected the losses in corn yield would continue to grow worse with each passing season unless actions were taken to control the spread of the Corn Borer right here in Sibley County.
Consequently, Harris listened to the suggestions of the Minnesota Department on how to control the Corn Borer. The main suggestion from the Agriculture Department was to destroy or bury all the corn stalks on the surface of the corn field. Specifically, the Department suggested that farmers use a stalk chopper to shred the corn stalks in the fall. Then the Department advised that farmers begin plowing their corn fields in the fall rather than waiting until spring. A good thorough job of moldboard plowing after stalk chopping would remove nearly all shelter needed by the Corn Borer larvae when they emerged from their underground winter hibernation in the spring. Although he did not have a stalk chopper, Harris Lawrence did attempt to disc his corn fields before plowing in the fall of 1947. However, the early onset of winter in 1947 foreclosed all tillage before it could even get started. Freezing temperatures arrived in Sibley County on November 7 with a snow storm that dumped four inches of snow on the ground. Except for a momentary rise in temperature to about 40°F on November 21, the temperatures throughout the month kept falling. By Thanksgiving, temperatures had reached -10 degrees below zero during the nights. There were two more major snow storms in November and one in early December each adding more that 4 inches of snow to the accumulations already on the ground. Accordingly all thought of fall plowing had to be put off until spring.
Warmer than normal temperatures in April of 1948 had allowed Harris Lawrence to get an early start on the spring plowing. Harris knew that the Corn Borers would begin to emerging from winter hibernation starting in late April. However, working with the horses he was not able to get all the corn stalks under the ground before the month of May. Harris knew that with passing day, more Corn Borers were reaching the surface and would immediately seek shelter in any corn stalks laying on the ground and then would immediately begin to pupate into a moth. Once that occurred, the Corn Borers would be off and running in their path of destruction and it would be too late to stop them. In light of this urgency to be done with the plowing, Harris could really “feel” the slowness of the horses as he plodded on day after day to try and beat the clock.
To stand any chance of defeating the Corn Borer, Harris Lawrence realized that he would have to complete the discing and plowing of his corn fields in the fall. However, in order to get the plowing done in the fall, he would need to replace his horses with a faster mechanical source of farm power. Consequently, Harris Lawrence became resolved to the idea of obtaining a farm tractor and a trailing moldboard plow. It was his only way to save his corn crop from the ravages of the Corn Borer. He was determined to look into purchasing a farm tractor during the coming off-season—the winter of 1948-1949.
Meanwhile, the same thought was occurring to many of his neighbors. Ever since the end of the Second World War there had been a growing trend among farmers of the neighborhood to replace the horses on their farm with modern tractor power. However, the threat of the European Corn Borer turned that general inclination into a stampede. Farmers understood that the only way to effectively fight against the Corn Borer was to obtain a farm tractor and a trailing plow and to complete the plowing of the corn fields in the fall rather than attempt to do that plowing in the spring. Consequently, work horses were vanishing from the farm scene of Sibley County almost over night.
The results of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s “Year of Corn Borer Control” program were startling. The fall corn harvest of 1948 revealed what could be accomplished with just a little public awareness and public cooperation to control the Corn Borer. Corn production across the state of Minnesota in 1948, climbed an incredible 48.9% over the previous year, to establish a new all-time record production of 236,898,000 bushels with a new all–time record average state-wide corn yield of 54 bushels per acre. In rich black soil of Sibley County, the average county-wide yield reached 62 bushels per acre far eclipsing the old record of 52 bushels per acre.
Another dynamic occurring during the post-war era was the growing use of commercial fertilizers. The growing popularity of commercial fertilizers was causing phenomenal increases in average corn yields and total corn production. Commercial fertilizers had never been used so widely by farmers as now. During the war, nitrates used in making commercial fertilizer had been severely limited. Nearly all nitrates were channeled into making explosives and ordinance for the war effort. Now, with the wartime economy being readjusted to peace time, there was an abundance of nitrates on the market which was now released for civilian use. Producers of nitrates sought to find civilian uses for this glut of nitrates which were clogging up the market. The largest civilian use of those nitrates was the making of commercial fertilizers for agricultural use. Thus, large amounts of nitrates were funneled into production of commercial fertilizers. Accordingly, there was a heavy supply of commercial fertilizers available on the market and prices for commercial fertilizers became quite inexpensive. Farmers soon learned that the small cost of commercial fertilizers was more than offset by the tremendous increase in production that they could expect from their corn by the use of commercial fertilizers. So farmers found it easy to purchase adequate amounts of fertilizers to apply to their corn fields. New records in corn production became common place as commercial fertilizers were applied to corn fields. However, these new records in corn yield and increased production, set in 1948, would not have been possible if the Corn Borer had not been effectively controlled during the growing season.
The warmer weather of the fall of 1948, allowed Harris Lawrence get more of the discing and plowing of his corn fields done, than he had in the previous year. However, progress remained painfully slow with the horses. A snow storm in the second week of December with cold temperatures down to -10° F below zero, froze the ground and forced him to leave some of his corn field unplowed over the winter.
Once again, Harris was confronted with the necessity of mechanizing the power of his farming operation. It was something that he could not put off. Accordingly, he planned to obtain a farm tractor, just as soon as he could shell out the corn in his corn crib and sell off a substantial portion of the shelled corn to raise money for the tractor. January of 1949 had been very cold with the temperature reaching down to -15°F to -20°F below zero on a number of nights throughout the month. Cold air is dry air. Thus, the ear corn in the crib had dried out nicely during the month of January, 1949. The ear corn was ready to be shelled. Usually, Harris liked to get his corn shelled in February each year. However, a deluge of snow fell during the month of February, 1949, leaving a 10 inch snow accumulation covering the ground for most of the month. The large accumulations of snow on the ground made it difficult to move around the yard with horses, let alone trucks necessary for shelling the corn. Consequently, Harris Lawrence was prevented from shelling out his corn crib in February. Warmer weather in early March melted all the snow, but this made the yard a muddy quagmire. Once again corn shelling had to be delayed. In mid-March winter returned again with a vengeance with temperatures again down to 0°F. The ground froze hard again, but there was no additional snow. Thus, with the ground firm again with very little accumulated snow, Harris was finally able to shell out the corn in his corn crib. After saving some of the shelled corn to feed his hogs and chickens throughout the coming year, he sold the rest to the elevator in nearby Henderson, Minnesota (1940 pop. 820).
Harris was able to sell his shelled corn to the elevator for $1.37 per bushel. This price was down by a whole dollar from the extraordinarily high prices of the year before. The damage done to the 1947 corn crop had reduced corn production enough nationwide that the price of corn had risen to new record levels—reaching $2.74 per bushel in January 1948. However, control of the Corn Borer and the bumper crop of corn harvested in the autumn of 1948 had driven the price of corn back down. Still the price of $1.37, though down from these record highs, was still well above the average price of $1.09 per bushel that had prevailed all during boom years of the Second World War. Harris intended to use some of the money he received for his corn on the purchase of a new farm tractor. Accordingly, he paid a visit to a local farm equipment dealer—the Steckman Bros. International Harvester Farm Implement dealership located in Henderson.
Frank (born on April 6, 1908) and Harold Steckman (born on October 15, 1910) were the new owners of the International Harvester dealership in Henderson. They had just purchased the dealership from Herman Lindorff in 1947. (Regular readers of Belt Pulley magazine will recognize that Frank and Harold Steckman were mentioned in the article called “A Life of Giving: The Marcus Griep Minneapolis-Moline Model ZAU Tractor” contained in the May/June 1997 issue of Belt Pulley magazine. Indeed the young 4-year old Frank and 2-year old Harold are pictured in that article.) Prior to purchasing the International Harvester dealership, Frank and Harold Steckman had, since 1938, owned and operated the DX gasoline service station on the southeast corner of Main and Sixth Streets in Henderson. Thus, the brothers had experience with engine mechanics. Bringing that experience to the tractor and farm equipment sales and service business was, thus, an entirely natural step. Furthermore, it was an opportune time to enter the farm equipment business.
`During the Second World War, new tractors and farm equipment had been largely unavailable, as iron, steel and rubber and other raw products used in making the farm equipment had been severely restricted in order to make military equipment for the war effort. Consequently, a huge pent up demand for farm equipment had been released at the end of the war in September of 1945. Now four years after the end of the Second World War, dealerships, like Steckman’s, were still selling new farm tractors almost as fast as they could be manufactured. Currently, Steckman’s was busy selling the new “letter-series” Farmall tractors i.e. the Model M, Model H, Model B, Model A and the various International Model W-series tractors. The letter series tractors had been introduced in 1939. The most popular seller of the letter series of Farmall tractors had always been the two-plow Model H tractor. In first couple of years in the the post-war era the Model H continued to outsell the larger three-plow Model M tractor. Although, as years went by, sales of the Model M tractor was starting to catch up. In 1947, the Model M actually outsold the Model H for the first time. Last year, in 1948, the Model H regained its leading position in sales with 31,885 Model H tractors being sold as opposed to 28,806 Model M tractors for the year. So far in 1949, Steckman’s noticed that the Model H was still selling well.
Accordingly, when Harris Lawrence walked into the Steckman dealership located on the corner of Main Street and Fourth Street in downtown Henderson, the dealership had only one Model H Farmall tractor left in their inventory and this Model H had actually already been sold and was merely awaiting delivery. Nonetheless, the sales staff showed Harris Lawrence this tractor and described the Model H as the tractor that would best meet his needs. They assured him that another shipment of three new Model H tractors would be arriving at the dealership within a few days on board the train from the Mankato District warehouse. Although one of these tractors had already been “spoken for” the other two were available for sale to Harris if he signed a sales agreement.
Ordinarily, sales of new row crop farm tractors to farmers were “package” deals which included a mounted cultivator and a tractor plow. The cultivator offered to Harris in this case as a part of the proposed package deal was a new McCormick-Deering Model HM-236 two-row mounted cultivator. Although the Farmall Model H tractor and the mounted cultivator both would have be ordered from the Mankato “block house,” the particular plow that was being considered for the package deal for Harris Lawrence was, currently, on the Steckman’s showroom floor. This plow was a McCormick-Deering No. 8 “Little Genius” two-bottom pull-type plow with 14 inch bottoms. The sales staff at Steckman’s offered deliver this particular plow to the Lawrence farm as soon as the purchase agreement was signed.
Given the recent concern over fighting the European Corn Borer, the sales staff spent time pointing out to Harris Lawrence the specific features of the No. 8 Little Genius plow that would be most effective in turning trash under the soil—thus, controlling the Corn Borer. They pointed out that compared with other plows, namely, the Oliver Series 100 plow, the angle of the bottoms on all McCormick-Deering Little Genius plows was quite sharp. This tended to roll the soil over more completely when the plow was used in the field. This meant that when plowing corn stalks with the No. 8 plow, the corn stubble would be buried more completely underground, than with any other model plow. Furthermore, the sales staff at Steckman’s offered to install some small moldboard extensions on end of both moldboards of the plow. These mold board extensions were simple pieces of metal bolted to the outer edges of both moldboards of the plow. Nonetheless, these small extensions on the moldboard had proved effective at turning soil in the corn field. This small extension of the moldboard was a rather recent innovation in the history of the Little Genius plow and was a direct result of the current war on the European Corn Borer.
The Internatonal Harvester Company began manufacture of the McCormick-Deering No. 8 Little Genius plow in 1928 as a replacement for the “Little Wonder” plow. (See the series of articles on the article on Chicken raising in Sibley County and the Pre-war Little Genius plow.) Both the Little Wonder and the Little Genius plows were part of a historic line of plows that even pre-dated the formation of the International Harvester Company. Like other local IHC dealerships, the Parts Department at Steckman’s Implement dealership carried an inventory of a variety of parts for the Little Genius. These parts were IHC-made plow parts. However, the part numbers of those Little Genius plows routinely began with the prefix—“PO.” This prefix is evidence of the historic background of the Little Genius plow. P. O. stands for the Parlin and Orendorff Company of Canton, Illinois (pop. 11,927). The P.& O. Company was the original manufacturer of the line plows that eventually lead to the Little Genius plow.
The Parlin and Orendorff Company began as a small blacksmith shop owned by Robert C. Culton located at the corner of South Main and Pine Streets in Canton, Illinois. In 1836, Robert Culton employed a promising young apprentice by the name of William Parlin. On July 4, 1840, Parlin became a partner in the blacksmith business. Together the partners designed a new wooden plow with a steel moldboard. This plow was called the “Diamond Plow.” The Diamond Plow was an instant hit and the blacksmith shop was soon deluged with purchase orders for the new plow. William Parlin knew that the blacksmith business needed to expand and take the Diamond plow into mass production. Expanding the business to this degree, caused a disagreement between William Parlin and his partner Robert C. Culton, and later, between Parlin and John Culton, son of Robert, who took over his father’s share in the business. Eventually, William Parlin sold his interest in the partnership to the Cultons and set out on his own to mass produce the Diamond plow. In 1846, Parlin purchased a foundry owned by Major Lewis Bidamon located at the corner of Main and Walnut Streets in Canton, Illinois.
Just when the business was starting to mass produce the plow, Parlin suffered a setback when the foundry caught fire and burned to the ground in 1847. Parlin was forced to start all over again. To obtain the necessary capital to start his business again, William Parlin signed a partnership agreement with one of Canton’s most enterprising merchants—A. Thompson Maple. With this new financial help, William Parlin was able to get his business back on its feet following the catastrophic fire. The Diamond plow began to sell very well and soon other plow models, the “Carey Plow” and the “Bar Share” breaking plow were added to the line of plows William Parlin was offering to the public. However, A. Thompson Maple was not interested in a long-term investment in the farm equipment manufacturing industry. Accordingly, in 1848, William Parlin was required to buy out his new partner and operate the business alone.
In 1849, another fire at the factory totally destroyed the building again. After this fire, William quickly constructed a new building on the same site. This time, the building was constructed from brick. Fortunately, 1849 also brought its share of good fortune for William Parlin’s business. That year, Parlin introduced a new plow called the “Canton Clipper” plow. This plow proved to be an instant success and, within a few years, sales of the Canton Clipper exceeded the capacity of the Company to make the plow. The Company, once again, needed to expand, just to keep up. To raise the additional capital for this expansion, William Parlin once again took a partner in his business. In 1852, Parlin made his brother-in-law, William J. Orendorff, a partner in the business. In 1860, the business was officially renamed the Parlin & Orendorff (P.& O.) Company. Each partner gravitated toward the area of the business which contained their special area of interest. William Parlin remained in command of the manufacturing and development section of the partnership, while William J. Orendorff established himself in the sales and office management end of the business.
Sales of the Clipper plow continued to grow and in 1870, the Company manufactured and sold 8,000 plows in a single year. The plows were now being sold to a world wide market. To help organize the sales end of the business in light of the uncontrolled growth, William Orendorff suggested that the business develop a network of local distributors. It was agreed and soon the Company had approximately fifty distributors in cities around the nations, including St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri; Dallas, Texas; Portland, Oregon; Dubuque, Iowa; Madison, Wisconsin; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Portland Oregon; Denver, Colorado; Decatur, Illinois; Nashville, Tennessee; Indianapolis, Indiana; San Francisco, California and Spokane, Washington.
On December 16, 1882, there was another large explosion and fire when one of the boilers at the factory exploded. Nine employees were killed in this greatest tragedy that had hit Canton, Illinois, up to that time. After the fire the Company provided aid and assistance to the fire. Then the business began the process of rebuilding. Nothing, however, seemed to interfere with the continuing success of the P.& O . Company. In addition to plows, the Company began manufacturing a series of riding cultivators in the Canton factory. In 1894, the P.& O. Company introduced a new check-row corn planter. The check-row planter used a wire stretched across a field, to plant corn in a grid in the field. Planting corn in a grid allowed for corn to be “cross cultivated” as well as cultivated lengthwise. Thus, not only could the weeds growing between the rows of corn be controlled, but also the weeds growing between the hills of corn within the row could be controlled. In 1895, the P.& O. Company introduced their own horse-drawn “stalk cutter.” Although the stalk cutter could be used for chopping corn stalks following harvest for better incorporation of the corn stalks into the soil, the stalk chopper was more often used in cotton fields of the south, to chop the hard woody stalks of cotton plants following harvest. (Although planted as an annual plant, the cotton plant was really a perennial, as the woody texture of the cotton stem attests.) Accordingly, the stalk cutter became more associated with the Cotton Belt that it did with the Corn Belt of the United States. However, the Corn Borer wars of the late 1940s would change this to some degree.
In addition to the changes in the line of farm machinery, there were also big changes occurring within the management of the Company. On June 25, 1891, William Parlin died at the age of 74 years. Filling his shoes to some extent at the factory was his son, William H. Parlin. Six years later in 1897, William J. Orendorff also died away at the age of 68 years. Taking his place in the Company was his third son—Ulysses Orendorff. In recognition of his contributions to the advancement of American agriculture, William Parlin, posthumously, became only the sixth person to be admitted to the Illinois Farmer’s Hall of Fame in Urbana, Illinois on January 21, 1917.
Introduction, by the P. & O. Company of the new tillage implements to their line of plows, created a problem for the new management of the Company. Once again, the increased sales of the farm equipment, required the Company to expand their production capability. Accordingly, in 1899, the Company purchased the whole city block in Canton surrounding their small factory and spent a half a million dollars constructing a large complex of manufacturing buildings that covered the entire block. The Company built a new foundry with floor space measuring 90 feet by 335 feet. In 1903, the Company constructed its own water tower to meet the factory’s water needs. In 1910, the Company spent another $300,000 on improvements in the factory complex including a new power plant to supply electrical energy to the factory complex. The brick smoke stack of this power plant was built up to a height of 225 feet, which made the smoke stack the tallest structure in Fulton County.
Introduction of the internal combustion engine-powered farm tractor by the Hart-Parr Company in 1903, brought about a revolution to farming—especially in the heavy duty field tasks like plowing. Recognizing this revolution in the making, the P.& O. Company began designing a series of tractor plows specifically made for the new farm tractors. Accordingly, in 1916, P.& O. introduced the “Genius” No. 3 series of plows. The No. 3 series included plows containing up to four bottoms with each bottom having either a 10 inch, 12 inch or 14 inch cut. Also introduced in 1916 was the Genius No. 5 series of plows—a heavier version of the No. 3 series, the No. 5 series plows were called “breaker plows.”
When the United States entered the First World War in April of 1917, there was a tremendous increase in the demand for agricultural products as the government bought food products to feed the soldiers in Europe. This high demand for agricultural products also created a parallel demand for new farm equipment and especially P.& O. moldboard plows. Immediately, following the war, the high prices for farm products continued as the government continued buying food to feed the starving citizens of the war-torn nations of Europe. All throughout the war years and the immediate aftermath, the P.& O. Company increased their share of the moldboard plow market—taking market share from older, more established and larger plow manufacturers—Deere and Company, the Case Plow Company and the Oliver Farm Equipment Company. In 1919, the P.& O. Company sold more plows than any other plow manufacturer.
With this huge share of the plow market, it was natural that the P.& O. Company became a target for a corporate merger. In 1919, the International Harvester Company made a proposal that the management of P.& O. could not refuse and so P.&. O. came under the large corporate umbrella that was the International Harvester Company that same year. The acquisition of the P.& O. Company by IHC was important to IHC not only because of the line of P.& O. plows which came under the IHC name, but also because the merger brought the P.& O. check-row corn planter under the IHC corporate umbrella as well. In years to come, the P.& O.-designed check row planter, and its successors, would make IHC a great deal of money. Instantly, the corporate merger made IHC a full line farm equipment company—complete with all the tillage equipment that any farmer would want.
After the corporate merger of IHC and the P.& O. Company, the factory complex in Canton Illinois was re-named the “Canton Works” or the “Plow Works in Canton.” The factory continued to turn out plows, cultivators and corn planters under the McCormick-Deering name—a brand name under the IHC corporate name. Working along side IHC designers, the P.& O. designers came up with a series of tractor plows—the Little Genius No. 8 series of plows. As noted above the No. 8 series went into mass production in 1928. Now in 1949, IHC was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the purchase of the P. & O. Company and the 21st anniversary of the introduction of the Little Genius No. 8 plow. In the years since its introduction, few changes had been made to the design or appearance of the Little Genius plow.
Until the late 1930s, the Little Genius plow was mounted only on steel wheels. Rubber tires became available, as an option, on the Little Genius plow in the late 1930s. As noted in an earlier article, IHC made their own rims for rubber tires on Little Genius plow. However, also noted in that prior article, in 1941 IHC also may have turned to the French and Hecht Company to supply some of the rims needed for the rubber tires on the Little Genius plow in the pre-war era.
During the Second World War very little farm equipment had been produced by the North American industry. Nearly all of the industrial effort of the United States was channeled toward the war effort. Consequently, from 1942-1945 very few Little Genius No. 8 plows were produced by the Canton Plow Works. Because of the strong need for rubber in the war effort very little rubber was available for civilian use. Accordingly, what few plows were produced during the war at the Canton Plow Works, were mounted on steel wheels. When the war ended large scale production of the Little Genius No. 8 was once again taken up. Rubber tires were back and once again available for the Little Genius No. 8 McCormick-Deering plow. In the post-war era, the rubber-tired option for the plow became so universally requested by the farmers purchasing new Little Genius plows, that rubber tires were virtually “standard equipment” on the post war Little Genius No. 8 plow. However, unlike the pre-war Little Genius plows mounted on rubber this plow had rubber tires mounted on disc-type wheel rims. In the post-war era, IHC did not try to manufacture its own rims for the flood of Little Genius plows that the Company was selling to farmers all across the country. Neither did IHC re-negotiate a new contract with the French and Hecht Company to supply their familiar round-spoke rims for the Little Genius plow. Rather IHC turned to another company to supply the rims they needed for the Little Genius plow—the Electric Wheel Company of Quincy, Illinois (pop. 42,408). (The Electric Wheel Company will be the subject of a future article.) The rims supplied by the Electric Wheel Company were not spoke type wheels. Rather, the Electric Wheel Company supplied “disc” type wheels for the Little Genius plow.
Consequently, although there were no real differences between the Little Genius plows of the pre-war era as compared with the Little Genius plows of the post-war era, the mere use of the disc type wheel made the post-war Little Genius plow look significantly different from its rubber-tired pre-war ancestor. The disc wheels just seemed “more modern” and made the post-war Little Genius more modern in appearance. (This fact is alluded to in the Chad d Elmore article called “Who Can You Thank for Your Tractor’s Wheels?” which was carried in the November/December 1999 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.)
Accordingly, the 2-bottom Little Genius plow on the showroom floor of the Steckman Bros. dealership, which was being shown to Harris Lawrence in the early spring of 1949, was another of the Little Genius plows fitted with rubber tires mounted on the disc type wheel rims from the Electric Wheel Company. The disc-type wheel rims were painted creamy white just as the spoke-type wheel rims had been in 1941 and just like the steel wheels had been in earlier Little Genius plows. However, the rest of the plow remained the same.
So it was that, in the spring of 1949, Harris Lawrence signed a sales contract for a package deal—a Farmall Model H tractor, a McCormick-Deering Model HM-236 fixed beam mounted cultivator and a Little Genius plow. The mechanics of the deal were set in motion. Steckman’s called the their local “block house” (warehouse) located at 426 North Front Street in Mankato, Minnesota (1940 pop. 15,654) to check on the expected delivery of the three new Farmall H tractors. They submitted a request for the delivery of a new HM-236 mounted cultivator to accompany the tractors on that delivery. Then the sales staff at Steckman’s began to “prep” the particular 2-bottom Little Genius plow now sitting on the showroom floor for delivery to the Lawrence farm.
Prior to loading the plow on the truck for delivery to the Harris Lawrence farm, holes were drilled at the tips of each moldboard and a metal strip was bolted to the tips of each moldboard. This small extension of the moldboard was a modification to the plow made in response to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s program to control the European Corn Borer. The Little Genius No. 8 plow was already known as a plow that rolled the soil completely over. This extension of the moldboards merely exaggerated that tendency to more completely roll over the soil. Because of the close association of these moldboard extension strips with the Corn Borer Control program, addition of these strips branded this particular post-war plow—the Harris Lawrence plow—as a plow that was involved in the Great Corn Borer war of 1948-1955.
Within a few days, following the delivery of the plow, the new Farmall Model H tractor and cultivator were delivered to the Harris Lawrence farm. Now, with the new tractor and trailing plow, Harris Lawrence felt that, at last, he would be able to effectively fight the Corn Borer on his farm. That spring of 1949, he got the tractor and Little Genius plow into the field as soon as he could. The new tractor and plow were an attractive scene on the landscape. The tractor was bright red. The frame of the plow was also red. Attached to the red frame were the two moldboards which were painted Royal blue. The disc-type wheel rims on the front of the Little Genius were painted creamy white. The tire fitted on the wheel on right side of the plow was the known as the “furrow wheel.” The furrow wheel of the post-war Little Genius was fitted with a 6.00 x 16 inch tire. The wheel on the left side of the plow was known as the “land wheel” and was fitted with a 7.00 x 16 inch tire. Additionally there was a smaller third wheel at the rear of the plow. This wheel was known as the “trailing wheel.” The rear trailing wheel followed along in the new furrow that was being made by the rear of the two moldboards as the plow was pulled across the field. The rim of the trailing wheel was painted white. This trailing wheel was fitted with a 4.00 x 12 inch rubber tire.
Except for a small snow squall in early April, 1949, the early spring weather was milder than normal. The soil warmed up early in the spring. Accordingly, Harris Lawrence was able to get into the corn field with the tractor and trailing plow in mid-April of 1949. Working steadily in the field with the new plow in the spring of 1949, Harris was able to get all the stalks under the ground before the Corn Borer larvae emerged from winter hibernation. Once the plowing was done, the seedbed was prepared. Consequently, Harris was able to get the corn planted relatively early in the spring of 1949.
As the growing season started, it looked as though 1949 was going to be a “wet” season just like the three previous seasons had been. However, with the coming of June the rains suddenly stopped. Rainfall for the month of June and for the first part of July was much less than normal. This dry spell occurred during a critical time for the growth of corn. Although the rains would return again in late July, the damage had been done. Yields per acre in Sibley County fell off from the record yield of 62 bushels per acre in 1948 to 54 bushels per acre in 1952. This represented a 17. 7% drop in corn yields from the record setting year of 1948. More importantly, the 1949 yield was 5.6% below the average yield of 54 bushels per acre which the farmers of Sibley County had come to expect for their corn since the introduction of commercial fertilizers. The largest portion of this decline in corn yields from the average harvest yield was do to the dryness of the weather during the important early growth stage in the early part of the summer. Soybean yields in Sibley County also reflected a significant drop off in yield (4.8%) because of the dryness of the weather in the early summer of 1949. The lack of any real difference between the decline in corn yields and the decline in soybean yields in 1949, reveals the effectiveness with which Harris Lawrence and his neighbors were able to get the control the ravages of the Corn Borer on the corn crop of Sibley County in 1949. It was a sign that Harris Lawrence and his neighbors had been able to get all the old corn stalks from the previous safely under ground before the Corn Borer emerged from winter hibernation. Harris Lawrence could thank his new tractor and trailing plow for saving his corn crop in 1949 from the ravages of the Corn Borer.
The new tractor and Little Genius No. 8 trailing plow had accelerated the process of plowing the corn stalks. Nonetheless, Harris Lawrence still needed some time after the harvest in the fall to complete the plowing of the corn stalks. Fortunately in the fall of 1949, he had the time to get the plowing done. The next growing season, in 1950, was also a drier than normal and also was shorter than a normal year. A colder than normal April delayed the field work and the planting of the crops in the spring of 1950. Cold weather set in early in the autumn of 1950. The shortened growing season interfered with the development of the crop. Consequently, corn in Sibley County experienced a drop in yield of 11.8% in the fall of 1950. Likewise there was a 15% drop in the average soybean crop yield in Sibley County in 1950.
Although, Harris Lawrence grew no soybeans on his farm, a parallel comparison of the corn yield with the soybean yields of his neighbors in Sibley County can be used to reveal the extent of damage caused by the Corn Borer in Sibley County. When losses in soybean yield and corn yield are approximately equal, as they were in 1950, we can conclude that the losses in 1950 were due to the weather rather than the Corn Borer. This indicates that the Corn Borer had been controlled for a second year in a row.
However, the early onset of winter in the fall of 1950, prevented Harris Lawrence and his neighbors had trouble getting the corn stalks plowed that autumn. Furthermore, there was a lot of snow on the ground over the winter of 1950-1951. The melting snows and the rains of April delayed field work in the spring of 1951 and prevented plowing of the corn stalks until well after the Corn Borer larvae had emerged from underground. Consequently, during the 1951 growing season, the European Corn Borer was back its destructive path Sibley County. Once again comparisons of the corn yield with the soybean yield of Sibley County shows the extent of the Corn Borer damage in the county. Under the normal weather conditions of the summer growing season of 1951, soybean yields in Sibley County rose by 11.8%. Because 1951 was a normal growing season weather-wise, one might have expected that the corn yield to bounce back also. However, the corn yield in Sibley County remained flat. The extent to which the corn crop failed to bounce back in 1951 is a measure of the damage done to the corn crop by the Corn Borer in 1951.
Fall came early in 1951 with temperatures dropping down in to the single digits and freezing the ground as early as Halloween, 1951. Once again, the corn stalks were not properly plowed in the fall of 1951. However, the saving grace came in the spring of 1952. April of 1952 was warm and dry and helped the farmers get into the field early enough to get the corn stalks plowed before the emergence of the Corn borer larvae from winter hibernation and it worked. Thanks to the tractor and new plow, Harris Lawrence was able to deny the larvae its habitat on top of the ground. When the larvae emerged from under ground they died because of the lack of corn stalks on top of the ground. The results were that the corn crop remained undamaged by the Corn Borer throughout the 1952 growing season. Whereas soybeans continued at the same high level of yield as the previous year, corn yields finally made the recovery in 1952 that should have occurred in 1951. The average corn yield in Sibley County rose to 54 bushels per acre in 1952—up by a startling 20% over the previous year.
The growing season of 1953 was a curiousity. A warm fall of 1952 and a warm March in 1953 allowed Harris Lawrence and his neighbors plenty of time in the fall and the spring to get the corn stalks plowed under the ground. Still corn yield fell by 11.1% in the fall of 1953. By comparison, the soybean yield in Sibley County set a new all-time record high of 22 bushels per acre—a yield that was increased by 15.8% over the previous year. The Corn Borer had damaged the corn crop despite the best efforts of the farmers of Sibley County to stem the tide.
Warmer than normal weather continued long after the harvest in the fall of 1953. Not until mid-December, 1953, did the ground freeze. Despite the very cold weather that arrived in mid-January of 1954, the winter season of 1953-1954 passed without any significant snow accumulations at all. The warm weather of the spring of 1954 arrived early. With no snow to melt the ground was dry enough to allow the farmers of Sibley County to get into the fields very early in the growing season. Consequently, the corn stalks across the county were buried well before the Corn Borer larvae emerged from under ground. The corn got off to a good start with sufficient gentle soaking rains in April and May, 1954. The weather and rains cooperated with the farmers of Sibley County all summer long and the corn yields in Sibley County in the fall of 1954 showed the results. With an average yield of 58 bushels per acre, Sibley County corn farmers had their best year since the record setting year of 1948.
The warm weather in the fall of 1954 allowed Harris Lawrence and his neighbors to get their corn ground plowed again before the winter of 1954-1955 arrived. As one might expect the corn yield in Sibley County was very good in 1955. Indeed, the average corn yield for the county set a new record in 1955 rising to 63 bushels per acre. However, the next three growing seasons 1956, 1957 and 1958, were all “short” growing seasons. The early onset of winters and late arriving springs of these short seasons severely limited the farmers’ ability to plow their corn fields. Thus, the shortened seasons should have meant an open invitation to the Corn Borer to destroy the corn crops during those years, but this did not happen. Instead, the average corn yield in Sibley County set another new record in 1956, rising to 64 bushels per acre. In 1957, the corn average county-wide corn yield set yet another new record of 68 bushels per acre. In 1958, the Sibley County average corn was again, 68 bushels per acre. All of these new record yields were established during years when there was a short growing season that did not allow farmers to properly plow their corn fields. How was it possible?
There was a revolution occurring in the fight to control the Corn Borer. In the years of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the farmers of the Corn Belt had been involved in the Great Corn Borer War, in an attempt to control the pest. In the years of the mid-1950s, this “war” came to an end. Starting in about 1955, farmers were turning to a new agent to control the Corn Borer—insecticides, particularly Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane (D.D.T). No longer was it important to get the corn stalks plowed prior to the emergence of the Corn Borer larvae. No longer was effective control of the Corn Borer totally dependent on the whims of the weather. Chemical insecticides could take care of the Corn Borer at any stage of development—eggs, larvae, or the moth stage. The Great Corn Borer War was over. The farmer, armed with powerful chemical insecticides had beaten the Corn Borer.
In the years during and since the Great Corn Borer War, many changes have occurred in the lives of those people associated with the post-war plow. Sometime in 1953, Harris Lawrence was traveling on a road when he noticed a car with a flat tire. He stopped to offer assistance to the driver. The driver happened to be Mary Elizabeth Tousignant. It was a fortuitous meeting, about a year later Mary Elizabeth and Harris Lawrence were married. They had a family that eventually consisted three boys (Eugene Harris, born on September 20, 1955; Robert John, July 10. 1957; and Joseph William born on September 18, 1958) and one girl (Joan Marie, born on March 6, 1961). Mary Elizabeth Harris died at the early age of 44 years on February 25, 1973. Harris passed away on November 7, 1983.
Meanwhile in Henderson, Minnesota, the Steckman Bothers Implement dealership continued to sell farm equipment from the same location on the corner of Main Street and Fourth Street in downtown Henderson. Predictably, during the midsts of the Great Corn Borer War, Steckman’s sold more McCormick-Deering tractor-powered stalk choppers than before or after the war on the Corn Borer. In 1950, the dealership expanded into selling automobiles as well as International Harvester farm equipment, when the dealership obtained a franchise to sell Plymouth and DeSoto cars. In 1950, the Steckman dealership expanded into the sale of International Harvester refrigerators and freezers. Steckman’s may have retained an advantage been aided in the fact that they resisted the trend Like Steckman’s, most local International Harvester Company (IHC) dealerships were located in “downtown” buildings. Most often these dealerships, like the Steckman dealership, were located right on “Main Street” of most small towns. In the post-war period, the IHC began a campaign to encourage (some would say “force”) local dealerships to move their dealerships from the traditional downtown locations to a location outside the city limits. This was done to allow more room for expansion of the dealerships and to make the dealership more accessible to their local farm customers. The Steckman dealership resisted this move to the “suburbs” and remained in its locationDuring these years, Steckman’s also expanded into the selling of International Harvester refrigerators and freezers. encouraged (some say “forced”) by the International Harvester Company (IHC) to have local dealerships move out of downtown locations to the suburbs of towns. This trend did create more room for dealerships to exhibit the larger farm implements that were becoming popular. However, the move to the suburbs was a disaster for the selling of kitchen appliances. As a result, in 1955, IHC sold the its entire kitchen appliances line to Whirlpool Inc.
During the same time, changes were occurring in farm practices across the Corn Belt. In 1962, author a Rachel Carson’s 1962 book called Silent Spring initiate a public campaign of concern about the DDT. The dangers of D.D.T. and the damage that it was doing to wildlife and the environment would become glaringly obvious when even the American Bald Eagle—the very symbol of the United States of America—has been threatened with extinction because of D.D.T. The D.D.T. compound was eventually banned in 1973.) Since 1973, farmers have turned to other newer insecticides to control the European Corn Borer. Insecticides without the environmentally harmful side effects of D.D.T.
During the 1980s, moldboard plowing of the soil as a farming practice also came under increasing criticism—especially, the practice of fall plowing which left the soil of the fields exposed to wind erosion all winter. Eventually the moldboard plow would become an antique of a bygone era. Because of its small size, the 2-bottom Harris Lawrence Little Genius plow was retired to the woods on the Lawrence farm long before moldboard farming as a practice became outdatd. Years later, after the death of Harris Lawrence, the little post-war plow was sold to Donald Goethke of rural Arlington, Minnesota. In April of 1994, Donald Goethke brought the Harris Lawrence plow to the annual LeSueur County Pioneer Power Swap Meet where the plow was sold to Mark Wells, brother of the current author. The plow was restored and painted by the author in the spring of 1995. However, the paint used at that time was only “industrial” grade paint rather than “automotive” grade paint. Therefore, the red pain on the Harris Lawrence plow soon faded. By 2006, the Harris Lawrence plow was once again in need of repainting. In preparation for the 2007 Show, the Harris Lawrence plow was again painted by brothers Dale and Wayne May with a better grade of paint.
From the time it was purchased at the 1994 Swap Meet, the Harris Lawrence plow has been matched to the 1944 Farmall Model H tractor bearing the serial number 173093 which is owned by Wells Family Farmalls. (No. 173093, was featured in a prior article called “Soybean Farming with a Farmall H in Butternut Valley Township.”) No. 173093 is a good match for the post-war Harris Lawrence tractor. In 1994, even before the plow was painted the first time, a copy of an Owners Manual for the Little Genius plow was consulted to find the correct configuration for the adjustable hitch of the plow in order to match or “tune” the plow to a Farmall H. However, it was discovered that the adjustable hitch needed no fine adjustment or tuning to fit No. 173093. The plow was still adjusted to fit Harris Lawrence’s 1949 Farmall Model H.
The restored Harris Lawrence plow was shown, for the first time, at the Pioneer Power Show held in August of 1995. The plow was paraded at that Show and has regularly been paraded at Pioneer Power Shows since that time. Each time the plow is exhibited or paraded with No. 173093, on the grounds of the LeSueur County Pioneer Power Association, the plow recreates a scene from 60 years ago of Harris Lawrence going to the corn fields to fight the European Corn Borer.
Written by Brian on 20 April 2011
Soybean Farming in Butternut Valley Township (Part 2 of 2 parts):
The 1944 Farmall Model H Tractor
by
Brian Wayne Wells
As noted, previously, Butternut Valley Township is located in the extreme northwestern corner of Blue Earth County, Minnesota. (See the first article in this series called “Soybean Farming in Butternut Valley Township [Part 1]” also published in the blog section of this website.) Also, as previously noted, in 1942 Butternut Valley Township was the home of a particular diversified 160 acre family farming operation. Our Butternut Valley Township farer and his wife had lived on this farm since they were married in 1919. As a diversified farming operation, he and his wife milked dairy cows, raised pigs and had a chicken flock. They sold milk and eggs off the farm for regular income. Each summer they marketed the pigs they had raised to provide cash income in the summer. In the fields, they raised oats and hay. Originally the oats were raised to feed their horses as well as their chickens ande the hay was used to feed both the cows and the horses. Since obtaining a “used” 1929 Farmall Regular tricycle-style tractor in 1937, he had greatly reduced the number of horses his farm. Thus, he had been able to reduce the number of acres planted to oats and hay each year. The largest crop on the farm was corn. Part of the corn crop was cut in August each year, while it was still green. This corn was then fed into the silo filler and blown into the silo which stood next to the barn. The silage in the silo would be used all winter to feed the dairy herd. The remaining corn would be picked in the late autumn and the ears of corn would be stored in the corn crib. Part of this corn would be shelled and saved to fatten the pigs for market. The rest of the corn would be sold to provide cash income in the winter. Consequently, the corn was a cash crop as well as source of animal food.
Since the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December of 1941, a new market for plastics had arisen. Soybeans was the main raw product used in making plastics. Accordingly, since 1941,. the market price for soybeans had been soaring. Because he now planted less acres in hay and oats, our Butternut Valley Township farmer decided to plant that extra acreage to soybeans in the spring of 1942. The growing season of 1942 was almost perfect. Both soybeans and corn were bumper crops. Furthermore, the price of these two farm products rose to high levels. Consequently, our Butternut Valley Township farmer had one of his best years in terms of farm income. As a result, he seriously think about upgrading his farming operation by trading the old 1929 Farmall Regular in on the purchase of a new modern farm tractor.
After selling his corn, our Butternut Valley Township farmer was able to pay off all his debts and find that he still had a comfortable balance of funds in the bank. As a result, he again visited the Fesenmaier Hardware dealership. He had heard rumors that more Famall H’s with rubber tires were starting to be manufactured, again, due to the fact that more rubber was starting to be released by the government for civilian production. This time he told the staff at the Fesenmaier dealership to place his name on the list for a rubber-tired Farmall H. However, he told them he only wanted a Farmall H with rubber tires, electric starting and hydraulics. He needed the new tractor now more than ever before.
In the spring of 1943, our Butternut Valley Township farmer increased the amount of acreage he planted to soybeans. He kept waiting for his Farmall H to arrive at the Fesenmaier Hardware dealership. However, very few Farmall Model H tractors arrived at the dealership in New Ulm, Minnesota in 1943 because the manufacturing capacity of the International Harvester Company was still being dominated by government-military contacts. By 1943, ⅔ or 66.6% of the Company’s sales contracts were for military hardware. (Barbara Marsh, A Corporate Tragedy: The Agony of International Harvester p. 71.) Consequently, production of farm tractors by the IHC declined even more. Although already greatly curtailed, production of the Farmall Model H fell off by another 6% in 1943 when compared with the previous year. Rubber pneumatic tires for the Farmall H had been almost totally unavailable since July of 1942. However, starting in July of 1943 rubber tires for the Farmall H started to become available again on a limited basis. (Guy Fay and Andy Kraushaar, Farmall Letter Series Tractors [MBI Publishing Co.: Osceola, Wisconsin, 1998] p. 73.) Thus, the rumors that our Butternut Valley Township farmer had heard in the early spring of 1943, that rubber tires were once again becoming available for Farmall tractors, proved to be a bit premature.
Although he was disappointed about the new tractor, he did make one improvement in his farming operation over the summer of 1943, and it was a significant improvement. Our Butternut Valley Township farmer obtained a second-hand J.I.Case Company Model A-6 combine at an auction held in his neighborhood. It had been an “expensive” auction. Farmers could not obtain new farm machinery. Accordingly, their pent up demand drove up the price of used machinery especially at these neighborhood auctions. Of all farm machinery, combines were most in demand right now. The rise of the soybean as a crop on farms had created this demand for combines. Our Butternut Valley Township farmer felt that he had spent more money than he should have to obtain the combine at the auction. When introduced in 1938, the Case Model A-6 combine had cost $695 when fitted with a power take off (pto) shaft to allow the combine to be powered by the tractor towing the combine. When fitted with its own power source—a Wisconsin Model VE-4 four cylinder air-cooled engine, the cost of the Model A-6 rose to $890. Here he was spending a “new combine” price for a combine that was five years old. However, he expected the combine to pay for itself in savings when he harvested his soybeans in the fall. First, combining soybeans required much less man-handling of the soybeans than did the cutting, binding and threshing of soybeans. While threshing the soybeans the year before he had become very much aware of the amount of soybeans that were lost merely getting the bundles of soybean plants to the stationary thresher. Soybeans were much more brittle and fragile than wheat or oats. His attempt at threshing soybeans in 1942 had involved too much waste. If he had been unable to purchase a combine himself in 1943, our Butternut Valley Township farmer felt that he would have to hire someone combine his soybeans. Better that, than trying to thresh the soybeans again.
Our Butternut Valley Township farmer also knew that if he had his own combine, he could also use the combine in the middle of the summer to harvest the small amount of oats that he still raised for animal feed on his farm. This would save valuable time, because he would no longer have to wait for the neighborhood thresher to make the rounds of his neighbor’s farms and finally arrived on his farm. Additionally, he would no longer have to spend a great deal of time away from the farm following the thresher around the neighborhood serving as part of the threshing crew. Many of his neighbors were also realizing the necessity of combining rather than threshing soybeans. Accordingly, when the growing season in Blue Earth County in 1943 was marred by a total lack of rain and very hot temperatures during the crucial month of June and the rest of the summer was drier than normal, soybean actual soybean yield was reduced. However, because of the widespread use of combines rather than threshers in harvesting the soybean crop in Blue Earth County in 1943, average recorded soybean yield in Blue Earth County (in terms of the amount of soybeans sold brought to market) fell off only slightly to 17 bushels per acre in 1943. Use of the combine made a below-average harvest of soybeans look respectable, because the combine saved much more of the soybeans that would be wasted when threshing with a stationary thresher.
Nationwide, the production of soybeans in 1943 set another new record of 190,133,000 bushels. Consequently, one might have expected the price of soybeans to drop in the fall of 1943. However, wartime demand for soybeans kept growing by leaps and bounds. Thus, despite the flood of soybeans coming onto the market, soybean prices did not decrease. Instead the price continued to increase. Our Butternut Valley Township farmer was able to sell his soybeans in November of 1943 for the price of $1.81 per bushel.
The winter of 1943-1944 passed. Spring planting in 1944 came and went and the summer cultivation of the corn and soybeans was all completed on the farm. Here it was, August of 1944 and still our Butternut Valley Township farmer heard nothing from the Fesenmaier Hardware dealership regarding a new tractor.
Meanwhile, in that same month of August, 1944, more raw materials became available across the nation for production of both war material and civilian farm machinery (“guns” as well as “butter”). At the IHC Farmall Works in Rock Island, Illinois, production of the various Farmall tractors was increasing for the first time in four years. The two-plow Farmall H still led in sales among all the letter-series Farmall tractors, and thus, production of the Farmall H in 1944 rose to 20,660 tractors—approximately half the pre-war production levels. As a result of both the continuing military contracts and the recent gradual increase in civilian production, the total value of the production of all goods by the IHC passed the half a billion dollar mark for the first time in the history of the company in 1944 (actually reaching $640.5 million). (Barbara Marsh, A Corporate Tragedy: The Agony of International Harvester p. 71.)
Production of the Farmall Model H in the Farmall Works continued to rise until it reahed the level of 3,634 tractors for the single month of August of 1944—an average of 158 Farmall H tractors manufactured each day during the 23 working days of the month. Each one of these tractors began on the assembly line as a simple frame onto which a rear end differential assembly was mounted. On Monday, August 7, 1944 one particular frame and chassis moving along the assembly line bore the Serial No. 173093 stamped into frame of the future tractor. A metal plate with the same number stamped on it was attached to the cast-iron bell-housing covering the fly-wheel and the clutch on the left side of the tractor. As No. 173093 moved along the assembly line an engine and a radiator were added to the frame. Then the frame was fitted with IHC’s cast iron drop center wheels front and rear. The cast-iron drop centers meant that No. 173093 was destined to be fitted with rubber tires front and rear. Even a year after the return of rubber tires as an option for the Farmall tractors, it was an uncommon sight for the workers along the assembly line to actually see a tractor being equipped with rubber tires. At a later station along the assembly line, after the tractor was painted and dried, the silver colored rims mounted with 10.00 x 38 inch rubber tires were rolled into place and attached to the cast-iron centers on both rear wheels. At the same time the rims containing the smaller 5.50 x 16 inch rubber tires also mounted on silver colored rims were attached to the front wheels of the tractor.
Additionally, No. 173093 was fitted with a battery, electric lights, an electric starter, and the Lift-All hydraulic system. These features were optional equipment during the war, but following the war they would be universally added to almost every Famall H produced in the post-war period. Accordingly, as No. 173093 was being constructed on the assembly line, it was being fitted with options that would make the tractor a thoroughly modern tractor even in the post-war era.
No. 173093 was fitted with yet another option that was quite rare—disc brakes. (As discussed in an earlier article, this option was so unusual that some observers of the restored No. 173093 have alleged that the tractor is a really a Farmall Super H rather than a wartime Model H. (See the article called “The Wartime Farmall H” in the July/August 1994 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.) However, as discussed in that article, the external linkage connecting the brake pedal with the housing containing the brake discs is entirely different from the linkage used on the disc braking system of the Super H. (Ibid.) With its disc brakes, however, No. 173093 was a tractor of the future that anticipated some of the equipment that would be standard equipment on the Super-series tractors which would be introduced eight and a half (8½) years in the future, on December 12, 1952. (Guy Fay and Andy Kraushaar, Farmall Letter Series Tractors p. 77.) Fitting No. 173093 and a limited number of other Farmall H tractors, with the optional disc brakes may have been a test that IHC made of the popularity of the disc brakes themselves with farmer/consumers prior to the release of the Super series. Thus, No. 173093 was not only was a tractor of the post-war era but was a tractor that anticipated the introduction of the Super series in the 1950s.
There was, however, one small feature that is a reminder that No. 173093 really is a wartime tractor. Unlike the pre-war Farmalls, the gear shift stick in the middle of the operator’s seat was threaded—in order to accept a steel gear shift knob. Before the war, the gear shift knobs on the Farmall letter series tractors had all been made of rubber which were merely pressed on the unthreaded gear shift stick. However, with the rubber shortage, the Farmalls made during the war were fitted with steel knobs of the same shape. Even after the limited return of rubber tires as an option for Farmalls in July of 1943, the steel gear shift knob would remain as a feature of wartime tractors until the end of the war in September 1945. There may have been enough rubber to introduce reintroduce rubber tires for the Farmall in 1943, but the use of rubber for something so superfluous as a gear shift knob was not regarded as a good use of rubber during war time.
Reaching the end of the assembly line, on August 7, 1944, No. 173093 faced its final and most important test—starting the engine. The engine on the tractor started and No. 173093 was driven under its own power off the assembly line. When No. 173093 was driven out of the Farmall Works Factory under its own power for the first time, it was immediately assigned to IHC’s district “block house” located in Mankato, Minnesota. The Mankato block house served as a warehouse facility for IHC dealerships all across south central and southwestern Minnesota. No. 173093 was loaded onto one of the railroad flat cars setting along side the loading docks outside the Farmall Works factory ready for shipment to Mankato.
The loaded railroad flat car bearing No. 173093 was hitched to a Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific (Milwaukee Road) train that was being formed to head north out of the “Quad Cities.” (Moline [pop. 37,397] and Rock Island [pop.49.461], Illinois were adjacent to each other and directly across the Mississippi River were Davenport [pop. 74,549] and Bettendorf, Iowa [pop.5,132]. So economically integrated were these four towns that they functioned as a single economic unit and, thus, were called the Quad Cities.) The long Milwaukee Road train heading north across eastern Iowa was loaded predominately with war materials headed for the Pacific theater of war through the port of Seattle, Washington (pop. 467,591). (Seattle was currently mushrooming in growth not only because the sea port which shipped exports to the Pacific, but because of the growing aircraft industry headquartered in Seattle. Leading the way in this industry was the Boeing Aircraft Company designing and manufacturing the B-17 bomber and later the B-29 bomber for the war effort. Following the war Boeing provide a strong manufacturing base for Seattle as they became a large manufacturer of passenger aircraft. One particular Navy pilot returning from the war would settle in Seattle and start working for Boeing in the post-war era. This returning veteran was Donald Wells, late uncle of the current author. Consistent readers of Belt Pulley magazine will recognize Donald Wells, as a young high school graduate working on this father’s farm as mentioned in the article called “The Wartime Farmall H” on page 15 of the July/August 1994 issue and in the article called “A 1931 Farmall Regular at Work” on page 34 of the in the March/April 2008 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.)
Just as the farm equipment industry was impacted by wartime economic restrictions, so too were the railroads affected by the war. Before the war Milwaukee Road had been a pioneer among railroads in the United States in conversion from steam power to diesel-powered locomotives. Since 1939, the Milwaukee Road railway had been busy replacing their steam power locomotives with 600 horsepower diesel units made the American Locomotive Company (Alco) of Schenectady, New York. However, the since the start of the war, Milwaukee Road railway had been unable to replace any of their aging inventory of steam engines. Suddenly in 1944, the War Production Board allowed ten (10) new S3 Class 4-8-4 (the term “4-8-4” refers to the wheel arrangement under the steam engine e.g. four (4) weight-bearing coaster wheels at the front of the engine, eight (8) huge driving wheels under the middle of the engine and four (4) coasters in the back of the under the engineers cab) freight steam locomotives to be manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and to be delivered to Milwaukee Road. These ten (10) engines proved to be the last steam-powered engines ever to be purchased by Milwaukee Road.
It was one of these new steam engines that now set about towing the long Milwaukee Road train with the flat car bearing No. 173093 across eastern Iowa through the towns of Oxford Junction (pop. 663), Monticello (pop. 2,888), Delhi (pop. 383), Fayette (pop. 1,469) and New Hampton (pop. 3,323), Iowa. The route taken by the train skirted around the small manufacturing city of Waterloo, Iowa (pop. 65,198) where IHC’s rival in the tractor manufacturing industry, Deere and Company, had their main tractor works. The train did, however, pass through the small town of Charles City, Iowa (pop. 10,309), where another rival, the Oliver Farm Equipment Company had their tractor works. The train passed through countryside dotted with small farms. The fields of those farms that bordered the tracks were lush with the corn. As the leading state in the production of hogs in the nation, it stood to reason that Iowa was also a leading producer of corn. Corn and hogs were grown together on most diversified farming operations. Ground shelled corn was used to feed the pigs and fatten them for market. However, now in 1944 as the Milwaukee Road train made its journey, a surprising number of the fields along the tracks had been planted to another crop—soybeans.
The Milwaukee Road train passed through the counties of Clinton, Jones, Delaware, Fayette, Chickasaw, Floyd and Mitchell counties in Iowa. In some of the counties, soybean planting had not made a big impact yet, i.e. in Clinton County farmers on average still allotted 18.1 acres for the production of corn for every acre of soybeans they planted. In Jones County the ratio was 15.8 acres to 1 and in Delaware County it was 12.7 acres to 1. However, in other counties along the route, the average production of soybeans had encroached much more into the domain of corn. The ratio in Fayette County was 3.9 acres of corn for every acre of soybeans, in Chickasaw County the ratio was 2.7 to 1, in Floyd County it was 2.4 to 1 and in Mitchell County it was 2.2 to 1. Iowa did not surrender its position as a leading state in the production of corn, but it was clear that the soybean was becoming a significant cash crop—more so than flax or barley had ever been.
Leaving Mitchell County, Iowa, the Milwaukee Road train proceeded north and crossed the Iowa/Minnesota border near the village of Lyle, Minnesota (l940 pop. 513). Ten miles north of Lyle, the train entered the small city of Austin, Minnesota (1940 pop. 18,307). Here, one of the flat cars bearing the some of the other Farmall tractors were detached and placed on a siding at the freight depot. Delivery of the Farmall tractors on this flat car would be made to the International Harvester Company dealership located at 1303 East Oakland Street in Austin. As mentioned in an earlier article, this dealership in Austin was company-owned dealership rather than a franchise-owned dealership. (See the article, cited above, called “A 1931 Farmall Regular at Work” contained in the March/April 2008 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.) A single flat car of Farmalls was a pretty sparse delivery for a dealership like the one in Austin, but it was a sign of the times.
After the stop in Austin, the freight train moved on headed west across southern Minnesota and arrived in the village of Wells (1940 pop. 3,217). Here the flat car bearing No. 173093 was detached from the main train, which then continued west. The detached flat car was then attached to another Milwaukee Road train that served the branch that extended into Mankato. This train passed through Minnesota Lake (1940 pop. 526), the gateway to Blue Earth County. Passing though Mapleton (1940 pop. 1,070), the train arrived at the freight depot in Mankato (1940 pop. 15,654) where No. 173093 was unloaded. No. 173093, along with the precious few other Farmall tractors that had arrived as part of this shipment, were was picked up by the staff of the Mankato IHC block house and transported back to the Mankato block house located at 426 North Front Street in Mankato.
The Mankato block house was a warehouse facility that served a number of dealership all across southwestern Minnesota. Currently, there was no shortage of dealerships begging for Farmall tractors—or indeed, any new farm machinery at all—from the Mankato block house. Every Farmall tractor in this new shipment of tractors, including No. 173093, had already been assigned to a few lucky dealerships with in the district according to the date of the requests for tractors. The rubber-tired No. 173093 was assigned to being assigned to the Fesenmaier Hardware Dealership in New Ulm, Minnesota, to satisfy a long-standing request from that dealership for a Farmall H equipped with factory-rubber tires front and rear, electric start, electric lights and the optional Lift-All hydraulic system. This particular request was nearly two years old and so the staff at the block house took a great deal of pleasure in being able to fill this request at long last. When the block house staff contacted the Fesenmaier Dealership they learned that the buyer who was taking delivery of this particular tractor actually lived on a farm northwest of Lake Crystal. This was the farm of our Butternut Valley Township farmer. Because his farm was actually located between Mankato and New Ulm, Fesenmaier Hardware made arrangements with the Mankato blockhouse do the final “prep” work on the tractor and to make actual delivery of the tractor to our Butternut Valley Township farmer, rather than delivering the tractor all the way to New Ulm and then have Fesenmaier’s back track toward Mankato to deliver the tractor. Accordingly, No. 173093 was brought in the garage area in the back of the Mankato block house building to be prepped for final delivery to our Butternut Valley Township farmer.
Besides functioning as a warehouse facility for other dealerships in the southern Minnesota district, the Mankato blockhouse also served the immediate Mankato area as a company-owned retail dealership. Indeed, at about the same time that No. 173093 was being prepped for delivery in the rear of the block house/dealership building, two young brothers were walking into the front door of the dealership. As noted in another article, Fred and Bruce Hanks, brothers from Mapleton, Minnesota wanted to purchase a pair of cast-iron drop-center front wheels and some rims for rubber tires for a 1942 steel-wheeled Farmall Model H they had purchased from A.E. Rehwaldt of LeRoy, Minnesota (1940 pop. 752). (See the article cited above called “The Wartime Farmall H” in the July/August 1994 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.) The Hanks brothers, too, had become aware that more rubber tires were now available for Farmall tractors and they now sought to update their own newly purchased wartime Farmall H by mounting rubber tires on at least the front wheels of the tractor.
No. 173093 arrived on the farm of our Butternut Valley Township farmer in late August, 1944. Cultivation of the row crops and most field work was already complete. Consequently, the first time he had a chance to get into the field with the new tractor was in the late fall when he headed to the field with the new bright red tractor and the old A-6 combine.
The 1944 growing season had been good. Planting of the soybeans had been completed in mid-May of 1944. So, by mid- September, the soybeans had reached 120-day maturity, witnessed by the fact that the leaves of the soybean plants turning yellow. Now our Butternut Valley Township farmer had only to wait for a frost. Both corn and soybean plants are killed by air temperatures reaching down to a mere 29°F. He did not have long to wait. There was an early “killing frost” that arrived on the night of October 9, 1944 as temperatures reached down to 27°F. Following the frost, the leaves on the soybean plants now dried up, turned dark brown and eventually fell off the plants. The frost on the night of October 9 proved to be a “snap frost.” The rest of the month of October warmed up with no more frosts at night. Indeed some days toward the end of the month reached highs of above 70°F. So the soybean pods became very dry and brittle. The leaves fell off the soybean plants so thoroughly that nothing was left of the soybean plants except a brown stalk sticking up out of the ground with the pods attached to it —perfect for combining. There was no rain at all in October. Thus, the fields remained dry for the tractor and the combine.
Once in the soybean field, our Butternut Valley Township farmer stepped down from the tractor and walked around combine and lifted the grain tank up into its operating position. (The high gravity-flow grain tank on the Model A-6 combine folded backward and down into a transport position for transport of the combine and for storage in low ceiling buildings.) Now with the grain tank locked in place, he adjusted and secured the grain elevator leading up to the tank. Then he crawled up on top of the A-6 combine and started the Wisconsin Model VE-4 air-cooled engine with the little crank that was provided with the engine. Once the engine was started, he crawled down off the combine and walked around to the tractor again. Then he engaged the clutch of the Wisconsin engine and the combine began to shake and come to life.
Because the combine was a pull-type implement the tractor had to run along side of the combine. Consequently, our Butternut Valley Township farmer crawled up on the operator’s seat of No. 173093 and steered the tractor around so that the front wheels of the tractor moved down the pathway between the rows one 1 and 2 of the eight end rows planted cross-ways across this end of the field. This meant that the cutter bar and platform of the pull-type A-6 combine was positioned to cut rows 3 and 4 of the eight rows planted across the end of the field. Then our Butternut Valley Township farmer reached around behind him to grab the platform height control lever and adjusted the platform and 6-foot cutter bar to a height as close to the ground as possible. He wanted the cutter bar to “shave” the ground in order to cut the dried soybeans so close to the ground that he would get all the pods on each plant—even the low hanging pods which were only a couple of inches off the ground. Next, our Butternut Valley Township pressed in the foot clutch of the tractor and shifted No. 173093 into second gear and carefully released the clutch to start forward movement of the combine. The combine harvested rows 3 and 4 leaving only short stubble where the soybean plants used to be. The soybean plants were taken into the combine and the soybeans were removed from the pods and the naked, creamy colored, round little soybeans were elevated up into the grain tank. Reaching the other side of the field our Butternut Valley Township farmer backed the combine around to harvest rows 1 and 2 nearest the fence. Then he made two more sweeps across the end of the field to combine rows 5 and 6 and rows 7 and 8.
Now he had room at the end of the field—almost 24 feet—to turn the combine around at the end of this end of the field. Additionally, he had room to bring the Farmall Regular and his wagon out to the field. He parked the Regular and the wagon on the soybean stubble at the end of the field. Before, he headed headed across the field on his first length-wise round, our Butternut Valley Township farmer pulled the combine up next to the wagon and crawled up into the wagon and reached over and lowered the chute attached the gravity flow tank on the combine. The chute now hung over the center of the wagon and when he opened the sliding door on the gravity flow tank, the creamy white colored soybeans began to flow out of the tank and into the wagon.
With the grain tank on the combine now empty, he pulled the combine around to the edge of the field and aligned the cutter bar and platform of the combine with the third and fourth length-wise rows of the field. This meant that the front wheels of No. 173093 would be steered down the pathway of the first and second length-wise rows at the edge of the field. The tractor would be passing over un-harvested rows over the entire length of the field. He hated the idea of passing the tractor over these two un-harvested rows because he knew that some of the brittle soybean pods would be disturbed causing an unavoidable loss of soybeans on the ground. The first row of dried brown skeletons of soybean plants might pass easily enough under the left rear axle housing of No. 173093. That was their only obstacle. However, the second row would pass under the right rear axle of the tractor, but would also have to pass under the hitch and also the axle of the combine which was much lower to ground. He expected a significant loss of soybeans from these two rows with a greater loss on the right side row.
Before turning the combine around at the other end of the field and starting the combine back across the field, he needed to combine all the soybeans in the eight rows planted cross-wise across the far end of the field. Accordingly, he would definitely need to unload the grain tank on the A-6 combine before he headed back across the field. Therefore, he had his wife follow the combine across the field driving their Ford 1½ ton grain truck. Once our Butternut Valley Township farmer had combined all eight end rows on the far end of the field, his wife leave the truck parked at a convenient location on the stubble ground on the far end of the field. Now he could unload the grain tank on the combine at either end of the field as necessary. After making the return trip back across the length of the field, he pulled the combine up to the middle of the field. In opening up the middle of the field he would, of course run over another two rows of un-harvested soybeans. Furthermore, he would have run over two additional rows of soybeans at the opposite side of the field. The losses incurred in running down these rows would reduce the overall yield from his soybean harvest, but these losses were minimal when compared to the losses he had incurred in 1942 while attempting to cut and bind soybeans in the field and then load the dried soybean bundles onto flat-rack wagons to be hauled to the stationary thresher and then unload the bundles into the thresher.
Once the soybean field was totally “open” with both ends and both sides of the field harvested and with the field divided into two “lands” because of the four-row strip harvested stubble ground up the middle of the field, the combine would really begin showing its true efficiency. Our Butternut Valley Township could now head No. 173093 across the field on the one side of the center strip and return back down the other side of the in the center strip. The whole time, both the tractor and combine tires would be rolling along on ground that was already harvested—no more running over the crop. Skids on either side of the combine platform would slide along the ground to help keep the platform and cutter bar steady at the height desired to get all the soybeans. The large reel was adjusted to speed slightly faster than the ground speed of the combine. In this way, the reel turned just fast enough to allow each one of the six bats on the reel to gently pull the un-harvested soybean plants over the platform of the combine a moment before the sickle in the cutter bar cut the soybean plants off about an inch above the ground. With the soybean plants bent over the platform when the plant was cut, assured that any pods broken loose or soybeans accidentally shelled in the process of cutting the soybean plants would then fall onto the platform. There the rapidly moving canvas “apron” which extended across the entire inside of the platform would quickly move the loose soybeans and pods, together with all rest of the un-harvested soybean plants up the incline to the mouth of the threshing component of the combine.
There the cylinder threshed everything and allowed the soybeans to fall through the concave under the spinning cylinder. For threshing wheat or oats, the Instruction Manual that came with his combine recommended a cylinder speed of 1,100 revolutions per minute (rpm). However, soybeans were more fragile than the oats he had combined earlier in the fall, and much more susceptible to splitting than was oats or wheat. Accordingly, our Butternut Valley Township farmer slowed the cylinder speed down to about 650 rpm. Furthermore, because the soybeans were larger than grains wheat or oats, he opened up the clearance space between the cylinder and the concave from the 3/8 of an inch (which was used for combining oats) to a clearance setting of between 1/2 of an inch and 5/8 of an inch (the suggested setting for soybeans).
Passing through the concave, the threshed soybeans were then hit with a blast of air from the cleaning fan to blow off any light weed seed or bits of straw that had come through the concave with the soybeans. Meanwhile, the stems and branches of the soybean plants (the straw) passed between the cylinder and the concave and onto the shaking straw racks of the separating unit of the A-6 combine. Here additional soybeans were shaken loose from the straw and fell through sieves and onto the grain pan of the combine, where the soybeans were moved forward to the elevator leading to the grain tank. Any un-threshed soybean pods and other “tailings” were separated both from the straw and from the threshed soybeans and were moved to the lower part of the separating unit where they would be picked up by the “tailings elevator” and would be taken up forward again to the cylinder for re-threshing. The straw passed through the combine and out the rear, where a turning straw spreader would spray the straw out evenly over the ground rather than leaving it fall in a windrow behind the combine. The efficiency of the A-6 combine seemed positively miraculous. If soybeans made it to the platform of the A-6 combine they were sure to be trapped and sooner or later end up in the tank rather than being wasted dropping to the ground during the process.
Driving No. 173093 up one side of the center strip of harvested stubble ground in the field he no longer was running over un-harvested soybeans. The Farmall H rolled along on stubble ground created by the combine on the previous round. The ground was covered with a thinly spread layer of straw and shelled soybean pods from the previous round. Reaching the other end of the field, our Butternut Valley Township farmer would turn the tractor and combine around on the stubble ground of the end rows, empty the grain tank into the wagon and back across the field on the opposite side of the of the ever-widening center strip of stubble ground he was creating in the middle of the field. Everytime he completed a round, up and back along the center strip, the center strip of stubble ground in the middle of the field grew wider by 12 feet. Soon he was able to make a shorter turn around at the end of the field by going up the center strip and returning on the outer side near the fence row side of the field rather than pulling the combine all the way across the width of the center strip.
Fitted with a muffler, the quiet Farmall H allowed our Butternut Valley Township farmer to actually hear the combine working and to hear if the little Wisconsin engine was under stress. He did not want to plug the cylinder of the combine and cause the Wisconsin engine to stall out. The air-cooled engine was notoriously hard to start when warmed up. (See the article called “Wisconsin Built Engines” in the September/October 2004 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.) If the four-cylinder Wisconsin engine were allowed to stall, he would be forced to waste time letting the engine cool before he could start it again. Clogging or plugging the combine would usually begin when a large weed became wrapped around the cylinder and reduced the cylinders ability to thresh the soybeans. This was exactly why he spent so much time in the soybean field in the summertime, hoeing out every last weed. The frost had not killed the weeds as it had the soybeans. So the weeds were still “green” and tough. Consequently, rather than passing through the cylinder and out back of the combine with the rest of the straw. The green weeds tended to become tightly wrapped around the cylinder requiring our Butternut Valley Township farmer to stop the combine and pull the weeds free from the cylinder by hand. Usually the weed was a thistle or a cocklebur which would make the task even more delicate because of the thorns and prickles on those plants. Thus, he usually attacked this job with a heavy pair of leather gloves a pocket knife and a pair of pliers.
Harvest of the soybeans in 1944 went smoothly in the warmer-than-average October temperatures that year. In the distance our Butternut Valley Township farmer had noticed his neighbors also combining soybeans. Among his neighbors was Louie Carlson. (Later Louie Carlson would retire from farming and sell the arable land of his farm to Fred Lantz. However in 1974, he would sell the building site on his farm to Carolyn and Scott Shrewsbury, a couple of Political Science professors from Mankato State University. The current author is an alumnus of Mankato State University and Scott Shrewsbury was the current author’s advisor for his entire college career. In the winter of 1974-75, the current author and his family including newborn infant daughter J’aime Arron Wells, visited Carolyn and Scott Shrewsbury on this farm.)
The warm weather of the fall of 1944 continued into November and allowed our Butternut Valley Township farmer, not only to harvest the soybeans, but also to get all of his corn out of the field and safely into the corn crib. The soybeans, he sold directly from the field to the grain elevator. The elevator delivered the soybeans to the soybean processing plant in Mankato. In 1942, the soybean processing plant had been sold to a farmer-owned cooperative called the Washington Egg and Poultry Association. Since that time the soybean processing plant had been operating at full capacity crushing the soybeans for the soy oil which was employed in the manufacture of plastics and soy meal which was being sold as enriched animal food. The price of soybeans in 1944 continued to set new record highs and surpassed $2.00 per bushel. (From the National Agricultural Statistics Service page on the United States Department of Agriculture website.) Our Butternut Valley Township farmer sold his soybean crop in November, 1944 for $2.05 per bushel. It was an unbelievable price.
In 1945, our Butternut Valley Township farmer was able to employ No. 173093 every type of field work that the growing season required. He found that that the Lift-All hydraulic eased a number of chores—especially cultivation of the corn and soybeans. No longer did have to stand and strain to lift the cultivators at the end crossing of the field. A mere pull on the Lift All hydraulic lever with his right hand was sufficient to activate the hydraulic cylinders on both sides of tractor to raise the gangs out of the dirt.
In September of 1945, the war ended with the surrender of Japan. It was great news to hear that their two Navy boys would be returning home to the United States unharmed. They certainly looked forward Christmas when all four sons and their families and grandchildren would all gather together again. However, in the back of his mind our Butternut Valley Township farmer was worried. He expected that with the end of the war, farm commodity prices would also start a decline after all the same thing had happened at the end of the First World War. Thus, it a total surprise to him and other farmers when prices did not decline as then expected. The return of the peacetime economy created a large and hungry consumer’s market plastics of all sorts created from soybeans. Soybeans were used to make a great many plastic items for the peace time consumer market. As a result, soybean prices continued to rise despite the end of the war. In November of 1945 our Butternut Valley Township farmer sold his soybeans for $2.10 per bushel. In 1946, Blue Earth farmers responded to this continuing increase in soybean prices by planting 46,000 acres in the county to soybeans—44% more acres than the 1945. On that 46,000 acres, Blue Earth County farmers raised a record 966,000 bushels of soybeans—68% more soybeans than the previous year. This record production was brought about by a record yield of 21 bushels per acre.
After the very wet year of 1947 when there was decrease in soybean production (see the article called “The Case NCM Baler: A Family’s Crucial Year” on page 31 of the January/February 1995 issue of Belt Pulley magazine), 1948 saw another new Blue Earth County soybean production record of 1,500,000 bushels established and another new record yield of 24 bushels per acre in the county. The weather of the record growing seasons of 1946 and 1948 was not significantly better than the glorious growing season of 1942. Fertilizers were not used on soybeans during any of these years. Accordingly, the only reason for the dramatic increase in soybean yields in the post-war period has to be that more soybean farmers were turning to combines as a means of harvesting their soybeans as opposed to using threshers. On the farm of our Butternut Valley Township farmer, credit was given to the combine for the greater efficiency in the harvesting of this new cash crop, but credit was also given to No. 173093 for easing physical labor and shortening the hours spent in the field growing the soybeans.
Meanwhile the soybean processing plant located in Mankato which had, suddenly, become profitable during the war, was purchased by a couple of brothers engaged in entrepreneurial activities—Dwayne and Lowell Andreas. They owned a series of feed mills in Iowa under the name Honeymead. Accordingly, when they purchased the soybean processing plant in Mankato in 1949, the Andreas brothers did so in the name of the Honeymead Products Company. Lowell Andreas introduced to the Mankato plant a new revolutionary soybean oil solvent to remove the soy oil from the soybeans. This new revolutionary process replaced the old process of crushing the soybeans to obtain the soy oil. Dwayne Andreas, later, became the Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O.) of the agriculture conglomerate Archer-Daniels-Midland Corporation. He moved out of Mankato and took up residence in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In that new position, he was noted for political contributions he would make to candidates for national office. By far the most famous political contributions he ever made, was a $25,000 cash contribution he gave, in 1972, to Kenneth Dahlberg, the Midwest Coordinator of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (Nixon). Kenneth Dahlberg converted the cash into a cashier’s check in a bank Boca Raton, Florida. He then gave the cashier’s check to Maurice Stans, the Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon cabinet and also the Finance Chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect. As noted in the 1976 movie called All the President’s Men, the cashier’s check eventually ended up in the bank account of Bernard Barker, one of the Watergate burglers. (In the movie All the President’s Men the character of Kenneth Dahlberg is heard mentioning over the telephone that he has been stressed out over the kidnapping of the wife of one of his neighbors. This was an allusion to the kidnapping of 49-year-old Virginia Piper of Wayzata, Minnesota, which occurred on July 27, 1972. A large ransom was paid and Virginia Piper was found alive three days later in a dense forest in a state park handcuffed to a tree. Arrests were made in the case but no conviction was ever obtained.)
On farms all across the nation, tractors became the sole source of power for those farming operations. The Farmall Model H became one of the most popular tractors sold in the United States as many farmers in the Midwest purchased Model H tractors for their farms. Many farmers within Butternut Valley Township, itself, purchased Farmall Model H tractors for their farming operations. Many Farmall Model H tractors had long, active life in many farming operations. To this day, Ralph Campbell, a current farmer in Butternut Valley Township, still owns three Farmall H’s which are still in use in his farming operation.
Our Butternut Valley Township farmer retired and sold his farming operation in the 1970s. At the auction No. 173093 was purchased by Fred Netz. Fred and Jan Netz live on a small farm in Traverse Township in Nicollet County across the Minnesota River from Blue Earth County. Although Fred and Jan both taught school for the Nicollet, Minnesota, school system, they also did some farming on the side. They used No. 173093 on their small farm to put up hay, to feed their horses and beef cattle in the winter.
In the summer of 1993, however, Jan and Fred Netz sold No. 173093 to the late Wayne A. Wells. However, this was by no means the end of the active life of No. 173093. The tractor was painted and decaled in the summer of 1996 in preparation for the Le Sueur County Pioneer Power Show that year. The 1996 summer show hosted the summer convention of Chapter #15 (Minnesota chapter) of the International Harvester Collectors Association. Thus, No. 173093 played an active part in the 1996 show.
Wheat is planted on the 100-acre showgrounds owned by the Le Sueur County Pioneer Power Show each spring. Threshing of this wheat is a major field demonstration each August at the annual show. Shortly before the show each year, the wheat is bound with grain binders that are kept on the showgrounds. Usually, “bull-wheel” binders with 6-foot cutter bars are favored for this work. Bull wheel binders are powered by a large ground wheel which operates the binder as the binder is pulled along the ground. Accordingly, bull wheel binders need a certain amount of dry ground for traction to operate the binder. However, in July of 1997, the torrential rains which occurred just before the wheat was to be harvested, assured that no bull wheel binder could operate in the wheat field on the showgrounds. For a while, it looked as though there would be no threshing of wheat at the 1997 annual show.
However, a 10-foot McCormick-Deering “tractor-powered” grain binder saved the day at the show that year. This particular grain binder had been donated to the Pioneer Power Association by the late John and Mary Depuydt of Mankato, Minnesota. (The “Depuydt binder” was mentioned in an article called “Deering and McCormick Grain Binders” contained in the May/June 1997 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.) As a tractor-powered binder, the Depuydt binder was powered by the power take-off shaft of a tractor rather than by a bull wheel. The current author and his brother, Mark Wells, and his father, the late Wayne A. Wells had been restoring the 10-foot Depuydt binder, throughout the spring of 1997. When the need for a tractor powered binder arose, the restoration of the Depuydt binder was stepped up. Finally in July, 1997, the Depuydt binder was ready for the field. No. 173093 was employed to power the Depuydt binder in the field that year. Thus, No. 173093, again, played an important role at the 1997 Show—this time, in actually, saving the wheat crop for the 1997 Le Sueur County Pioneer Power Show.
Since 2004, No. 173093 has taken on another role as a “service” or “utility” tractor around the Pioneer Power Showgrounds. The restored 1890 Melounek-Deutsch Sawmill, located on the Showgrounds of the LeSueur Pioneer Power Association, saws logs every year at the annual Show as a field demonstration for the public. Sawing the logs produces a great deal of lumber that can be used by the Pioneer Power Association. However, the sawing also produces a great deal of waste “slab wood.” The saw mill crew “cross cuts” the that operates the sawmill needs to get rid of slab wood which the branches of trees that are attslab wood into 18 inch to 24 inch pieces that can be marketed and/or used for firewood. Consequently, a cross cut or “buck” saw was mounted on the front of No. 173093 for use in sawing up the slab wood for fire wood. Accordingly, No., 173093 has really never stopped serving as a real source of power in a commercial activity—albeit, this time, in a non-profit setting. This is totally fitting for a tractor like the Farmall H which played such a large part of the “home front” in the United States during the worst armed conflict of the nation’s history. This is a fitting tribute to those members of the “greatest generation” that built, sold and used No. 173093 and all the other Farmall Model H tractors that have served and continue to serve American Agriculture.
Written by Brian on 20 April 2011
Soybean Farming in Butternut Valley Township (Part 1 of 2 parts)
by
Brian Wayne Wells
Although officially organized May of 1858, settlement in Butternut Valley Township, Blue Earth County, Minnesota, was still quite new in 1900. As previously noted, the first settlers in Butternut Valley Township raised wheat. (See the article called “Case Part II: Steam Engines and Threshers” in the March/April 2006 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.) Wheat was the predominate crop in Butternut Valley Township and the neighboring townships of Cambria, Judson, Garden City and Lincoln Townships. However, as the twentieth century progressed wheat production declined as corn replaced wheat on farms. By 1921, more that 109,778 acres of corn were planted and harvested in the whole of Blue Earth County while wheat acreage had decreased to 43,520 acres for the county as a whole. With the coming of the Second World War, production of corn continued dominate the agricultural landscape of Blue Earth County reaching 136,900 acres of corn harvested in 1943. Meanwhile, wheat production in Blue Earth County fell to a miniscule 7,600 acres in 1943.
During the same period of time, other changes were occurring on Blue Earth County farms that were reflected in the crops that were raised in the county. Acreage allotted to the raising of hay in Blue Earth County fell from 59,505 acres harvested in 1921 to 41,100 acres harvested in 1943. This reflected the fact that farmers were purchasing more farm tractors and selling off their horses. Consequently, they no longer needed to feed the horses all year long. Thus, the average farm could reduced the amount of hay raised each year. As a result, the average farm in Blue Earth County had acreage that could now be devoted to some other crop.
For a time in the 1920s barley production rose to fill this gap in production acreage on the average farm in Blue Earth County. In 1921, only 7,134 acres of Blue Earth County’s arable land was planted to barley. However, in 1927 barley acreage shot up to 12,300 acres. In 1928 barley acreage in the county doubled to 25,200 acres. Eventually, the dramatic growth of acreage planted to barley in Blue Earth County reached a total of 33,800 acres in 1938. However, barley production in Blue Earth County fell as dramatically as it had grown. By 1943, the acreage devoted to barley in the county fell to only 5,400 acres and in the following year (1944) barley acreage fell to a mere 700 acres in the county.
Coinciding with the decline in the production of in barley was a rise in the production of flax in Blue Earth County. In 1938 only 2,300 acres of flax had been raised in Blue Earth County. However, in 1939 flax acreage shot up to 11,900 acres. Blue Earth County production of flax continued to climb and in 1943, 20,300 acres in the county was planted to flax. However, in 1944, acreage planted to flax was cut in half—down to only 9,500 acres in the county as a who
le. As suddenly as it had appeared, flax production fell to nothing. Farmers in Blue Earth County were turning to production of something else apart from wheat, apart from barley and apart from flax. The crop to which they turned was the lowly soy bean.
Native to the orient, where it was a staple of human consumption, the soybean was introduced in the United States in 1804. In 1879, two agricultural stations in New Jersey started growing and working with the soybean. Ten years later, in 1889, several more agricultural experiment stations were actively researching the soybean. In 1896, famous botanist George Washington Carver, from Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, discovered and refined over 300 by-products derived from the soybean. The two most important marketable products of soybeans were edible oil and meal. In 1922, the first soybean processing plant in the United States was opened. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Brian on 20 April 2011
The French and Hecht Company of Davenport, Iowa
by Brian Wayne Wells
with the assistance of Paul William Cook
(This is not the first time that the history of the French and Hecht Company [F. & H. Company] has been brought to the pages of Belt Pulley magazine. Chad Elmore wrote a fine history of F. & H. called “Who Can You Thank for Your Tractor’s Wheels?” which was carried in the November/December 1999 issue of Belt Pulley magazine. The Elmore article, and his 1996 book, called Peru Plow Works: Ninety Years of Farm Machinery in Peru, Illinois (1851-1941) provide a great deal of information on the Peru Plow and Wheel Company of Peru, Illinois; the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company of Davenport, Iowa; and the Electric Wheel Company of Quincy, Illinois. The present article merely attempts to supplement the information contained in the prior article and the book. )
Restorers of old farm equipment find them on old machinery and/or collect them for their own tractor or farm equipment restoration projects. They came in all sizes for tractor wheels (front or rear) and implement wheels. They became most famous during the time when rubber tires were first being mounted on farm tractors and farm implements. They contain round-spokes and bear the F.& H insignia. They are the round-spoke wheel rims made by the French and Hecht Company of Davenport, Iowa. The French and Hecht Company (F.& H.) remains pretty much below the radar of public awareness for most individual
consumers. The reason for this was that F.& H. was not a retail seller to the farming public. Rather, the company was a “B. to B.” (business to business) type company. B. to B. companies supply products to other businesses rather than supplying products directly to the “end users.” F.& H. supplied round-spoke steel wheels of all sizes to a variety of tractor and farm equipment manufacturers.
In 1929, the Allis Chalmers Manufacturing Company became the first farm equipment company to introduce farm tractors and farm equipment on pneumatic rubber tires. To supply the rims for their rubber tires, Allis-Chalmers signed a contract with the F.& H. Company. Allis-Chalmers used F.& H. round-spoke rims of all sizes on the farm tractors and 16 inch F.& H. round spoke rims on much of the farm equipment they sold. By the mid-1930s, nearly all tractor and farm equipment manufacturers began following Allis-Chalmers’ lead and began offering the option of tractors with rubber tires. Rubber tires remained an option for tractors and farm equipment and as this option was not often chosen by farm equipment purchasers, the major farm equipment manufacturers did not find it profitable to make their own rims for this option. Consequently, nearly all of these farm equipment companies turned to the F.& H. Company to supply the rims they needed for the small (but growing) number of tractors and farm equipment, they were selling with the option of rubbers tires. (The International Harvester Company [I.H.C.] was one of these farm equipment companies that turned to F.& H. to supply all the their needs for rims for rubber tires on tractors and farm equipment. This “supply contract” that I.H.C. signed with F.& H. is alluded in the two-part series of articles on a particular Little Genius plow which was used in Dryden Township, Sibley County, Minnesota, which is carried in January/February 2009 and the March/April 2009 issues of Belt Pulley magazine and which is also carried on the blog of this website.) Consequently, the familiar round-spoke rim embossed with the “F & H” insignia became a familiar sight on farms around the nation. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Brian on 20 April 2011
A McCormick-Deering “Little Genius” Plow in Dryden Township
(Part II)
by Brian Wayne Wells
assisted by Paul William Cook
In 1940, as previously noted, a particular farmer and his wife were engaged in diversified farming on a 160 acre farm in Dryden Township in Sibley County, Minnesota. (See the first article in this series called “A McCormick-Deering ‘Little Genius’ Plow in Dryden Township [Part I]” contained in the January/February 2009 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.) Also as noted previously, our Dryden Township farmer had used the money received from the unusually large “bumper” corn crop of 1939 to purchase a used 1935 Farmall Model F-20 tractor, a two-row mounted cultivator and a new two-bottom McCormick-Deering “Little Genius” No. 8 plow with 14 inch bottoms from his local International Harvester Company (IHC) dealership—Thomes Brothers Hardware located in Arlington, Minnesota (1930 pop. 915).
Since its introduction in 1928, the Little Genius plow had become one of the most popular tractor trailing plows sold in the North America. The Little Genius plow replaced an earlier McCormick-Deering plow called the “Little Wonder.” The Little Wonder had proved to be a disappointment to IHC and
to farmers that used the plow. Because of its light construction and because of the lack of clearance under the frame, the Little Wonder had trouble plowing in any kind of soil conditions especially in fields with any trash on the surface of the ground. The Little Wonder tended to clog up in trashy conditions and never seemed to adequately turn the soil over the way a mold board plow should. The Little Wonder was such a bad plow that farmers used to say that it was “‘little wonder’ that the plow was able to plow at all.” Continued production of the Little Wonder threatened to permanently ruin the International Harvester Company’s reputation as a plow manufacturer. Introduction of the “Little Genius” plow turned all of that around, however. In reaction to the criticism of the Little Wonder plow, the Little Genius plow was designed to be a much heavier plow. Furthermore, the Little Genius was unmatched in clearance under the frame. The Little Genius could handle a great deal of trash without clogging. Additionally, the bottoms of the Little Genius plow were more sharply angled to assure a complete roll over of the soil and to completely bury trash that was lying on the surface of the ground. Thus, the Little Genius tended to work well in fields with a lot of trash on the surface of the ground. However, the sharp angle of the bottoms of the Little Genius plow meant that the plow had an increased load or draft as the plow was pulled across the field. Thus, the Little Genius plow needed to be matched to tractors with more horsepower than mold board plows designed with a less angle to their bottoms—such as the Oliver A-series Model 100 Plowmaster.
Our Dryden Township farmer was pleasantly surprised at the low price that Thomes Bros. offered for the purchase of the used 1935 F-20 tractor, the new cultivator and the new Little Genius plow. So, in the early spring of 1940, he signed the sales agreement with the Thomes Bros. Hardware dealership to purchase the tractor, plow and cultivator. Our Dryden Township farmer was anxious to get into the fields with the tractor and new plow and so he took immediate delivery of the tractor and plow. The winter of 1939-1940 was colder than normal with more than the usual amount of snow. Accordingly, it looked as though, the spring field work would be delayed because of the large amount of snow.
When the 1935 F-20 tractor arrived on the farm, it looked like a brand new tractor. Our Dryden Township farmer could scarcely believe that it was the s
ame tractor. As a 1935 F-20, the tractor originally had come from the factory painted battleship gray in color and, in the years since its original purchase, the tractor had become quite rusty looking. Now however, the tractor was as red as any of the new letter series tractors. The tractor really looked good with its new decals. Thomes Bros. stated that they had re-conditioned the tractor. However, the “re-conditioning” of the engine was basically just a tuneup. Nonetheless, the F-20 started very easily by crank and seemed to exhibit sufficient power. Consequently, it looked and felt like a new tractor. This was our Dryden Township farmer’s first farm tractor. He hoped the F-20 would replace his Belgian work horses in a number of tasks around the farm.
Although spring field work was still a few weeks off yet when the tractor first arrived on the farm, our Dryden Township farmer began to use the tractor for a number of “wintertime tasks. He adapted much of his horse drawn machinery to allow it to be used with the tractor. He shortened the tongue on his horse-drawn Minnesota Prison Industries manure spreader to make the spreader into a tractor-drawn spreader. The tractor was now employed each morning hauling the barn manure to the field. Every winter, usually in February or March, he would shell out all the ear corn that he had stored in his big “double” corn crib. As noted previously, this year the shelling of the ear corn in his corn crib had been delayed until April of 1940 because of the bad weather. (Ibid.) Part of the shelled corn had been stored away in the granary and in the bins over the alleyway of the double corn crib. Also as noted previously, once he had filled the granary, he was assured of enough corn to feed the cows, hogs and chickens for the entire next year. The remaining shelled corn could then be sold to the grain elevator up town in Arlington. (Ibid.) The money received from the sale of this corn was used make a big payment on the new farm machinery.
Now with all the ear corn shelled, our Dryden Township farmer employed the 1935 F-20 on a number of other “wintertime” chores. The feeder pigs were now starting to eat a great deal more feed as they were being fattened and be readied for market. Consequently, he needed to fill the feed bin in the hog house every two weeks or so with fresh ground feed. Now instead of the old “hit and miss” single cylinder stationary engine, he used the F-20 tractor to power the hammer mill. He also changed the screen on the hammer mill from the fine-grind screen, used for grinding shelled corn, to the coarse-grind screen. He then attacked the huge pile of corn cobs that had been left by the shelling crew when he shelled out the corn crib. These ground corn cobs were stored in another bin of the hog house. Whole cobs could be used as bedding for the sows, but the ground corn cobs made excellent bedding for the baby pigs and for the chickens. He was surprised at the amount of wintertime work that he was able to complete simply by using the tractor. The tractor was making money by saving him time and he was not even in the fields yet. Now as the spring weather continued to warm, our Dryden Township farmer anticipated the beginning field work. He was anxious to get into the field with the new two-bottom Model No. 8 “Little Genius” tractor trailing plow. The plow with its bright red frame, two royal blue moldboards and cream white steel wheels in the front and a cream white rear trailing wheel was currently sitting in his machine shed. The 14-inch bottoms on the Little Genius trailing plow were bigger than the bottoms of any sulky plow, our Dryden Township farmer had ever used with the horses.
While he anticipated the spring field work, his wife was busy with the two flocks of chickens, they had on their farm. The chickens were in “her domain” in their farm partnership. The hens that currently occupied the hen house on the farm were the old laying hens that were currently producing eggs. These eggs were sold off the farm as a “cash crop.” (See the previous article in this series, for a description of this cash crop.) The winter months, just past, had been the laying flock’s peak production period. Now as spring wore on their egg production was falling off slightly. Our Dryden Township farmer’s wife knew that the old hens could continue to lay eggs at a reduced level for another year. However, she knew that it was far more profitable to her to sell off the old hens and replace them with a fresh flock of layers each year. This fresh flock of layers was also being raised on the farm. Currently, they were “baby chicks” occupying the brooder house down in the “brooder yard” on the farmstead. The baby chicks had begun their life on the farm as new hatchlings which had first arrived on the farm in February. (More information on these baby chicks is contained in Part I of this series in the January/February 2009 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.)
Following a cold snap in mid-April, the days started warming up to 70°F. As the warm weather of spring arrived, the baby chicks in the brooder house became too big for the small quarters of the small brooder house. The nights were warm enough on a consistent basis that the brooder stove could be turned off and dismantled and stored away for another ye ar. With the brooder stove gone, there was room to assemble the small roost in the brooder house. The chicks were now in that awkward stage when they were losing their yellow fur and they were sprouting their first white feathers on their wings and tail. Now they would begin to exercise these feathered wings by flopping their wings as they jump up onto the newly installed roosts in the brooder house to sleep all night. The feathers on the body would bloom later. The head was the last part of the chick to feather out. During this time they would tend to look like little “vultures” with naked necks and heads. As the spring weather continued to grow increasingly warm, our Dryden Township farmer’s wife would open the little door at the end of the brooder house which opened up onto the little wire porch . The wire porch was enclosed by wire on the bottom, top and sides. This enclosed wire porch allowed the chicks to become accustomed to the outdoor weather and to enjoy some sunshine while protecting them from predators. Additionally, the floor of this porch was lifted off the ground approximately six inches. This allowed the droppings of manure to fall through the wire floor to the ground below. Thus, the wire floor protected the chicks from another danger—their own raw manure. The droppings of raw manure would fall through the wire floor and onto the ground. Thus, the young chicks were kept from having direct contact with the raw manure. This would significantly reduce the chick’s exposure to a wide range of “enteric” or digestive tract bacterial diseases. The most common of these diseases is coccidiosis. From year to year the brooder house and the wire porch would be moved from location to location around the brooder yard. This would tend to break the life cycle of many bacteria by avoiding concentrations of manure in one place. The chicks were let out into an enclosed “wire porch” during the warm daytime hours. However, in the evenings, our Dryden Township farmer’s wife would chase the little chicks back into the brooder house out of the wire porch and close the little door behind them until morning. Later as the nights of late spring became warmer and the chicks became more fully “feathered” and, thus, protected from the cooler weather, the small doors to the wire porch would be left open all night.
Ever since they had been introduced to the brooder house, our Dryden Township farmer’s wife had been watching the young flock for signs of coccidiosis. She watched carefully for any signs of loose or bloody droppings in the manure. Symptoms of coccidiosis were a loss of appetite and dehydration. The chicks would eat less and drink more water. Coccidiosis left uncontrolled could spread rapidly throughout the entire flock and kill a great number of the young chicks. The best defense against the spread of the disease was to continue increasing the “living space” of the flock.
Increasing the living space would have the effect of decreasing the flock’s exposure to concentrations raw manure. Thus, as the month of May wore on, the chicks in the brooder house became too big for the small quarters of the brooder house even with the additional space of the wire porch. Toward this end, the front doors of the brooder house were opened during the day and the young chickens were allowed the freedom to roam the entire homestead except the garden. At first, the chickens all seemed to return automatically to the brooder house at night to roost. However, each day, they would explore further and further out into the homestead away from the brooder house. Eventually they began roosting in the trees around the homestead at night and ceased returning to the brooder house at night altogether.
Come late June, or when the chickens were about 13 weeks old, our Dryden Township farmer and his wife could begin decreasing the size of their young flock by butchering some “spring fryers.” As the young flock grew, they began laying “pullet eggs” (the first small eggs that young hens lay when they begin first begin laying eggs). During this time, our Dryden Township farmer and his wife knew that some of the hens would reveal themselves as infertile or “culls.” These culls would be butchered. During this time, our Dryden Township farmer and his wife would have many fresh chicken dinners. Additionally, they would also cook and preserve (or “can”) the meat from a great number of the chickens. This would make many chicken pot pies, chicken hot dishes and chicken soups in the coming winter.
Some time in late March our Dryden Township farmer’s wife had divided the cockerels (male chicks) had been divided into two groups. She reserved about 50 of the cockerels which would become “breeding roosters” for the laying flock. However, the rest, she had “sexed” or “caponized” (surgically removed the testicles of the cockerels). She did this when the cockerels were between 3 and 8 weeks of age. At first, the capons would grow at the same rate as the other chickens. However, at the age of eighteen (18) weeks of life, the capons began gaining weight at a much faster rate than other chickens. Just two weeks later, after about twenty (20) weeks of life, the capons reached their full maturity and were ready for butchering. At this time the capons weighed about twice the amount of non-caponized cockerel—delivering four (4) to eight (8) pounds of meat to the table as opposed to the 3 ¼ to 4 ½ pounds for an ordinary roaster. Additionally, the meat of the capon was also much more tender than ordinary roasters. By design her capons reached their ideal weight during July—the start of threshing season. Our Dryden Township farmer’s wife butchered the capons at this time. The wives of the threshing crew were responsible for the large dinners for the threshing crew each day as the thresher made the rounds of the neighborhood. Our Dryden Township farmer’s wife used the large capons to prepare her share of the dinners for the threshing crews as she and the other wives followed the thresher around the neighborhood. Thus, the threshing crews were treated to large, tender capons as part of their dinners every day during threshing season.
Almost as soon as the oats had been threshed and stored away for the winter, it was time to fill silo. Once again the neighborhood cooperated in this activity and once again the wives of the crew prepared large dinners. By the time, our Dryden Township farmer’s wife had finished preparing the food for all the dinners during silo filling season, she had butchered all the capons and some of the cull hens. Now, as late August gave way to September, the young chickens were becoming a nuisance as they roamed the entire homestead. The garden gate had to be kept closed and fastened or else the young chickens would enter the garden and begin to eat the garden vegetables. The door to the garage needed to be kept closed or the young chickens would roost on the car and leave their droppings on the seats of the car. Pullet eggs were found in the haymow of the barn and in the feed room in the hog house and just about everywhere. It was getting to be time to sell the old hens to Noacks and clean out the chicken house and confine the young chickens to the hen house.
Accordingly, one bright morning in September, the truck from Noacks arrived on the farm and backed up to the hen house. A large chute was assembled in the door of the hen house. The chute was enclosed on the top and all sides to prevent any of the old hens from escaping. There only openings in the chute were at either end of the chute. The entire flock of old chickens were herded into the open end of the chute which was inside the hen house. The other end of the chute, located outside the hen house, had an opening which faced straight down. This opening was covered by a trap door. A chicken crate was positioned under this trap door. As the old chickens made their way up the chute, the trap door was opened and chickens flowed out of the chute into the chicken crate. About fifteen hens filled the chicken crate. Then the crate was latched shut and the loaded crate was placed on the truck. Another empty crate was removed from the truck and placed under the chute and filled with fifteen more old hens. Soon all two hundred (200) old hens and roosters from the chicken house were loaded in crates and loaded on the Noacks truck. The truck then drove out of the yard and out onto the road for the short trip to the Noacks plant uptown in Arlington. There, the old hens would be butchered, cooked and canned. Canned chicken was destined to end up as a chicken soup or as part of some other processed food and sold to wholesale grocery stores.
Once the hen house was empty, our Dryden Township farmer and his wife set about cleaning the hen house to make room for the young flock of chickens. Accordingly, the next morning after the old chickens were gone following the morning milking chores, our Dryden Township farmer drove the F-20, pulling his Minnesota manure spreader from the barn over to the hen house. The manure spreader was already partially full of manure from the daily cleaning of the gutters in the barn. It did not take long to fill the rest of the manure spreader with some of the litter from the now vacant hen house. Once the manure spreader was full, our Dryden Township farmer started the tractor and headed to the field pulling the manure spreader.
During the summer season the disposal of manure always presented problems. With crops planted from fence row to fence row in every field, it was quite hard to determine where to spread the daily manure from the barn. Windows of opportunity were opened after each harvest on the farm. For instance, after the hay was cut and removed from the hayfield, our Dryden Township farmer would spread manure on the stubble in the hayfield. However, this was only a temporary fix. The second cutting of hay was growing up under the hay stubble and so after a few days, or so, he did not like to be out in the hayfield with the manure spreader trampling down his future second cutting hay crop. Immediately after storing away the first cutting of hay, it was time to harvest the oats.
Once the oats were cut and shocked, our Dryden Township farmer began spreading the daily loads of manure on the stubble ground in the oat field. However, once again, this was only temporary solution. According to the pattern of crop rotation our Dryden Township farmer had established, this year’s oat field would become next year’s hay field. Accordingly, last spring our Dryden Township farmer had planted the oats and hay together as companion crops. As anticipated, the oats grew very fast, had ripened and then had been harvested while the underlying hay was still preoccupied with forming a root structure. Only now, with the oats gone, did the underlying hay plants begin concentrating on their above-ground growth. As the new hay began to reach this stage of development, our Dryden Township farmer wanted avoid trampling down this new growth for fear of ruining next year’s hay crop. Consequently, only a limited amount of manure could be spread on this field.
Sometimes during the summer growing season when there was no where else to turn, he would spread the manure on the pasture. However, this made parts of the pasture undesirable for the milk cows until the manure was totally decomposed or incorporated into the soil. Clearly, spreading the manure on the pasture was only a last resort.
However, in August he had filled silo. The green corn that he had harvested to fill the silo had come from the northern 1/3 of the corn field. Thus currently, the end rows on both ends of the field and the northern 1/3 of the corn field had been reduced to only corn stubble. This was the place that our Dryden Township farmer could now use to spread his daily manure. Now in September this was where he took his Minnesota manure spreader with the loads of chicken manure from the chicken house.
Containing up to 5% nitrogen, up to 3.5% phosphorus and 1.8% potassium, chicken manure outstripped all other manures of the farm in soil building nutrients. (By contrast, the daily cow and horse manure from the barn contained only 0.6% nitrogen, 0.2% phosphorus and 0.5% potassium.) This corn field was the very field that needed the chicken manure the most. Growing corn had depleted the soil of this field of a great deal of nitrogen. This load of chicken manure that our Dryden Township farmer was now driving out to the field would also help replenish a large part of the nitrogen that the corn had taken from the soil this past growing season. In this regard, chicken manure was worth money. Next spring, according to his crop rotation plan, this field would planted to oats and, as noted above, our Dryden Township farmer would simultaneously be planting an under-crop of alfalfa and clover—good legume plants. Two years hence, this field would be his hay field. Legumes would return more nitrogen to the soil of this field. Hopefully, by the start of the fourth season in the crop rotation plan when this field would again be planted in corn, the nitrogen level of the soil would be back up to normal again.
However, our Dryden Township farmer knew that for any manure to be effective, the manure needed to be incorporated into the soil. Left exposed on top of the ground for even a very short amount of time, manure would lose most of its soil building qualities through evaporation under the hot sun or through runoff following a rain fall. The best way to incorporate the manure into the soil was to plow the ground as soon as the manure was spread. In this regard, not only did the corn stubble offer a good place to spread the chicken manure, but this ground could be plowed immediately after the manure was spread. Turning chicken manure into the ground by plowing would speed the incorporation of the manure into the soil and would prevent the loss of nitrogen that would occur if the manure was allowed to lie directly on top of the ground, exposed to the sunlight and rain. Additionally, our Dryden Township farmer knew that his neighbors driving along the road at the far end of the corn field would also appreciate the fact that he covered up a source of smell. Our Dryden Township farmer knew that the smell escaping from the manure smell was an expensive loss. The ammonia smell of chicken manure was actually nitrogen evaporating into the air and this nitrogen was being lost to the soil.
Consequently, after hauling the last load of chicken manure from the hen house to the field, he parked the manure spreader and unhitched it from the drawbar and drove the F-20 tractor over to the lean-to building where the No. 8 Little Genius plow was parked. Our Dryden Township farmer knew, ideally, that when plowing, there should be a straight line between the center of draft on the tractor (a position in the exact middle between the rear wheels of the tractor under the rear differential of the F-20 tractor) and the center of load on the plow (a spot on the rear bottom of the two bottom plow three-and-a-half (3½)
inches to the left of the center of cut of the plow bottom—the line between the two bottoms). Under ideal conditions, when the plow is hitched to the center hole of the drawbar, this line of draft would be absolutely straight and there would be no power wasting “side draft.” Our Dryden Township farmer recognized that side draft reflected itself in a tendency of the front end of the tractor constantly being pulled to one side or the other.
However, moldboard plowing with the Model F-20 and the two bottom plow required some compromises with this ideal straight line of draft. The F-20 tractor had rear wheels that mounted on the outside of the two fixed “final drives.” Thus, the rear wheels were, basically, fixed at the width needed for cultivation of row crops. For the job of moldboard plowing, the plow had to be hitched so that the furrow wheel on the plow followed directly behind the right rear wheel of the tractor. Some tractors, like the smaller Farmall Model F-12 tractor of the F-Series of tractors or the modern Farmall Model M and Model H of the new letter-series Farmall tractors now being produced by the IHC, had no final drives. On these tractors, it was easy to position the rear wheels along the rear axle to narrow the tread of the tractor rear wheels so that the right rear wheel of the tractor was positioned directly ahead of the furrow wheel of the plow even when the plow was attached to the center of the drawbar. The rear wheels of the F-20 could not be adjusted, so, pursuant to the suggestion in the Instruction Manual for the Little Genius plow, our Dryden Township farmer placed the twisted clevis in a hole on the drawbar about four (4) to six (6) inches to the right of the center hole of the wide drawbar on the F-20. Then he placed the hook latch on the hitch of the plow in the twisted clevis. Now, he pulled the bright red plow with its blue mold boards and cream white wheels out into the bright sun of the Indian summer afternoon of mid-September 1940.
Our Dryden Township farmer noticed, as he pulled the plow out into the yard that, thanks to off-center hitching point on the drawbar, the furrow wheel of the plow was directly behind the right rear wheel of the tractor. However, the off-center position of the hitch point on the drawbar created a deviation to the right in the line of draft from the tractor to the plow. Ordinarily, this would cause the front end of the tractor to pull toward the right. Out in the field, this tendency of the front end of the tractor to pull to the right would mean that our Dryden Township farmer would have to fight the steering wheel all day just to keep the front wheels of the F-20 out of the furrow while plowing. However, IHC had planned for the eventuality that their Little Genius plow might be hitched to any one of a number of models and/or makes of tractor. Consequently, the glossy-black-painted hitch of the Little Genius had been designed as a triangle with three adjustable iron bars. These bars were made of hardened metal with many holes along the length of the bars to allow the triangular hitch to be bolted up in a number of different configurations to match the various drawbars and rear wheel spacings of a number of different tractors. These various triangular configurations were designed to compensate for the lack of “straightness” of the line of draft caused by hitching the Little Genius plow to various tractor drawbars. Our Dryden Township farmer knew that he need not worry about the particular triangular configuration of the plow hitch, because he could see from the Instruction Manual that the plow hitch had already been bolted together in the proper configuration for an F-20 tractor. (This configuration for a two-
bottom plow with 14 inch bottoms when attached to an F-20 tractor is pictured at Illustration #18 on page 15 of the 1939 Instructions for Setting Up and Operating the Little Genius Plow.) He had used the new plow last spring to finish up the plowing that he had not completed a year ago and had had no real problems with side draft. Accordingly, he could be sure that the line of draft was as straight as possible when viewed, horizontally (viewing the line of draft from a position above the tractor and plow).
However, our Dryden Township farmer also knew that the line of draft needed to be straight when viewed “vertically” (viewing the tractor and plow from the side). When viewed from the side of the tractor and plow, with the plow bottoms in the ground, the imaginary line stretched from the point under the differential of the tractor down to the center of load on the rear bottom of the plow now under ground. The plow hitch needed to be attached to the drawbar slightly higher than it was attached to the plow itself. Accordingly, when plowing in the field, the hitch of the plow would slope downward from the tractor to the plow. However, the angle of this slope needed to reflect the degree of slope of the imaginary line of draft as closely as possible—not too steep nor too shallow. If the degree of slope of the hitch was too steep, the front end of the plow would tend to be pulled out of the ground. If the degree of slope was too shallow or flat, the front end of the plow would tend to “nose downward.” Either way, a poor job of moldboard plowing would result and power and fuel would be wasted. The triangular hitch on the Little Genius plow could be attached to the frame of the plow by any one of a number of different holes on the frame of the plow. Furthermore, the drawbar on the F-20 was adjustable up and down. Thus, adjustment could be made to the plow hitch and/or to the tractor drawbar to assure the proper slope of the hitch and a straight vertical line of draft.
In the spring this drawbar had been set by the mechanics at Thomes Bros. Hardware to the proper height for plowing. However, over the summer, our Dryden Township farmer had removed the drawbar to mount the rear gangs of the mounted cultivator. Now in September, he had to make sure that he returned the tractor drawbar to the height setting for proper plowing. Once this was done and the line of draft between the center of draft on the F-20 and the center of load on the plow was as straight as possible, both vertically and horizontally, then his tractor and plow were exactly “tuned” to each other. This was the ideal condition for heading to the fields.
When he first put the new plow to work last spring, our Dryden Township farmer had trouble with the black gumbo soil of his farm sticking to the outside rim of the furrow wheel of the steel-wheeled plow. The soil built up in clumps on the wheel made the wheel bob up and down as the wheel rolled along in the furrow. This tended to ruin the eveness of the plowing job that he was trying to execute. To solve this problem, he had taken an old blown out 6.00 x 16 inch car tire and cut a slit in the back side of the tire and slipped the tire over the steel furrow wheel on the right side of the plow. This tire acted like a boot on the steel wheel and prevented soil from building up on the furrow wheel. Even though it was now fall and the soil tended to be quite dry he left the tire/boot on the furrow wheel.
As he drove the F-20 and pulled the plow out to the field, our Dryden Township farmer was aware that there was one small deviation in the vertical line of draft that was intentionally designed into the drawbar of the F-20 by IHC. The drawbar of the F-20 was attached to the inside front of the final drives on either side of the F-20. However, the location on the final drive where the drawbar was actually attached was near the front of the final drive—ahead of the actual center of the wheel. Thus the drawbar was actually attached to a location slightly ahead of the center of draft of the F-20 tractor. This meant that the front end of the tractor would be pulled slightly downward by a load on the drawbar. This was a safety feature that would tend to prevent the tractor from tipping over backwards if the plow ever hit an immoveable obstruction and the trip release on the hitch of the plow failed to release the plow. Our Dryden Township farmer did not have think about this safety feature. It was an automatic safety feature that designed into his F-20 tractor. The safety feature would operate with no effort on his behalf. However, he was thankful for this feature because he was aware of accidents that had occurred where the tractor operator had been crushed between the tractor and the plow when the tractor suddenly flipped over backwards on top of the plow. The slight forward positioning of the drawbar connection, creating this slight downward pull on the front end of the tractor, would prevent a great deal of these “tip over” accidents.
Once he reached the corn field, our Dryden Township farmer pulled the plow across the stubble ground on the northern part of the field to a location in the middle of the manured portion of the stubble. He reached around behind himself and pulled the trip rope, thus, releasing the bottoms to fall onto the ground. He then shifted the F-20 into 2nd gear and released the foot clutch with his left foot. Then he reached forward with his left hand and pulled back on the engine governor control. The engine of the F-20 rose to operating speed, as the plow settled down to its work. As the tractor and plow moved across the field he would make minor adjustments to the lever on the furrow-wheel side of the plow. This lever kept the plow level side to side and level from front to back. He would occasionally stop on the first couple of rounds of the field to check the plowing depth. Then he would make adjustments to the lever on the land-wheel side of the plow. He was plowing corn stubble and there was no need for very deep plowing. However, the roots of the stubble were still very “green” because the corn
plants had been cut off from the stubble only about a month prior. Thus the root systems were still very vigorous and tended to make plowing difficult as the plow bottoms tried to cut through this vigorous root system. To solve this problem, our Dryden Township farmer lowered the depth of the plow so that the bottoms would pass under the largest mass of roots of the corn stubble.
Arriving at the other end of the field near the township road, our Dryden Township farmer reached around and gave the trip rope a little tug. The clutch on the land wheel side of the plow was set into motion and the wheels on the front of the plow lifted the bottoms out of the ground. Our Dryden Township farmer was pleased to see that the bottoms glistened in the afternoon sun. They had not lost their “land polish” over the summer. At the conclusion of plowing last spring he had smeared axel grease over the surface of each bottom to prevent the bottoms from rusting. Obviously, it had worked. Now as he pulled the tractor out and around to be headed back across the field along side the furrows he had just made on the first trip across the field. On the first trip across the field the front plow bottom had turned soil over on top of unplowed ground. Now as he drove the tractor around to head back across the field he drove the tractor so that the right rear wheel of the tractor rolled along on top of the soil that he had just turned over on his first trip across the field. This meant that the front bottom of the plow would now, not only be turning over the same soil again, but the bottom would also be plowing the un-plowed strip of soil underneath. He needed to re-arrange the levers of the plow to get sufficient depth and to keep the plow level as it moved back across the field. Plowing these furrows toward each other like this tended to create a ridge of soil that extended all the way across the field. This was known as a “dead furrow.” Another form of dead furrow was created as a slight gulley when adjacent furrows were turned away from each other. These dead furrows were inconvenient, but were necessary in order to get all the soil in the field plowed.
When he reached the near end of the field again and raised the plow bottoms and turned the tractor around again and drove the tractor up to the side of the plowed ground, he positioned the tractor so that the right rear wheel of the tractor was in the furrow on that side of the plowed ground. Then he tripped the plow again and set about adjusting the levers again. The tractor moved along across the field with a slight “list” to right side because the right rear wheel of the tractor was rolling along in the furrow while the left rear wheel was up on top of the ground unplowed ground. Although the tractor was listing to one side, our Dryden Township farmer adjusted the levers so that the plow was operating level from side-to-side despite the slight tilt of the tractor. Once again he adjusted the depth of the plow so that the bottoms would pass under the thickest part of the root mass of the corn stubble. When these adjustments were set, our Dryden Township farmer was able to plow continuously across the field and back again, merely raising the plow and turning around that the ends of the field and tripping the plow again. There was no real need for any further adjustment of the levers. Once set the plow would return to the same depth of plowing and to the same level setting each time the plow was tripped without any further adjustment. Our Dryden Township farmer wanted to get this manured portion of the corn stubble plowed quickly so that the chicken manure could be thoroughly incorporated with the soil and be ready for the oats in the spring. To wait might allow the rich chicken manure to be lost through water “run off” or evaporation into the air before spring. Plowing was locking the value of the chicken manure into the soil to prevent such loss.
He kept plowing the corn stubble until the manured portion of the stubble ground was all plowed. Going up one side of the plowed land and returning on the other side, the plowed ground grew by 28 inches on each crossing of the field and 56 inches upon the completion of each round. By milking time that evening, he had plowed all the ground over which the chicken manure had been spread. Now he could be sure that all the nutrients in that rich chicken manure were worked into the soil and would stay in locked into the soil and be available as plant nutrients for the oat crop next spring.
While he was working in the field our Dryden Township farmer’s wife was busy sweeping out the hen house. Then she set about with a bucket of water containing a strong lye solution and a broom, to wash down the entire chicken house. She cleaned all the waterers and the feeders with the lye solution. This lye solution ridded the hen house of any residual bacteria or germs from the old flock. The hen house was then a clean environment into which the new chickens would have a clean start. Then she let the waterers and feeders dry outside hen house in the sunshine of the September Indian summer weather.
The next day after the morning milking chores, our Dryden Township farmer loaded a bunch of ground corn cobs up into the narrow double box of his wagon. Then he drove the wagon over to the hen house where he and his wife loaded bushel baskets full of the ground corn cobs and started spreading the ground corn cobs on the floor of the hen house a basket-full at a time. They wanted the covering of corn cobs on the floor to be about three or four inches thick. Once the floor was fully covered with sufficient bedding, they moved the clean feeders and waterers back into the hen house and loaded the feeders with corn and oats and put water in all the waterers. She purposely did not feed the young chickens that day, as she usually did. Instead, she left the door to hen house wide open. Some of the chickens noticed the open door and entered and found the feed. Their happy conversational cackling soon caused other chickens to enter the hen house and eat. Towards evening she again poured out more oats and corn in the feeders. While they were busy eating she closed the door of the hen house.
About half of the young chickens in the yard were enclosed in the hen house by this method. The rest of the chickens needed to be gathered by her and her husband.
Gathering these strays was a task that was best done at night while the chickens were roosting and asleep. When the chickens were asleep, they were quite oblivious to their surroundings and our Dryden Township farmer and his wife hoped was to get close enough to the chickens to pick them up from their roosts and place them in the chicken crates for the short ride to the fresh, newly cleaned hen house. Consequently, it was about 8 PM, well after supper and a good couple hours after sunset, when our Dryden Township farmer and his wife set out to gather the young chickens from their various roosting places in the yard and transport them to the newly cleaned hen house. Although night had fallen, the stray chickens were not hard to see as they roosted in the lower branches of the elm and box elder trees of the yard. Their white feathers reflected the light of the nearly full moon. The full moon had actually occurred a couple of nights prior on September 16, 1940. As the full moon closest to the fall equinox (September 22) this full moon was referred to as the annual “Harvest Moon.”
Our Dryden Township farmer’s wife removed the four empty milk cans from the big wheel push cart she ordinarily used for the carrying the daily water from the windmill to the hen house. (For a description of these daily chores, see the first article in this series carried in the January/February 2009 Belt Pulley magazine.) She then stacked two chicken crates one on top of the other in the push cart. She and her husband would attempt to fill the crates with chickens gathered in the yard and transport them to the newly cleaned hen house. The easiest place to gather the most chickens at once was the brooder house. Even at this age, many of the young chickens habitually returned to the familiar surroundings of the brooder house to roost at night. However, these chickens would have to wait until last. Our Dryden Township farmer and his wife quietly closed the door of the brooder house and the small door to the wire porch. The chickens sleeping on the roosts inside the brooder house were now trapped. Our Dryden township farmer and his wife wanted to gather the young chickens that were roosting in the trees around the yard before the squawking and commotion of gathering chickens awaken all the chickens in the whole homestead and sent them running off wildly in all directions.
Our Dryden farmer got the step ladder and set it up under a low branch of the one tree where three or four young chickens were roosting. Quietly climbing the step ladder he was able to capture all three by the legs and hold them upside down as he descended the step ladder. They squawked and flopped their wings until he locked them safely up in the first chicken crate. Unbelievably some chickens roosting on a branch on the other side of the same tree had not been awakened yet and our Dryden Township farmer was able to gather them too by using his step ladder.
Our Dryden Township farmer’s wife stood by with a “chicken hook” in hand. A chicken hook was a piece of heavy wire that was about four feet long with a wooden handle attached to one end. The business end of the chicken hook was fashioned into a long narrow hook. The hook was shaped so that it would fit around the thin lower portion of a chicken’s leg. Once hooked a chicken could not run away because the foot would not slide through the hook. Our Dryden Township farmer’s wife intended to use the chicken hook to snare any chicken that awoke from its slumber, jumped down from the tree limb and tried to run away. Our Dryden Township farmer was aware that he could snare the chickens on the limb of the tree with the chicken hook and pull them down. However, he remembered his father’s admonition against this method of gathering when he was still a child on his parent’s farm. His father warned him that the chickens might be injured as they were jerked awake and fell to the ground. Accordingly, he now preferred to get up near the chickens and gather them by hand.
Thus, they moved around the yard that night gathering chickens in the moonlight. They looked carefully up in all the large trees in the yard. They checked the barn and the hay mow for chickens roosting. Then they went to the brooder house and slowly opened the door. They quickly gathered up the chickens roosting there and brought all of them to the hen house where they were released to become acquainted with their fresh new surroundings.
The chickens had been laying eggs in the yard. These could not be gathered and were unmarketable pullet eggs. Now, however, in the hen house with the properly balanced feed and supplemental calcium available, the chickens would enter the age when their production of eggs would reach its peak. All winter the eggs from the hen house would add substantially to the farm income of our Dryden Township farmer and his wife. This was an income that did not require our Dryden Township farmer or his wife to transport the eggs to market. The Noacks Company “egg truck man” kept arriving on the farm every Wednesday and Saturday regular as clock-work to pickup the eggs they had ready for market.
Unforeseen by our Dryden Township farmer were the vast changes that would occur to the nation in the years just ahead. Starting in June of 1941 the increasing demand for eggs drove the price of eggs up as the United States began to supply food stuffs for the Soviet Union, China and England and other belligerents in the current, ever-widening world war. From the usual average price of 20.4¢ per dozen the price moved up to 25.5¢ per dozen in July of 1941. Then in December the United States unexpectedly entered the war as Pearl Harbor was attacked. Eggs were needed in large quantities by the United States Army as they fed soldiers and sailors around the world. These eggs were delivered to the front as “powdered eggs” in K-rations. Once at the front the eggs were reconstituted with boiling water into a form of scrambled eggs. Reports indicate that these reconstituted eggs were not for everyone and were definitely an acquired taste! Nonetheless the price of eggs that our Dryden Township farmer’s wife received for her eggs rose to 34.8¢ as an average for the whole month of December 1941 and the price kept on rising throughout the war. This huge demand for eggs led many persons to start raising chickens. This in turn spawned many other businesses. By 1943, there were 12,000 nurseries in operation across the United States, busily hatching eggs for future laying flocks that were in demand everywhere. (Pam Percy, The Complete Chicken [Voyaguer Press: Stillwater, Minn., 2002] p. 32.
All throughout the war, the increased profits obtained from rising egg prices was definitely aided by the fact that our Dryden Township farmer had mechanized his farming operation with the purchase of the Little Genius tractor plow. He was able to accomplish the plowing his fields much more rapidly with the McCormick-Deering Little Genius plow and the 1935 Farmall model F-20 than he ever had with his horses. Furthermore, the Little Genius plow was able to turn over the sod better than other plows. Corn stalks and other trash on the surface of the ground was efficiently rolled under the ground much easier with the Little Genius plow. The result was a cleaner field when it came time to prepare seed bed in the spring of the year.
Like all other farmers in the United States during the Second World War, our Dryden Township farmer found it difficult to obtain new farm machinery during the war. When the war ended, many farmers who owned pre-war tractors with steel wheels employed local blacksmiths to cut down the steel wheels of their tractors and had them fitted with rims for rubber tires. Our Dryden Township farmer, however, decided to trade in his old 1935 Farmall F-20 tractor to his local IHC dealer—Thomes Bros. Hardware in Arlington, Minnesota—as part of the purchase of a new post-war Farmall Model H tractor. Like the F-20, the Model H was a two-plow tractor. So he continued to use the same Little Genius plow with the Model H. However, he did have to make an adjustment to the plow’s triangular hitch to “tune the plow” to the new Model H tractor.
Furthermore, in 1947, our Dryden Township farmer decided to take the steel-wheeled Little Genius plow uptown to the Gustave Knapp blacksmith shop in Arlington, Minnesota. Gus Knapp had just moved into his new building in the Spring of 1947 after a fire had destroyed his old blacksmith shop in the fall of 1946. Our Dryden Township farmer wanted Gus to cut down the steel furrow wheel of the plow and fit the wheel with a rim for a 6.00 x 16 inch tire. The reason for this provide a permanent fix to the problem of soil building up on the rim of the steel furrow wheel while plowing. As noted above, the temporary solution had been to slide an old blown out tire over the steel wheel on furrow side of the plow. Cutting down the wheel to be fitted with any old car tire would permanently fix this problem. Accordingly, the furrow wheel on the plow was cut down to be fitted with a rim for a 6.00 x 16 inch tire. The 6.00 x 16 inch tire was the most common size car tire in the post-war era. It was thought that any farmer would be able to find an old bald 6.00 x 16-inch car tire that could be mounted on this particular rim.
However, to provide some balance to the plow, our Dryden Township farmer also had Gus cut down the steel wheel on the land side of the plow. The steel wheel on the land side of the little Genius plow was, however, larger in diameter than the furrow wheel. The land wheel was the wheel connected to the clutch of the plow which lifted the plow mold board “bottoms” out of the ground when the trip rope was pulled at the end of the field. Consequently, it was thought that a larger diameter wheel was needed to provide more traction and leverage to pull the plow out of the ground in some heavy soil conditions, where the surface of the ground was slippery. This situation arose when plowing in succulent green vegetation. The outer surface of the land side wheel would become slippery from the succulent plant life crushed under the land wheel. Then when the trip rope in pulled the land wheel might slide along the surface of the ground rather than turning and lifting the plow out of the ground. A larger wheel on the land side of the plow would provide more leverage under these slippery conditions and would reduce the tendency of the land wheel to skid along the surface when the trip rope was pulled to lift the bottoms out of the ground.
Since a rubber-tired wheel would also get wet as it rolled over succulent green plant life, a rubber-tired land wheel would also have the tendency to skid along the surface of the ground under slippery conditions. Accordingly, it was decided that the land wheel should be cut down to be fitted to a 19 inch tire rather than a 16 inch tire like the furrow wheel side of the plow. A 4.75 x 19 inch tire was chosen for mounted on the 19 inch rim for the land side wheel. Although during the war and in the immediate post-war era, the 6.00 x 16 inch tire was the most common tire size available on automobiles, the 4.75 x 19 inch tire was also a very common tire size which had been used on a number of cars in the pre-war era, e.g. the 1930 and 1931 models of the Ford Model A car, the 1930 and 1931 Chevrolet car and the 1929 through 1931 Plymouth cars had all been fitted with 4.75 x 19 tires. Accordingly, it was thought that even in the post-war era a farmer might easily find one of these old tires quite easily to have mounted on land wheel of his plow.
Since the mid 1930’s, IHC had offered their McCormick-Deering Little Genius to the farming public with the option of rubber tires. IHC contracted with the French and Hecht Company (F. & H.) of Davenport, Iowa to supply all the rims IHC needed for mounting on Little Genius plows which were to be equipped with rubber tires. F. & H. supplied their trademark “round-spoke” rims for this contract with IHC. A 1941 picture of the showroom floor of the Taylor Bros. Implement dealership of Johnsonville, Illinois, shows what a brand new Little Genius plow with would have looked like with factory-installed rubber tires. (This picture first appeared in the November/December 1993 issue of Red Power magazine.) In that picture, a Little Genius plow is seen on the showroom floor with 
a 6.00 x 16 inch rubber tire on furrow side and a 4.75 x 19 inch rubber tire mounted on the land wheel side. Both tires are mounted on F. & H. appropriately-sized round-spoke rims.
As noted in an earlier article called “The McCormick-Deering Little Genius Plow” carried in the September/October 1994 issue of Belt Pulley magazine, when Gus Knapp cut down the round-spoke steel-wheels of this particular plow owned by our Dryden Township farmer, the result was that this plow came to look exactly like the Little Genius plow shown in that 1941 photo of the Taylor Bros. Implement showroom. By cutting the steel wheels down to fit rubber tires on the plow, Gus Knapp and our Dryden Township farmer made the plow look exactly as the plow would have looked if in had been sold new in the pre-war era equipped with the optional rubber tires. Once the front wheels of the plow were cut down and fitted with appropriate rims for rubber tires on the front of the plow, the only clue that remained indicating this plow was originally a steel wheeled plow was the steel trailing wheel at the rear of the plow. Our Dryden Township farmer continued to use this Little Genius plow, now fitted with rubber tires, on the farm where he and his wife continued their diversified farming operation including the raising of laying hens and selling of the eggs. However, by the mid-1960s small chicken raising operations started disappearing from the scene of North American agriculture. The raising of chickens for eggs and/or for meat became the domain of much larger confinement operations of 2,000 chickens or more. No longer were small flocks of 200 laying hens profitable. So our Dryden Township farmer’s wife ceased raising chickens and a few years later she and her husband retired from farming altogether. Together they moved into Arlington to live.
At the retirement auction of our Dryden Township farmer, someone purchased the 2-bottom Little Genius plow. The plow did not bring much money because, by the 1960s, the plow was regarded as a very small piece of equipment in light of the size of mold board plows employed in the late 1960s. As noted in the first article in this series (the article called “A McCormick-Deering ‘Little Genius’ Plow in Dryden Township [Part I]” contained in the January/February 2009 issue of Belt Pulley magazine), the plow was again put up for sale in 1974 or 1975. By this time the little plow was even more outdated because the practice of mold board plowing, itself, was being abandoned by farmers as a practice that caused excessive soil erosion. This time, as noted in that first article, the little plow was purchased by Delmar Trebesch who intended to use the plow in his large garden on the farmstead where they lived in Arlington Township, the township immediately east of Dryden Township in Sibley County, Minnesota. Accordingly, the Trebesch plow came to be parked in the grove of trees on the farmstead in Arlington Township when Larry Hiles moved onto the farmstead.
On the last weekend of April of 1993, Larry Hiles loaded the plow up with some other farm equipment and took the equipment to the LeSueur County Pioneer Power Swap Meet held on Saturday April 24, 1993. There the Trebesch plow was sold to Mark Wells. Scenes of the plow under going initial cleaning and repairs at the 1993 Swap Meet can be seen in the second hour portion of the Disc/Tape No. 5 of the International Harvester Promotional Movies Collection. In those scenes, the plow is shown being pulled by the 1937 Farmall Model F-20 bearing the serial number 71355. This particular tractor is the same tractor that was purchased by Wayne A. Wells a year earlier at the LeSueur County Pioneer Power Swap Meet held on April 25, 1992. Consistent readers of the Belt Pulley magazine will recognize that No. 71355 was the subject of the two-part series of articles contained in the July/August 2008 and the November/December 2008 issues of Belt Pulley magazine. No. 71355 is the tractor to which the Trebesch plow was to be matched for purposes of exhibition and field demonstrations at the showgrounds when the plow became a permanent exhibit at the LeSueur County Pioneer Power Show held annually on the last weekend in August.
Preliminary plowing tests were conducted with No. 71355 and the Trebesch plow. These tests revealed that under a load the plow tended to pull the front end of the tractor toward the furrow indicating that the line of horizontal line of draft between the plow and No. 71355 was not as straight as it should be. Research conducted during the summer of 1993, revealed the triangular hitch on the Trebesch plow was not configured correctly for an F-20 tractor. (Indeed the triangular hitch of the Trebesch plow was configured in such a way that the plow pulled much easier behind the Farmall Model H [Serial No. 173093] indicating the Trebesch plow had most recently been “tuned” to a Model H tractor or a tractor with a drawbar arrangement very much like a Farmall Model H tractor. Of tangential interest, it might be noted that the particular Farmall Model H bearing the serial number 173093 was mentioned in an earlier article called “The Wartime Farmall H” published in the July/August 1994 issue of Belt Pulley magazine. More detail on the history of the tractor is intended when No. 173093 becomes the subject of an article to published in the upcoming November/December 2009 issue of Belt Pulley magazine.)
During restoration and painting of the Trebesch plow which was begun on August 22, 1993, appropriate adjustments made to the triangular hitch of the Trebesch plow to straighten the imaginary line of draft both horizontally, and vertically when hitched to No. 71355. The result was that the Trebesch plow was “tuned” precisely to the F-20 tractor bearing the serial number 71355. This meant that the Trebesch plow would operate at top efficiency under all plowing conditions when hitched to N. 71355.
This peak efficiency was demonstrated a year later at the 1994 LeSueur County Pioneer Power Show, when on August 28, 1994 No. 71355 pulled the Trebesch plow in a plowing demonstration at the Show. No. 71355 pulled the plow straight across the field without any tendency toward wasteful “side draft” of the front end of the tractor. Indeed, No. 71355 and the Trebesch out-performed many newer, post-war tractors with “integral” or mounted plows in the wet plowing conditions that existed at the 1994 Show. No. 71355 and the Trebesch plow easily “walked” across the field with very little or no slippage of the rear wheels of the tractor while other more modern tractors and plows were spinning out due to the wet plowing conditions.
As part of the restoration of the Trebesch plow, the steel trailing wheel on the rear of the plow was also replaced with a rubber-tired trailing wheel. As a consequence, the Trebesch plow now appears exactly like a Little Genius plow that came from the factory in the pre-war era fitted entirely with rubber tires. Matched with the 1937 rubber tired tractor (No. 71355), the Trebesch plow looks as though it could have been sold together with No. 71355 in the pre-war era—a pair of pre-war rubber-tired farm implements tuned exactly to each other. The tractor and plow are, in themselves, a scene from the pre-war era and they are a tribute to pre-war diversified farming of the Midwest, when most of the eggs (and chickens) produced in the United States were from small flocks of around 200 birds raised as a part of a diversified farming operation. The Trebesch plow and its companion tractor, No. 71355 will remain an enduring symbol of small diversified farming in that earlier pre-war era.
