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. 

            Our Nevada Township farmer realized the value of diversifying his farming operation into the production of soybeans almost immediately in the fall of 1945.  The growing season of 1945 had proved to be a dry season with insufficient rain for the crops.  Our Nevada Township farmer corn crop had suffered.  He harvested about 1/3 corn less in 1945 than in a normal year because of the dry conditions.  Because the drought seemed to be localized to southern Minnesota, there was no large drop off in production of corn nationwide which might have resulted in higher prices for corn harvested in 1945.  Therefore, our Nevada Township farmer and his neighbors in the drought area of southern Minnesota suffered a double blow.  They did not have much crop to bring to market and the smaller crop they had did not bring a price high enough to offset the reduced volume of crop.  This situation might have put a real strain on his farm income and budget for the coming year, 1946, had it not been for the soybean crop.  The 1945 soybean crop had weathered the dry growing season in better shape than the corn.  As a result, there was only a 9.4% decline in the soybean harvest on his farm.  Furthermore, the price of soybeans actually rose to a new record high level in the fall of 1946.  This higher price was sufficient to offset the loss felt by our Nevada Township farmer to his farm income caused by the drought of 1945.  So the diversification into soybeans had saved the farm income from a loss in 1945. 

            As he looked to the future, however, our Nevada Township farmer was worried.  Like everyone else, he had come to think of plastics as only a wartime product.  He did not see any peacetime use for plastics.  Thus, he expected soybean prices to fall with the end of the war.  There were, however, reports that the industry was finding new peacetime uses for plastics.  Our Nevada Township farmer was skeptical of these forecasts—thinking them just so much wishful thinking.  However, he could not argue with the fact that the price of soybeans remained high throughout the winter of 1945-1946 and into the early spring of 1946.  Based on this continued high price of soybeans, our Nevada Township farmer determined to plant soybeans again on his farm in the spring of 1946.  However, he remained uneasy about the future of soybeans and as a result he planted only the same amount of acres to soybeans as he had planted the previous spring—in 1945.      

            With the coming of the spring of 1946, our Nevada Township farmer could look forward to having more help on his farm.  His two grown sons had been away at war in the Pacific Theater.  He and his wife were extremely thankful when the war in the Pacific had ended and the news arrived that both sons would be home in time for Thanksgiving.  Accordingly, Thanksgiving of 1945 was glorious.  Our Nevada Township farmer and his wife could not help noticing how the boys had changed.  They were much more mature.  They were no longer boys.  They each had their own ideas about things.  Our Nevada Township farmer now faced some discontent from his sons regarding the farming operation.  His sons wanted to upgrade the farming operation by getting some new tractors and new farm equipment.  His sons encouraged him to trade in both old tractors on a new post-war tractor with electric starting, electric lights, hydraulics, rubber tires and faster speeds.  Our Nevada Township farmer resisted making any new purchases of farm equipment this year.  He was still unsure how crop prices would be maintained now that the war was over.  He did, however, have one improvement in mind. 

            The end of the war now meant that rubber was now available for civilian manufacture.  During the winter of 1945-46, after rubber tires became available, again. 

Oliver/Hart-Parr Model 28-44 on steel wheels

Our Nevada Township farmer sought to convert his 1937 Oliver/Hart-Parr Model 28-44 tractor over to rubber tires.  This tractor was old now and, as a standard tractor, was outdated, but it had been his first tractor and he was somewhat partial to it.  He didn’t really want to part with it.  The Oliver Farm Equipment Company had been offering a conversion to rubber tires as a package deal for the Model 28-44 since 1935.  Ever since he had obtained the tractor in 1940, our Nevada Township farmer had been thinking about taking advantage of this deal to put rubber tires on his favorite tractor.  The cost of this package had been $353.00 plus the cost of labor in 1935.  Now in 1946, the price was higher due to inflation.  This was more than our Nevada Township farmer wished to spend, but he did have another idea.  While he did go to Thill Implement to purchase new rims for rubber tires for the front end of the tractor, he jacked up the rear end of his Model 28-44 tractor and removed the steel wheels from the rear of the tractor and loaded them into the back of his 1939 Chevrolet Model JD ¾-ton truck.  He drove the truck with the wheels to the Attlesey Blacksmith Shop in Lyle, Minnesota.  Harry D. and Isabel (Webber) Attlesey owned this blacksmith shop on the north end of town on U.S. #218.  Harry Attlesey had operated this blacksmith shop since moving to town in 1932.  Previously, Harry Attlesey had helped our Nevada Township farmer design and make a tight grain box bed for the new ¾ ton Chevy truck that he had purchased from Usem Chevrolet in nearby Austin, Minnesota (1940 pop. 18,306).  This new grain box replaced the loose-fitting stake bed that had originally come on the Model JD ¾ truck.  Indeed the new bed on the back of the truck was not just a grain box.  It also had a series of heavy racks that mounted on top of the sides of the grain box.  These racks were tall enough to allow our Nevada Township farmer to safely haul livestock, even cattle and horses in the bed of the truck.  Harry was a guy that could fix just about anything. 

            Over the winter of 1945-1946, however, Harry had been making a good income from cutting the outer steel bands (or “tires”) off of steel wheels of various tractors and welding new open rims for rubber tires onto the centers of those same wheels.  In this way, rubber tires could then be mounted onto the rear tractor wheels.  Harry now did this for the wheels brought to him by our Nevada Township farmer.  He cut the flat-spoke centers out of the steel wheels and welded the centers to the inside of a 28 inch rim which was 12 inches wide.  Each rim was now ready for the mounting of a 12.75 x 28” rubber tire and the corresponding tube. These are the same size of tires that were part of Oliver’s rubber tire upgrade package.  However, the price of cutting down the rear wheels and welding the rims on the centers of those wheels was much less than the Oliver package deal. 

            Once the rear wheels with rubber tires were mounted again back on the tractor, the old Model 28-44 tractor surely did ride smooth.  However, the smooth ride seemed to accentuate the extremely slow speeds of the Model 28-44.  Top speed was still only 4.33 miles per hour. 

            Our Nevada Township farmer had also had the steel rear wheels on his 1935 Hart-Parr/Oliver Model 18-27 (dual wheel) tricycle style tractor cut down and had 38” rims welded on these cut-down centers.  He then mounted

Oliver Model 18-27 Row Crop tractor on steel wheels

 10.00 by 38” rubber tires mounted on the rear of this tractor.  Once again, the ride on the new rubber tires was smooth, but extremely slow.  The top speed of the 18-27 was 4.15 mph. 

            The Model 18-27 tractor had been an important addition to his farming operation when he had obtained this tractor in late February of 1943.  While the purchase of the “standard” or “four-wheel” style Model 28-44 had allowed our Nevada Township farmer to reduce the number of horses on his farm, it was the purchase of the tricycle-style Model 18-27 that had allowed him to totally mechanize his farming operation.  The Model 28-44 could be used for every other field operation on the farm, except the cultivation of the row crops.  However, the tricycle style Model 18-27 had been specifically designed for the cultivation of row crops. 

            However, both of these tractors were of pre-war design and were not fitted with adequate speeds, electric start or hydraulics like the modern post-war tractors that were now being produced by various farm equipment companies.  As his sons continued to agitate about getting a more modern tractor, our Nevada Township farmer began to feel that perhaps he should get another tractor.  He might purchase one at Thill Implement in Rose Creek, Minnesota (1940 pop. 261).  To hold the price down on a new or used tractor, he might trade the old Model 18-27 (dual wheel) tractor in on the purchase of another tractor.  However, with both sons and himself able to start the field work this coming spring, he knew that he would need a third tractor.    

            As the winter wore on he began to ponder his need for a third tractor.  As a result, he began to attend the winter auctions again.  Sure enough he found an auction bill that offered a 1941 Oliver Model 70 for sale.  When it was introduced in 1935, the Model 70 had been a very modern looking and streamlined tractor, complete with sheet metal side-curtains covering the engine. However, in 1937, the Model 70 was re-styled to become even more streamlined looking.  The Model 70 at the auction was one of these new “late-styled” Model 70s with a rounded yellow grill with a red nose strip down the center of the grill. 

            At the auction, our Nevada Township farmer observed that the Model 70 was fitted with fctory-installed rubber tires front and rear, had the optional electrical lights and an electrical starter.  The tractor also had a six-speed transmission with a road gear of 13.44 miles per hour.  He felt that his sons would really enjoy this tractor.  This tractor was as just as good as a new tractor.  It contained many of the same features his sons had been wanting in a new tractor.  However, many other people at the auction also saw the tractor as the equivalent of a new tractor, the price of the tractor was bid up and up.  It was unbelievable.  Considering the high prices that these “used” tractors were now demanding at auction, a person might as well purchase a new tractor.  Nonetheless, compelled by his desire to keep his sons happy so that they might stay on the farm, our Nevada Township farmer stayed in the bidding.  In the end, despite the exorbitant price, he became the owner of the tractor.  Now it was time to settle up with the bank clerking the auction. 

            The Farmers State Bank of Lyle was clerking the auction.  Indeed 29 year-old Gwenith Gislason, clerk at the Farmers State Bank; and incidentally daughter of Alfred Perl Garantz owner of the bank, was present at the auction representing the bank.  Although Gwenith lived in Austin with her husband, C.J. Gislason, she continued to work at her father’s bank in Lyle.  (In a few years, following her parent’s retirement and their move to Pinellas, Florida, Gwenith would take over the reins of ownership of the bank in place of her father.)  The Farmers State Bank in Lyle was the bank at which our Nevada Township farmer did his banking.  He knew Gwenith and her father.  Our Nevada Township farmer was learning that Gwenith was starting to speak with the authority of her father on the bank’s behalf.  Still he preferred dealing with her father, a male who was more closely his own age and, indeed, was older than himself,. 

            In situations like this, Gwenith recognized the problem and graciously deferred to her father and told our Nevada Township farmer that she would okay the financial arrangements concluded at the sale and let our Nevada Township farmer talk with her father at the bank the next time he was in Lyle.  She knew as much about our Nevada Township farmer’s financial situation as did her father—probably more.  She knew her father would no doubt agree with her decision to okay the sale on the spot and would no doubt approve of her charade of deferring to him in this instance.  No doubt he would act out his role as the “decision maker” in this small charade. 

            Accordingly, on these casual arrangements, our Nevada Township farmer settled up with the bank at the auction and went home to his farm.  His sons were excited about the prospect of working with a “new” modern tractor.  The next day later he took his two sons and drove back to the site of the auction.  One of the sons was assigned the task of driving the Oliver 70 back home.  February of 1946 had been colder than usual and this day was no exception.  Although the roads had been cleared of snow there were still large snow drifts in the ditch and on the fields of the farms along the way back to their home farm.  Thus, it promised to be a cold 12-mile ride along back roads to bring the tractor back home.  Even at the top speed of almost 13½ mph the trip would still take almost an hour.  Still his sons argued over who would have the privilege of driving the tractor back to the farm.  This argument was resolved by a flip of a coin.  The eldest son won the toss of the coin and drove the tractor home. 

            After the cold month of February, March of 1946 was incredibly warm with temperatures up into the 60’s for a good deal of the month and even up into the 70’s during the last full week of the month.  “April showers” are proverbially expected to about “bring May flowers.”  However,owH in April of 1946 showers were a precious commodity.  Indeed the showers were almost non-existent throughout the month of April.  Due to the warm weather and the lack of rain, field work began early that year.  Now with three tractors engaging in the field work that spring, our Nevada Township farmer was able to get all the crops in the ground early that year.  However, his dreams of continuing to work with both of his sons on the farm, was becoming endangered. 

            Over the winter months, of 1945-1946, the older of his two sons had been leaving the farm on many Friday and Saturday evenings and returning home late at night.  When he did so, our Nevada Township farmer would comment to his wife that their son was “on the prowl” for a woman.  His wife would disagree and contend that their son was only out with his high school friends.  She had a soft spot in her heart for the eldest son and she was in denial about anything that would mean changes in the family. 

            In actual fact, the eldest son had been trying to get back together with his buddies that he had known before the war.  He wanted to recapture some of what he had missed during the time he was in the armed forces.  Accordingly, he dressed up in a white shirt and slacks, slipped on his penny-loafer shoes and put on a winter coat and hat and borrowed the family’s new 1946 Chevrolet Sedan to head out to Cresco, Iowa.  Our Nevada Township farmer and his wife had traded in their old 1941 Chevrolet Sedan in to Usem Chevrolet in Austin, Minnesota (1940 pop. 18,307) on this new car.  This new Chevrolet was so new that it still had that “new car smell.”  New as it was, however, the car had been fitted with most one important option for a farm car.  A trailer hitch protruded from the rear bumper and contained a simple hole, through which a drawbar pin could be inserted while hauling a farm wagon to town. 

            Currently, the eldest son was pursuing one of his fondest memories from before the war.  He was going roller skating in the large roller skating rink in Osage, Iowa.  This was one of the entertainments he had missed the most while he was in the armed forces. 

            With the large roller rink and the movie theater, Osage had long been an entertainment hub for the area.  On any Friday or Saturday night, the downtown area of Osage would fill up with cars as young people from all across northern Iowa and southern Minnesota would gather in Osage to go to the roller rink or to see the latest movie that was playing in the Osage movie theater.   Since his return to the community, he had also engaged in his old hobby of looking at the license plates of Iowa cars and note which county, the car was from.  Every Iowa license plate began with one or two digits on the left side of the plate.  These digits identified the county in which the car had been registered.  There were 99 counties in Iowa and the digits on the license plates identified the counties in alphabetical order. Lyle, Minnesota was located right on the state line and so there had always been plenty of Iowa cars around to “identify” as he grew up.  Most commonly there were cars with “66” on the left side of their license plates.  This was Mitchell County located directly across the Iowa border from the town of Lyle and Mower County in Minnesota.  Mitchell County was referred to as “66 County Iowa.”  Neighboring Howard County to the east was “45 County Iowa.”  Cerro Gordo County to the southwest was 17 County and Worth County to the west was 98 County.  Minnesota also had a designation on their license plates.  However, the first digit on the Minnesota license plates referred to the one of the nine U.S. Congressional Districts the car hailed from in Minnesota.  Therefore, identifying Minnesota license plates was just not as much fun as identifying Iowa license plates.  The congressional districts were so large that the eldest son had rarely seen cars from other areas of Minnesota other than 1^st Congressional District (where Nevada Township and Mower County were located) with just a sprinkling of cars from the neighboring 2^nd Congressional District.  These were the districts that lay along the Iowa border in Minnesota.  Iowa provided a much more varied selection of cars.  Both Minnesota and Iowa required cars to have license plates on both the front and rear bumpers.  Consequently, the eldest son found himself “identifying” Iowa cars among the oncoming traffic in the twilight as he drove down the paved U.S. 218 highway on his way toward Osage.

            Once in Osage, the eldest son tried to find parking on State Street in Osage, which was the main street running east and west through town.  When he could not find parking on State Street, due to the glut of cars in Osage on this particular night, he tried 7^th Street both north and south of State Street.  The roller rink was located just west of the intersection of State and 7^th Street.  He found parking on south 7^th Street.  South 7^th Street led off into the residential area of Osage and was not as well lit as the commercial area of State Street and north 7^th Street.  Nonetheless, he parked the car and walked to the roller rink and paid his 50¢ admission at the door.  Then he went over to the skate rental desk and told them his shoe size and rented skates of that size for another 25¢.  He sat down and took off his favorite “penny loafers” and slipped into the black high top roller skates and pulled on the laces to tighten the skates around his ankles.  He skated over to the skate rental desk and turned in his penny loafers and received a claim check for the shoes. 

            Then, he started to skate out onto the rink.  Old memories flowed back as he made his way around the floor.  It did not take long to get back into the swing of skating.  He soon found that he could move easily with the music.  The music was played by an electric organ and amplified by speakers around the rink.  Currently, everyone was skating in a counter-clockwise pattern around the skating rink.  He knew that sometime during the night, about half way until closing time the pattern would be reversed and everyone would be required to skate in a clockwise direction for the balance of the evening. 

            On his first few visits to the roller rink, he had been attempting to re-capture old times with his male buddies from before the war.  However from the first, he realized that things were not the same as they had been before the war.  Many of his old friends from high school were now married and had their own lives.  So he had begun just going to Osage alone and had been asking girls to skate with around the floor.  At the roller skating rink, over the winter, he met a particular girl from Charles City, Iowa.  He had asked her for a skate around the rink to one song.  That song ended too soon.  So he asked if she wanted another turn around the large rink.  She agreed.  At the conclusion of a couple of more songs, they went to the refreshment stand and he ordered two hot dogs and two Cokes for them to eat.  She asked him if he would prefer a Cherry-Coke with the hot dogs.  He didn’t know what that drink was, but based on her suggestion he was willing to try something new.  So they sat for a while and conversed while they drank their Cherry Cokes and ate their hot dogs.  It seemed so easy to converse with her.  He enjoyed her company.  After eating, they skated some more.  Soon the announcement was made for all skaters to reverse direction.  The eldest son could not believe that half the night had passed already.  Without really knowing it, they had spent most of the night together. 

1941 Ford Super Delux Tudor Sedan

            After the last song had been played and the music ceased, he walked her to her car parked on State Street a couple of blocks from the skating rink.  It was her father’s 1940 Ford Tudor Sedan with a license plate indicating that the car was from “34 County Iowa”—Floyd County.  His only prior experience around girls had been in high school at Lyle High School.  Since the war, this part of his life seemed to be part of the distant past.  This girl seemed to be more serious about life than the girls he had known in high school.  Indeed, she was a woman not a “girl.”  She liked to talk about serious things not just conversational chit-chat.  She even seemed serious about roller skating.  Rather than renting skates at the skating rink, she carried her own pair of roller skates to the rink in a little suit case which was specially made for them.  She liked roller skating enough and went to the rink at Osage often enough that she had concluded that she would save money by having her own pair of roller skates rather than renting skates every time—especially now.  Since the end of the war prices were getting ridiculously high.  Renting skates used to be cheaper during the war—now it was a whole 25¢.      

            He had a good time, but he did not think that the relationship would grow more serious.  He just felt that it was a good friendship.  Nonetheless, when they did on reach her car on that first night of skating, he did inquire whether she would be back at the Osage skating rink next Saturday night and she assured him that she would. 

            Thus, their friendship went on like this from week to week throughout the winter of 1945-1946.  Early on, the eldest son knew that he could not continue to dominate the family’s new 1946 Chevrolet on the weekends.  Consequently, he made a deal with the Usem Chevrolet dealership in Austin, Minnesota for a used 1939 “pre-war” Oldsmobile Model 80 2-door Business Coupe, which had been sitting on the dealership’s used car lot.  Usem’s was a full-line dealership offering cars from all five divisions of the General Motors Company and both Chevrolet and GMC trucks.  The dealership had been founded by Edward G. and Edith Usem.  Born in Ukraine in Russia in 1907, Edward had immigrated to the United States with his parents and settled in Austin, Minnesota in the early 20^th Century.  Edward had grown up in Austin and been involved in the car business since the 1920s.  Our Nevada Township farmer had always purchased his cars from the Usem dealership—so it was natural that this was the first place that his eldest son would turn when seeking an automobile.  

            Our Nevada Township farmer’s eldest son liked the looks of this Model 80 Business Coupe—especially the long narrow hood covering the engine.  The hood was long for a reason.  Underneath the hood was an “in-line” eight cylinder engine.  The “straight eight” engine was standard equipment in all Model 80 Oldsmobile, also standard equipment for the Model 80 was the semi-automatic “Safety” transmission.  Oldsmobile had introduced the “Safety” semi-automatic transmission in 1937.  The salesman at Usem told him that only few of these Model 80 Coupes had been made in 1939.  Indeed, although Oldsmobile had made 158,560 cars in the 1939 calendar year—enough to put the company in seventh among all automobile manufacturers for that year—the company had made only 738 Model 80 Business Coupes in 1939.  .  

            The salesman at the Usem dealership noted that the “safety transmission” had been improved and made a fully automatic transmission in 1940.  This fully automatic transmission was called the “HydraMatic” transmission and was introduced by the General Motors Company into the Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac cars in 1940.  The salesman commented that most new General Motors (G. M.) innovations were introduced first in the Oldsmobile line of cars before they introduced in the other lines of General Motors cars.  The salesman also advised that it was always wise “to avoid buying a car in the first year of a new innovation.”  It was better to wait a year or two after the innovation had been introduced “to allow the ’bugs’ of the new innovation were worked out.”  In this regard, he noted that by 1939, all the bugs in the Oldsmobile safety automatic transmission had been worked out.  Accordingly, this particular Business Coupe was an especially good deal. 

            This Business Coupe was still fitted with running boards along both sides of vehicle.  Running boards had ceased being standard equipment on Oldsmobiles in 1939.  However running boards had continued to be optional equipment.  Obviously, the first owner of this car had preferred the option of running boards.  

            Lacking a rear seat the Oldsmobile Business Coupe was designed for only two people.  This particular Business Coup had been used by a traveling salesman.  The Business Coupe was ideal for traveling salesmen.  With its large straight-8 engine, its large 17 gallon gasoline tank, its automatic transmission and its “wide” 6.50 x 16 inch tires, the Oldsmobile Model 80 Business rode comfortably over long distances.  Additionally, there was ample room behind the seat and in the trunk to hold a great deal of merchandise.  This was the type of car that gave Oldsmobile the image of “the Old Man’s dependable work horse.”  Thus, Oldsmobiles were sometimes referred to as “your father’s Oldsmobile.” 

            In 1939, the new the Model 80 Business Coupe had sold for $920.00.  Now, the seven year-old car was being offered for a price of $300.00.  The car had a lot of miles on it, which accounted for the relatively cheap price.  To buy the car, our Nevada Township farmer’s eldest son used some of the money he had received in his last paycheck from the Navy to make a down payment on the car.  Then he obtained a loan for the balance from “Mrs. Gisleson” at the Farmers State Bank in Lyle.  In making these arrangements, the eldest son found that everybody was so anxious to help him out, because he was a returning veteran. 

            The eldest son had never owned a car before the war.  So this was his first car.  When he arrived at home, he carefully washed all the dust of the dirt roads off the car.  It was the beginning of a life-long love of Oldsmobiles.  Consequently, on his first trip to Osage with the Oldsmobile, he was anxious to show his new girl friend the car and take her for a ride.  She obliged and drove around a little in the Oldsmobile before they went to the movie theater.  Movies played at Osage’s theater usually six months or more after they were initially released.  Accordingly, many of the movies they were seeing in late 1945 were movies that had been released during the war.  On this night they saw Spencer Tracy in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, which had first been released on November 15, 1944.  She liked it and thought the movie informative about the war.  He did not much like it.  Probably, because he had been too close to the war to appreciate a war movie.  On another weekend they saw Pan Americana (1945) which had been released on March 22, 1945.  They both liked this movie.  They also saw Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh (1945) released July 14, 1945.  They both also liked this comedy movie.   They also saw State Fair (1945) released on August 30. 1945.  They both liked this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about the Iowa State Fair.   

        Back on the farm in Nevada Township in the spring of 1946, field work began earlier than usual due to favorable weather conditions.   The entire month of March was much warmer than normal with temperatures, almost reaching 80ºF in the last week of the month.  Oats were sown into the ground in April and the seedbed was prepared for the corn.  It looked like the corn and soybeans might be planted in May.  However a late season snow storm on the second weekend in May dropped 3 inches of heavy wet snow on the ground, but the temperatures barely got below 30ºF and in the days that followed temperatures reached up to 70ºF.  Thus, the snow lasted for no more than a day before it was all melted.  By the end of May the temperatures were unseasonably warm–85ºF.  Consequently, the temperatures of the soil kept on warming almost in spite of the late season snow.  Accordingly, both the corn and the soybeans were planted before the end of May. 

             As he had planned in the early spring, our Nevada Township farmer planted the same amount of acreage to soybeans in 1946 as he had in 1945.  Many of his neighbors did the same.  As a result, the total planted to soybeans in Mower County in 1946 remained the same as it had been the year before.  Although soybean prices had continued at high levels since the end of the war, he was still unsure about the future of this new crop during the post-war era.  His eldest son kept going to Osage nearly every weekend.  The eldest son worked hard during the week to leave time on the weekends for socializing with his new female friend.  He worked in the field during the week and on Saturday but still took his 1939 Oldsmobile south to Osage on Friday or Saturday night every weekend.  Our Nevada Township farmer commented on his energy.   

            June 1946 proved to be a wet month with a large rain of 1½ to 2 inches each week for the entire month and another 1½ inch rain in the first week of July for good measure.  Barely would the ground dry out and cultivation of the corn and soybeans get started again before another rain would force our Nevada Township farmer and his sons from the fields.  Even with both the Oliver/Hart-Parr 18-27 (dual wheel) and the Oliver Model 70 cultivating in the fields the cultivation of the corn and soybeans occupied most of the summer up until mid-July.  By that time the corn was too tall to be cultivated again and the soybeans were beginning to flower.  Any additional cultivation at this point would do more harm than good for the crops. 

            Following the heavy rain in early-July there was no rain at all until the end of August 1946.  This allowed our Nevada Township farmer and his sons to put up hay, and get the oats windrowed in anticipation of the arrival of their neighbor with his Oliver Model 10 Grainmaster combine to once again do the custom combining of their oat crop. 

            Also the weather remained bright and shiny for the Mower County Fair which was held from August 5 until August 11, 1946.   As usual the 4-H Exhibits dominated the first two days of the fair.  The Future Farmers of America or FFA Exhibits dominated the second two days of the Fair.  Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer took his prize registered purebred Suffolk sheep to the Fair in Austin on Friday afternoon for the last two days of the Fair which was devoted to the “open class” exhibits.  Attendance at the Fair was down from the previous year.  This was a reflection of polio scare that was gripping the public that summer.  Indeed some county fairs, like the 1946 Freeborn County Fair in neighboring Albert Lea, Minnesota to the west and the 1946 Fillmore County Fair in Preston, Minnesota to the east, had been canceled altogether out of fear of the polio contagion.  Indeed, our Nevada Township farmer would not have to worry about going to the Minnesota State Fair this year since he had already heard over the radio that the 1946 State Fair was being cancelled because of the polio scare.  Accordingly, the Mower County Fair would be the only real opportunity he would have to sell some of his purebred ewes this year.

            By the end of August there still had been no rain.  This late in the growing season, however, no rain was needed as the crops in the field were ripening anyway.  Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer was looking forward to a good harvest with dry crops and dry ground for the tractors and machinery to drive on.  However, during the first week of September it seemed as though the skies opened up and dumped out rain—as a 2½ inch rain fell in the first week of September, This rain was followed by a succession of heavy rains of two ¾ inch rains on consecutive nights, followed by a 1 inch rain on the third night.  Rains continued steadily until Thanksgiving creating difficulty in harvesting the corn and soybeans.  Paradoxically, the 1946 growing season had yielded a good crop because of the sufficient amounts of rain all summer.  Then the rain had stopped.  This allowed the crops to dry down nicely for harvest.  At this point the crops were like money sitting in the field.  It should have been an easy matter to just get to collect the money, get it out of the field and safely into the shed.  However, these late season rains were making it difficult to get this money out of the field.  Tractors were, continually, getting stuck in the mud of the cornfields as he tried to get the ear corn harvested and into the corn crib.  The corn crop across Mower County yielded 40 bushels, which was about 12% less yield per acre then usual.  This loss was almost entirely due to the difficult harvesting conditions in the fall of 1946. 

            However, soybeans proved to be the best surprise of the post-war era for American farmers.  Demand for plastics during the war had been so strong that soybean production had established a new nationwide record every year following 1941.  Surprisingly, even with the return of peace, and the loss of military contracts for plastics, the supply of soybeans still could not keep up with the growing new peacetime demand for plastics.  As the soybean harvest of 1946 started to come into the market in the late fall of 1946, it looked like another bumper crop of soybeans.  (Indeed nationwide soybean crop figures would reveal that the 1946 soybean crop would set another record, as 203,395,000 bushels came onto the soybean market.)  

            Just like the previous year, our Nevada Township farmer had made arrangements to have his soybeans combined by his neighbor with the Model 10 Grainmaster combine.  Just like the prior year, he had begun to worry that the soybeans would suffer losses in the field before he could get the soybeans harvested.  (See the second article in this series called “Oliver Farm Equipment Part II: Soybeans” contained at this website.)  Our Nevada Township farmer still felt the insecurity of having profit and loss on his crop hanging on someone else’s schedule.  This year a great deal rode on getting his soybean crop out of the field and into the shed.  The bumper crop of soybeans that was being harvested nationally should have depressed the price.  However, despite this new record harvest, the price of soybeans still continued to rise dramatically—reaching a phenomenal $3.14 per bushel in November of 1946.  So the “money” that was sitting in the soybean field, un-harvested, was substantially more than in previous years.   

            Luckily our Nevada Township farmer’s neighbor soon arrived on the farm with the Model 10 combine and our Nevada Township farmer was able to get his soybeans out of the field.  Our Nevada Township farmer did not waste any time on hauling the soybeans from the field straight to the Hunting elevator in Lyle, Minnesota, where he sold the entire crop at the highest price he had ever seen for soybeans.  Consequently, our Nevada Township farmer added a great deal to his annual income for 1946, solely because of the soybean crop.  The soybeans more than made up for any losses he had suffered in the corn crop and for the losses he had suffered because of his limited chance to advertise and sell his purebred Suffolk sheep due to the cancellation of the Minnesota State Fair.  Thus, diversification of his farming operation had proved itself once again in 1946.

            Over the summer of 1946, our Nevada Township farmer’s eldest son had gotten to know the family of his girl friend.  During the 4^th of July she had invited him down to Charles City, Iowa to a family reunion at her parents house.  This was his first visit to her parents.  He got the distinct impression that they were looking him over as a future son-in-law.  He thought this was humorous because it did not fit their relationship at all.  However, he had struck up a good relationship with her father.  Her father was an employee at the Oliver Company tractor factory located in right there in Charles City.  It was fun to hear about the production of tractors, like the Model 70 that was being employed on the farm back in Nevada Township.  Her father had a hobby of woodworking.  He did this work in the basement of the house on the weekends and on holidays from work.  Indeed, he had made some of the furniture and cabinetry in their family home.  

            In the early fall of 1946, the eldest son reciprocated and in invited his girl friend up to Lyle on a Friday night to attend a football game at Lyle High School.  It was the Homecoming game and so a great number of his old high school classmates were there.  He had fun and reminisced about the good times they had in high school.  He was glad to see that she got along well with everybody she met.  Her outgoing personality made him feel proud to introduce her to his high school classmates.  She seemed at home with any group of people.  Once again, he felt a little awkward, because most people they met assumed that they were soon to be married.  Their relationship was just not that type of relationship. 

            Now that the field work on the farm was done for the year, they began to see each other more regularly again meeting in Osage, Iowa.  Sometime before Thanksgiving of 1946, she obtained a job as a bookkeeper for the Gilles Amusement Company in Osage.  The Gilles Amusement Company was owned by William and Theresa (Seibert) Gilles.  Their place of business was located in Osage, only about two blocks from the roller skating rink.  The Gilles Company marketed Wurlitzer wall boxes.  These wall boxes were usually located on the wall at tables in restaurants.  These Wurlitzer wall boxes were connected with a large Wurlitzer juke box which was centrally located in the restaurant.  The wall boxes contained a coin slot and lists of popular songs.  Patrons in the restaurant could simply drop a nickel in the slot of the wall box at their table and press the right keys indexing their favorite song and the Wurlitzer jukebox would begin playing that song. 

            To facilitate her new job, the eldest son’s new girl friend had moved out her parents’ home and had obtained a room in a boarding house in Osage.  She also had purchased her own car—rather she purchased the 1940 Ford Deluxe Tudor Sedan that had been her parent’s car.  Her parents purchased one of the new 1947 Ford Super Deluxe Fordor Model 73B Sedans from the Charles City Motor Company the local Ford dealership.  The new 1947 Fords were introduced in the fall of 1946 and this new car was one of the first that had been delivered to the dealership. 

            His new girl friend bubbled over with enthusiasm, when she told the eldest son about her new job.  Working at the Gilles Amusement Company, she had become familiar with the Billboard magazine.  This magazine tried to cover all events in the entertainment industry in the nation—including recent movies and all live shows at state and county fairs across the nation.  Mr. Gilles subscribed to this magazine and, indeed, advertised his Wurlitzer wall boxes in that magazine.  She found that Billboard magazine was fascinating and looked forward to each new issue which arrived in the mail at the workplace.  Mr. Gilles, often, did not have time to read the latest Billboard and encouraged her to read this magazine and tell him anything new that was in the magazine. 

            Also during the short period of time that she had been living in Osage she had already made some new friends.  One of her closest new friends was a young woman that worked as the stenographer for the Osage theater.  Another of her new friends was a woman that worked as a salesperson at the local music store.  Their employment in the local “entertainment industry” brought them together with a common interest.     

            She and the eldest son of our Nevada Township farmer continued roller skating on the weekends.  They also continued to see movies at the Osage theater.  In the early in 1945, back during her senior year in high school while the eldest son was away in the Pacific, she had seen the movie Janie, which had been released on September 2, 1944.  This was a movie about the adventures of Janie Conway, a small town “bobbie soxer.”   Joyce Reynolds starred as Janie Conway, the “bobbie soxer.”   She had enjoyed the move a great deal and identified with the character of Janie Conway.  Now, because of her new job, she heard that a  sequel to that movie had just made.  The sequel was called Janie Gets Married which had been released on June 22, 1946.  She wanted very much to see the sequel.  During the fall of 1946, she stayed in regular contact with her friend—the stenographer at the local theater, just to find out when the sequel would be coming to Osage.      

            Over Thanksgiving our Nevada Township farmer’s eldest son was able to bring his girl friend to Nevada Township to meet his parents.  It was a good time.  The Thanksgiving dinner was tremendous success with turkey, cranberries, home-grown Blue Hubbard squash, home-grown mashed potatoes and giblet gravy—Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.  Thanksgiving was an anniversary of sorts.  Both sons had been home for one whole year.  With the sale of the soybeans having been so successful his father split the profits with his two sons and gave them each a nice big check during Thanksgiving.  He promised that more would come their way when he sold some Suffolk ewes in December and more money when they shelled the corn in February or March of 1947.     

              With the crops all harvested, our Nevada Township farmer considered his position.  He was starting to feel secure that soybeans could be a major cash crop that could be relied on even in peacetime.  However, he still felt that he needed to control the harvest.  Accordingly, in the winter of 1946-1947, our Nevada Township farmer began to think about using some of the money he had made from the 1946 soybean crop to modernizing his farming operation, once again.  If he could obtain his own combine, he would no longer have to depend on the schedule of hired combines to get his soybean crop harvested.   

              He was aware that, following the introduction of the small Allis-Chalmers Model 60 All Crop Harvester in 1929 (See the article on this blog entitled “Navy bean farming in Michigan Part III,” contained at this website.), a number of other farm equipment companies, e.g. John Deere, Massey Harris, and Case had introduced their own small combines.  Of course all of these combines had been unavailable during the war.  Now, however, these small combine were all becoming available again.  Furthermore he had, recently, heard that the Oliver Farm Equipment Company was introducing its own small combine—the Model 15 Grainmaster combine.   

              During a visit to Thill Implement in Rose Creek in February of 1947, he had seen one of these had one of the new Oliver Model 15 Grainmaster combines in the inventory of the dealership.  Like the previous Grainmaster combines, this new Model 15 was being produced at the old Nichols and Shepherd Company Thresher Works in South Bend, Indiana.  (This Thresher Works was now designated as South Bend No. 1, to differentiate it from South Bend No. 2, the new Oliver Company engine plant.  This new engine plant was built complete with a new foundry and molding works for making the cast-iron blocks of the new Oliver engines.) 

              The Model 15 Grainmaster was one of the new small “straight through” style of combines that were becoming popular in the post-war era.  The Grainmaster Model 15 had a six-foot cutterbar/feeder and a full-width cylinder positioned directly behind the feeder.  The grain crop was harvested and taken directly into the combine, where it was threshed.  The grain did not have to travel through any 90º turns on its convoluted way through the combining process, as it did with the older style combines like his neighbor’s Model 10 Grainmaster.  Because of this straight thru design, the forward motion of the combine would dump the straw back onto the ground in almost exactly the same location where it had been before the whole process had begun.  Because of this simplicity, the straight-through style combines were more efficient and saved more grain than older style combines. 

              The salesman at Thill Implement noted that this particular Model 15 combine was one of the new power take-off versions of the Model 15 Grainmaster.  The salesman informed our Nevada Township farmer that, initially, the Model 15 combine had been offered only with its own four cylinder—an engine supplied to Oliver by the Continental Motors Company of Muskegon Michigan.   Fitted with a four-cylinder Continental engine, the Model 15 Grainmaster had a suggested retail price of $1,800.  However, the new power take-off version of the Model 15 carried a suggested retail price of only $1,360.  The particular Model 15 combine that our Nevada Township farmer saw at Thill Implement was also mounted on rubber tires.  These rubber tires added to the modern appearance of the Model 15 Grainmaster. 

              Our Nevada Township farmer thought of how having a combine of his own would free him from the dependence on all custom combining operations.  He would be able to harvest the soybeans (and his oats) when the crop was at the proper degree of dryness rather than have to wait for his name to work its way to the top of the list of customers for his neighbor’s custom combining operation.  Our Nevada Township farmer had other reasons for liking the Model 15 combine.  One of these reasons was the fact that the Model 15 was a combine with a “low profile.”  Unlike his neighbor’s Model 10 Grainmaster combine, the grain tank on the Model 15 did not depend on gravity to empty its contents into a wagon or grain truck.  Rather the Model 15 was fitted with a special “auger style” tank unloading elevator.  This power unloading elevator, allowed the designers of the Model 15 combine to position the 20-bushel grain tank much lower to the ground.  Consequently, the overall height of the Model 15 combine was greatly reduced from the earlier Model 10 Grainmaster combine.  Because of its low profile, our Nevada Township farmer would not have to build a special shed on his farm simply to store the Model 15.  It would be easy to store this new small combine on his farm.  Accordingly, he signed a sales agreement to purchase an Oliver Model 15 Grainmaster combine.  The sales agreement with Thill Impliment also included the purchase of a new Innes Company windrow pickup attachment. 

Oliver Model 15 combine in standing wheat crop

              The new Model 15 combine would not only be used for the soybean crop in the  late autumn, but would also be used to harvest his oat crop in mid-summer.  Accordingly, there was a need for a windrow pickup attachment for the combine.  Unlike the oats and wheat “out west” on the Great Plains, oats in the Midwest could not be harvested as a “standing crop.”  Midwestern states received far more rain, on average, than the western states of the Great Plains.  Accordingly, under normal conditions more grasses and weeds (green material) tended to grow up in the oat fields of the Midwest.  Combining the oats or wheat while standing would allow the “green material” to pass into the combine where the green material would tend wrap around the threshing cylinder of combine, thus, preventing efficient threshing.  The solution to this problem was to cut he grain and all the green material a day or so before combining.  This would allow the green material to dry up completely under the hot summer sun.  Once completely dry and “brown” the formerly “green” weeds and grass would no longer tend to wrap around the cylinder, but rather it would be crushed by the cylinder and then, pass harmlessly through the combine and exit the rear of the combine with the straw. 

              Therefore, in the Midwest, farmers cut their oats and folded the oats into a narrow “windrow.”  Windrowing of the oat would begin before the oat crop was entirely ripened.  The oats would lie in narrow windrow on top of the stubble of the oat field and finish drying.  This last stage of drying in the windrow under the hot summer sum was called “sweating.”    Lying on top of the stubble allowed air to get under the windrow for a thorough and quick drying process.  Windrowing the oats would actually speed up the process of sweating.       

              To combine the windrowed oat crop, farmers in the Midwest needed to fit their combines with “windrow pickups.”  Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer needed a windrow pickup for his new Model 15 combine.  Oliver made their own standard equipment Oliver-built windrow pickup attachment for the Model 15 combine.  However, the Thill Implement salesman related that instead of fitting the Model 15 combine with the standard equipment pickup attachment made for the Oliver Model 15 combine, the dealership now advised farmers to fit their new combines with a pickup attachment made by the Innes Company of Bettendorf, Iowa.  (An article on the Innes Company of Bettendorf, Iowa was published in the May/June 2005 issue of Belt Pulley magazine and is now posted on the blog section of this website.)  The salesman at Thill Implement related that the Innes Company was a company devoted entirely to the production of their own patented pickup attachment which could be mounted on many modern combines.  The Innes pickup attachment was preferred by the Thill dealership rather than the standard equipment Oliver windrow pickup, because the Innes pickup was not as susceptible to the problem of “wrapping.” 

              The standard equipment windrow pickup made by the Oliver Farm Equipment Company had a series of revolving teeth which poked through a “stationary comb.”  As the combine moved ahead along the windrow, the rotating teeth would actually lift the windrow up and over the pickup and into the feeder of the combine.  Sometimes the teeth would pull some of the crop under the stationary comb where the crop would become wrapped around the axle of the pickup to which the teeth were attached.  As the combine worked through out the day, more crop might be pulled under the stationary comb until the pickup became jammed and would not work properly.  The farmer would then have to stop the combine and get down off the tractor and clean the wrapped crop out of the pickup. 

              The teeth on the Innes pickup protruded from a cylinder.  In operation, the whole cylinder of the Innes pickup revolved—not just the teeth.  Accordingly, there was no stationary “comb” which could catch the crop and start a wrapping problem.    Our Nevada Township farmer was familiar with the wrapping problem of windrowed grain crops from watching his neighbor stopping, in the field, to un-plug the pickup of his Model 10 Grainmaster combine.  Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer consented to inclusion of the Innes pickup attachment as a substitute for the Oliver pickup attachment.  He felt that he was now set to take full advantage of the future of soybeans in 1947.   

              Over the winter of 1946-1947, our Nevada Township farmer had been disappointed in the sale of his registered purebred Suffolk ewes.  Ever since, 1943, sheep prices at the Hormel meat packing plant, in Austin, Minnesota, had been declining.  Accordingly, farmers had been reducing the size of their flocks of sheep on their farms.  The number of sheep in Mower County had fallen steadily since 1944.  Whereas, in 1945, there had been 17,200 head of sheep in Mower County, one year later in 1946 there were now only 15,000.  (Figures for 1947 would reflect that in the coming year sheep numbers in Mower County would decline still further to 13,600 head.)  No wonder he could not sell any of his prize ewes.  Everywhere, farmers were cutting back on the size of their flocks of sheep.  The reduction in sales of ewes meant that our Nevada Township farmer did have much money to share with his sons.

              Additionally, the sale of the 1946 corn crop also proved to be a disappointment.  As always, our Nevada Township farmer allowed the ear corn to dry in the corn crib on his farm all winter long.  Now in late-February of 1947, our Nevada Township farmer made arrangements with Ray Jacobson to shell his corn.  The winter of 1946-1947 had been a mild winter with snow accumulating to about 6 inches which lasted until mid-February, 1947.  The unseasonably warm temperatures of mid-February melted the remaining snow.  Accordingly, Ray Jacobson arrived on the farm one day in late February with his Minneapolis-Moline “Shellmaster” corn sheller mounted on the back of a 1941 Ford “Cab Over Engine” (C.O.E.) Model 1 ½-ton truck with a 134 inch wheelbase.  This corn sheller had also been bought through the Thill Implement dealership of Rose Creek and had been mounted on this Ford truck.  As noted in an earlier article in this series, Thill Implement not only owned an Oliver franchise, but also owned a franchise from the Minneapolis-Moline Company to sell Minneapolis-Moline farm equipment.  Indeed the major reason that John Peter Thill had obtained a Minneapolis-Moline franchise was because he wanted to sell the corn shellers that Minneapolis-Moline made.

              Once the truck and sheller were positioned outside the alleyway of the double corn crib, the various sections of the “drag” line were connected to each other and extended the full length of the alleyway of the corn crib.  When the bottom of the cribs were opened, dried ear corn would begin to flow out into the drag which would transport the corn to the sheller.  The sheller itself was powered by the 239 c.i. flat-head V-8 engine in the truck.  Developing 95 hp. this engine was sufficient to power the sheller.  Ray make sure the transmission lever in the truck was in neutral.  Then he would depress the foot clutch and engage the lever directing the power of the truck engine to the sheller.  Then he would slowly release the foot clutch and the sheller came to life.  Then Ray depressed the foot throttle until the cylinder on the sheller was turning at the correct operating speed of 800 rpm. to 815 rpm.  Once he reached this speed he reach over on the dash board of the truck to lock throttle at that speed. 

              To shell out the entire double corn crib took all day with a break at noon time for dinner when they all went to the house to eat the large meal .  As the ear corn in both sides was shelled out, our Nevada Township farmer stored away enough shelled corn in the granary on the farm to feed the chickens and pigs for an entire year.  Depending on the current price and what he expected the future price to be, our Nevada Township farmer would either sell the rest to the Hunting elevator uptown in Lyle or he might save back more shelled corn to store in the grain bins over the alleyway of his corn crib.  This shelled might be sold at a later date when the price of corn might be higher.  This year he was

carefully watching the price of corn.     

              Last July (of 1946) corn prices had reached a phenomenal $2.17 per bushel.  However, since that time the price had fallen to $1.35 per bushel as an average for the month of January, 1947.  Our Nevada Township farmer thought this decline in the price of corn was part of the long expected decline in all farm prices caused by the end of the war.  He expected that the price of corn would continue to decline in the long-run.  However, February of 1947 revealed a slight rise in prices to $1.49 per bushel.  Thus, our Nevada Township farmer made up his mind to take advantage of this momentary upswing in the price of corn to sell all the corn he could spare just as soon as it was shelled.  Expecting that prices would fall even more over the long term, our Nevada Township farmer felt lucky to catch this temporary increase in price.  However, the price was still not as good as he might have expected and, once again, our Nevada Township farmer did not have as much money to share with his sons as he had expected.  However, he felt sure his sons would recognize that the soybean harvest money had covered for the corn and the sheep.  However, big changes were happening in the mind of his eldest son which would affect his plans.

                                                            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.

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.   

            However, not all of the crops on the farm could be sold for cash.  When our Nevada Township farmer had taken over the operation of the farm from his parents, he had used horses, exclusively, for power on the farm.  Accordingly, one field on the farm had been set aside for raising hay for the horses and the dairy herd.  Another field had to be set aside each year for the raising oats for feed for the horses, cattle, pigs and chickens.  Therefore, these crops were not cash crops.  These were crops were raised for animal feed only.  Corn was, therefore, traditionally the only “cash crop” of the farming operation.  However, not all of the corn could be sold. 

            Some of the mature corn plants were chopped in late August while they were still green and blown into the silo to be fed as “ensilage” to the dairy cows during the winter time.  The rest of the corn was allowed to ripen and the ears of the corn were harvested in October or November each year.  This ear corn was stored in the corn crib to dry in the cold winter air.  In February the dried ear corn would be shelled.  Most of this shelled corn would be sold to the Hunting Company grain elevator in the small village of Lyle, Minnesota (1940 pop. 513), located about 9 miles to the southwest of the farm in neighboring Lyle Township. 

            However, some of the shelled corn had to retained on the farm as animal feed.  A large portion of the shelled corn would be ground and fed to the feeder pigs.  Grinding the shelled corn in a feed grinder allowed the pigs to digest the corn easier and more efficiently.  The concentrated calories in corn quickly brought the feeder pigs up to market weight.  Another portion of the corn retained on the farm each year would be fed to the chickens.  The calories in corn and the protein in oats would provide a balanced diet for the chickens and kept their egg laying at a maximum.  Because chickens have gizzards, which can digest very coarse food, both the shelled corn and the oats could be fed to the chickens without grinding or other processing.  A portion of the ear corn retained on the farm was ground in the feed grinder—cob and all—to become feed for the milking cows.  Our Nevada Township farmer provided a scoopful of this ground corn to each lactating cow at each milk time.  This small amount of ground corn fed to the lactating cows twice a day allowed the extra calories that the cows needed to continue supplying milk.  Furthermore, since most of the cows were also pregnant, the additional calories in the ear corn also supported the growing unborn calf the cow was carrying.  The cow feed was not as rich in calories as was the pig feed.  Our Nevada Township farmer did not want the dairy cattle to become fat—like beef cattle.  He wanted a balanced diet.  The cobs in the cow feed provided a certain amount of roughage for the cattle.  Furthermore, when grinding the ear corn for the cows, our Nevada Township farmer added oats to the ear corn he fed into the grinder.  The oats added protein to the cattle’s diet.  The milking cows needed the roughage and protein more than they needed concentrated calories.  They did not need to put on a great deal of weight like pigs or beef cattle.  Even after sufficient corn had been retained on the farm for all these animals, a large amount of shelled corn could be hauled off the farm and sold to the Hunting Company elevator in Lyle.  The sale of this remaining corn supplied a large part of the cash income for his farming operation each year.  

            When our Nevada Township farmer had taken over control of the farming operation from his parents in 1924, horses provided the power for field operations, exclusively.  Accordingly, in addition to feeding the cows, pigs and chickens on his farm, a great portion of the oats and hay, he raised on the farm fed the horses he used on the farm.  Although the horses were used primarily only in the summer, they had to be fed all year long.  He had been aware, for some time, that he could increase the efficiency of his farming operation by mechanizing the power source on his farm.  Subsequently in 1940, Our Nevada Township farmer obtained a used 1937 Oliver/Hart-Parr Model 28-44 tractor.  This tractor was also called the “3-5 plow tractor.”  The tractor was a “used” tractor, but was only three (3) years old.  The Model 28-44 certainly was a great improvement to his farming operation.  The tractor performed all the heavy duty field work such as plowing and discing much more quickly than with horses.  Previously, these heavy duty field tasks had required the use of four or six horses harnessed together.  As time went by, our Nevada Township farmer even began using the Model 28-44 for lighter duty field work.  He had shortened the tongue on his Oliver/Superior horse-drawn two-row corn planter so that he could use the tractor to pull the planter across the field in the spring.  Our Nevada Township farmer found that he was able to reduce the number of work horses he kept on the farm.  Soon the only field task, which he not able to perform with his Model 28-44 tractor was the cultivation of corn.  As a “standard” or “four-wheeled” tractor, the Model 28-44 was not configured to be fit with a cultivator.  Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer had to retain some of his horses for this single field task—the cultivation of corn. 

            The cultivation of corn to control weeds was a task that dominated all his summers from June until the latter part of July.  Even now in the post-war era, he was still cultivating corn, one row at a time with his horses and horse-drawn one-row cultivator.  Cultivating corn was the most time-consuming activity on farm.  Hours, days and weeks of time were spent by our Nevada Township farmer riding the cultivator behind the horses watching the tiny shoots of corn pass between the two horses and slip between the two shields positioned on the cultivator to protect the young plants from being covered up by the dirt that was being stirred up by the shovels of the cultivator.  Our Nevada Township farmer vowed each spring to cultivate the entire corn field three times before the middle of July.  First, the corn was cultivated lengthwise.  This cultivation attempted to eliminate the weeds between the rows of corn. Then the corn was cultivated “cross-wise.” 

            Last spring our Nevada Township farmer had used his Oliver-Superior two-row No. 5 check-row corn planter.  “Check-wire” planting involved unrolling a wire across the length of the field to be planted in corn.  Every 40 inches along the wire was a button.  The wire was then secured at both ends of the field.  The wire was connected to a mechanism on the side of the planter.  As the planter was pulled across the field, the wire slid through the mechanism.  Every time a button passed through the mechanism, the button would trip the mechanism and both planting units on the No. 5 planter and the seeds of corn would be planted at that location along the wire.  As the planter went back and forth across the field the result was that the entire corn field would be planted in a grid with 40 inches between the rows and 40 inches between the plants within the rows.  Thus, when the corn sprouted up above the ground, our Nevada Township farmer was able to cultivate the corn both lengthwise and “cross-wise” and eliminate the weeds between the hills of corn within the rows as well as between the rows. 

            The first time over the field with the cultivator, our Nevada Township farmer drove the horses and cultivator lengthwise across the field.  The second time over the field, he cross-cultivated the corn.  Ideally, the corn should be cultivated a third time.  Every spring our Nevada Township farmer pledged to cover the corn three times with the cultivator.  However, between the slow progress of cultivating with the horses one row at a time and the rainy days and other field work usually made his plans go awry.  Usually by the end of July the corn was too tall to fit comfortably under the frame of the cultivator and besides the corn was already to the “tasselling” stage.  Cultivation at this stage would do more harm than good to the corn.  Most years, our Nevada Township farmer found that the corn was already too tall before he had finished third cultivation.  Thus, our Nevada Township farmer would be forced to cease cultivation of the corn before he was done with the third cultivation.    

            For some time, our Nevada Township farmer had been aware that if he owned a tricycle-style tractor, he could mechanize his entire farming operation—including the cultivation of corn.  He might then have no need for horses at all on his farm.  The elimination of horses from the farm would allow our Nevada Township farmer to decrease the number of acres used for raising oats and hay on the farm.  Thus, more of the arable acreage on his farm would be available for cash crops.  This meant that he could derive more income for his farming operation. 

However, in late 1941, about a year and half after he had purchased the Model 28-44 tractor, the United States found itself thrust into the Second World War.  Farm machinery of any kind and especially tractors became extremely difficult to obtain.  All farm tractor production was severely restricted as the industrial capacity of the United States was funneled entirely to the war effort.  Thus, it appeared that for the duration of the war our Nevada Township farmer would have to forego getting a new tricycle-style tractor.  Indeed, it seemed he would have to get by with all the same machinery that he owned prior to the war.    

            The war brought about a great number of changes in the rural farm economy.  First and foremost were the high prices that farm commodities fetched during the war.  The United States government bought a great deal of food stuffs as the government attempted to feed its armed forces stationed around the world.  Large government buying in the agricultural products market raised prices of agricultural products across the spectrum.  These higher prices created new opportunities for farmers.  One such opportunity arose because of the disruption of trade between Australia and Great Britain. 

            Britain has traditionally been known as a nation of meat eaters.  In the pre-war era (before 1939), the average British citizen ate 109.6 pounds (lbs.) of meat.  (From a 1949 document, found on the Internet, called “Australia’s Contribution to the British Diet” by R. H. Heywood.)  By comparison, the average citizen of the United States ate 82.9 pounds of red meat in 1938.  Like the diet of the average United States citizen, most of the meat eaten by the British was beef.  However, unlike the United States, the second meat of choice in the British diet was mutton or lamb, while pork was in third place among meats in the British diet.  In the United States, pork was second behind beef in popularity while lamb fell far behind chicken and even fish in popularity.  (From a United States Department of Agriculture spread sheet called “Red Meat and Poultry per capita availability in the United States” found on the Internet.)  Indeed, citizens of the United States ate twice as much chicken and nearly four times as much fish and shellfish as lamb.  (Ibid.) 

            Time was, when Britain raised nearly all the sheep consumed by its own people.  However, following 1900, the increase the number of sheep in Great Britain did not keep up with the growing of the population.  (“Australia’s Contribution to the British Diet” by R. H. Heywood found on the Internet.)  Consequently, lamb and mutton began to be imported—largely from Australia.  By 1940, one third of all mutton consumed in Great Britain was imported.  (Ibid.)  However, the Japanese conquests of large parts of Southeast Asia and the threats to Australia, had a debilitating effect on Australia’s trade with Great Britain.  Additionally, what trade left the shores of Australia safely faced another difficulty.  The virtual closure of the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea for the duration of the war meant that Australian shipping no longer had access to the Mediterranean “shortcut” to Britain.  Trade destined for Britain had to make its way around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa on its way to Great Britain.  This added a great deal to the expense to the price of Australian sheep.  The price of sheep in the United States began climbing as early as February of 1938.  However, in April of 1941, with the German invasion of the Greek mainland and the island of Crete and the resultant threat on British shipping in the Mediteranean, the price of sheep in the United States rose to $6.40 per hundred weight—a price not seen since 1930.  Consequently, a niche opened in the sheep market for the American farmer.  The Midwest family farm was now able to compete profitably with Australian sheep producers for a share of the large British market. 

            In 1941, sheep and lamb production in the United States set a new all-time record of 2.3 billion pounds of meat.  (From an April 30, 1942 document called “Meat Animals—Farm Production and Income 1935-1941 found on the Internet.)  Despite this drastic increase in production of sheep in the United States of America, no glut appeared in the sheep market which might threaten the price.  Indeed the price of mature sheep (mutton) continued on a sharp increase—rising from $3.90 per hundred weight in 1940 to $5.10 per hundred weight in 1941 (a 31% increase in just one year).  (Ibid.)  Spring lamb prices rose from $8.10 per hundred weight in 1940 to $9.58 per hundred weight in 1941 (a 19% increase in one year).  (Ibid.)  The United States Department of Agriculture estimated that the sheep raisers saw a 27% increase in their income between 1940 and 1941.  (Ibid.)  After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which drew the United States into the War, mutton prices remained at high levels as the United States put mutton into several C-ration military field kits.  (Many people now allege that putting mutton in military C-rations ruined the market for lamb and mutton for an entire generation of Americans.  After the war, returning World War II veterans absolutely refused to buy or eat lamb because of bad memories they retained of the mutton in the military field C-rations they had been forced to eat during the war.) 

            Favorable market conditions in the sheep market were reported over the radio—like WCCO radio out of the Twin Cities.  Our Nevada Township farmer began think hard about acquiring a small flock of ewes.  He was not alone.  Many farmers in his neighborhood were doing the same thing.  Indeed, for one farm family over in a neighboring township—Austin Township—sheep raising was already a major part of their farm income.  Earl Eugene and Margaret (Stormer) Subra owned a farm containing only 60-acres in Austin Township.  While, the Subra family milked some cows and raise some pigs, they virtually made all their cash income from sheep—pure bred Suffolk sheep.  Born in 1913, Earl Subra grew up on the farm of his parents William J. and Bertha (Dennis) Subra located in Austin Township.  Raised on his father’s farm, Earl had moved to his own farm.  In 1931, he and Margaret Stormer were married.  Earl began raising Suffolk sheep prior to 1940.  He chose Suffolk sheep because of the characteristics of breed. 

            The Suffolk breed was born as a result of the cross breeding of Southdown sheep with old Norfolk sheep in England.  Suffolks are not “wool” sheep.  They grow only a moderate amount of wool.  They were a breed of sheep known for their black faces and legs, which were free of wool.  Suffolk sheep were raised primarily as “meat” sheep.  Suffolk ewes (female sheep) were prolific in the production of offspring and were “good milkers.”  Suffolk lambs grew rapidly; they had more edible meat and less fat than other breeds.  Suffolks have excellent feed conversion characteristics which means that Suffolks have the capacity to actively graze and rustle for feed even on dry range lands.  However, this characteristic also means that when Suffolk lambs are raised on high quality feeds, the breed has one of the fastest growth rates of any breed of sheep.  Consequently, Suffolk sheep were rapidly becoming the most common breed in the Midwestern United States.  (Paula Simmons & Carol Ekarius, Storey’s Guide to Raising Sheep [Storey Publishing: North Adams, Massachusetts, 2001] p. 74.) 

            Earl Subra noted that Suffolks answered the demands of the market at the current time in 1940.  Meat, not wool, was the main product that was in demand in the current market.  Suffolks had the quality of lean meat that the market demanded.  Furthermore, the short five-month (147-153 day) gestation period plus the rapid growth rate of the individual lambs meant that the farmer could make money faster with Suffolks than with other breed of sheep.  Earl Subra knew that, drawn by the chance for making a good profit, many farmers would be attempting enter the sheep market by acquiring flocks of their own for the first time.  He also knew that many of these farmers would be choosing Suffolks.  Accordingly, in addition to raising and selling lambs to the Hormel meat packing plant in Austin, he felt he could also make a profit selling bucks (male sheep) and ewes (female sheep) to those farmers wanting to start their own flocks.  In this way he would be working with the rising tide of farmers entering the sheep market.  This, Earl Subra thought, was the way he could make a living out of the new situation that was arising.   

            However, to sell Suffolks to the farmers wishing to start their new flocks, Earl Subra felt that he needed to have a product that would these farmers would buy.  If Suffolk sheep had characteristics that would stand out among other breeds of sheep, then the goal should be to raise Suffolk sheep that would adhere closely to those characteristics and avoid any negative characteristics.  Indeed, there already was an organization in devoted to promoting the best characteristics of the Suffolk breed by educating Suffolk breeders.  This organization was the National Suffolk Sheep Association (N.S.S.A.) which was headquartered in Michigan and later was headquartered in Columbia, Missouri.  N.S.S.A. started a registration process by which purebred Suffolks could be registered with N.S.S.A.  N.S.S.A. would mail out a certificate of registration to the owner of the individual registered sheep.  In order to qualify for registration, both the sire (father) and dam (mother) must also have their own certificates of registration.  Theoretically, then every registered purebred Suffolk could be traced back through a paper trail of registration certificates to the original Suffolk sheep which initially defined the breed.  Each certificate of registration would document that the individual sheep was direct descendant of these original Suffolk sheep. 

            A registration fee was assessed by N.S.S.A. for each and every registration.  Farmers therefore tended only to register the best examples of Suffolk sheep in their flocks. Farmers would register only those sheep that were intended to keep as “breeding stock.”  Any sheep intended for market would not registered.  Usually all those sheep with lesser breed characteristics were sent to market.  These sheep might be purebred sheep, but they were non-registered purebreds.  Suffolks of unknown origin might look very good as far as breed characteristics, but because no paper trail of registration certificates could be assembled to show how they were connected to the original Suffolks, these sheep could never be registered, no matter how good they looked as far as breed characteristics.  These sheep are known as “grade” sheep.  The intended result of this registration process was that registered purebreds with their papers in good order would bring more money at any sale of breeding stock than either grade sheep or unregistered purebreds. 

            The N.S.S.A. sponsored judging shows of registered purebred Suffolk sheep to educate sheep growers on the best characteristics of the Suffolk breed.  The N.S.S.A. also promoted the “open class” sheep judging contests at the various state and county fairs around the nation.  Usually 4-H and FFA classes were also judged at these county and state fairs.  These judging contests were open only to members of the 4-H or FFA.  However, the “open class” show, which was open to sheep growers of all ages.  Within the open class competition, there were many different sub-divisions according to the breed of sheep.  Within each of these breed sub-division, only registered purebred sheep of that particular breed could be entered.  These judging competitions and shows were attempts to educate and sharpen the eye of individual breeders as to fine points of the breed.  The N.S.S.A. defined and evaluated exact standards as to the ideal Suffolk sheep.  Judges at county and state fairs around the nation were provided a “score card” which evaluated the various features of the Suffolk sheep and how many points were to be allowed for each feature.  The total number of points was 100 points of which 35 points were set aside for the rear legs alone. 

            Even prior to 1939, Earl Subra had been working on developing a flock of Suffolk sheep that reflected superiority in any number of individual features.  Soon his ewes and rams were winning a number of blue ribbons at the Mower County Fair which was held in the first week of August each year.  Earl also began to make a name for himself at the Minnesota State Fair.  Soon breeders from outside the Midwest, and even from Canada, were searching him out to purchase rams and ewes from the Subra flock.  These other breeders saw traits in the Subra sheep that they wished to include in the blood lines of their own flocks.  Consequently, Subra sheep were sold far and wide and Earl Subra became quite famous among Suffolk breeders across the nation.  

            Accordingly, when our Nevada Township farmer began to think seriously about obtaining a flock of sheep for his own farm, he though of the Subra farm located in the next township to the west.  Accordingly, in the fall of 1941, after watching the dramatic increase in the price of sheep over the summer (reaching $7.10 per hundred weight in August of 1941), our Nevada Township farmer purchased eight (8) purebred Suffolk ewes from Earl Subra in September of 1941 and brought them to his farm.  He hoped that adding sheep to his farming operation would be another diversification of the farming operation and the farm income.  He hoped this diversification would further strengthen his family’s financial position. 

            When our Nevada Township farmer bought the eight registered ewes, Earl Subra supplied him the corresponding N.S.S.A. registration certificates for each individual sheep.  Each registration certificate contained a registration number and was signed by the Suffolk breed secretary—Clare Williams of Michigan.  The registration number was matched to a number on a metal tag in the ear of the respective sheep.  On the registration certificate, were the registration numbers of both the sire (father) and dam (mother) of the particular sheep.  If needed, our Nevada Township farmer could use these sire and dam registration numbers to call the breed secretary and trace the registrations of the sire and dam back in time. 

            Introducing the ewes to his farm for the first time required that some changes be made to the farm.  The farm on which our Nevada Township farmer and his family lived was established in a series of concentric circles, each area fenced off from the next larger circle.  The immediate area around the house contained the lawns, the outhouse, dog house and family garden.  This was the inner yard.  A legal term for this area is “the curtilage.”   The next largest encircled area included most of the rest of the building site of the farm, the grove, the orchard and the windbreak running along the north and west sides of the building site.  This area was also called the “yard,” but the term was meant to be used in a larger sense than the mere curtilage around the house.  The area behind the barn was fenced off from the yard to keep the cows out of the yard.  Likewise the areas on either side of the hog house were fenced off to keep the pigs out of the yard and the chicken yard next to the hen house was fenced off to keep the chickens out of the yard.  All animals were kept out of the yard except the family dog and any cats from the barn.  These animals were actually encouraged to patrol the yard and keep rodents under control.  However, the yard was intended to be the main home for the small flock of sheep that he was now acquiring. 

            One of the benefits of a flock of sheep would be the fact that they would keep the grass and weeds in all area of the yard under control.  This would save labor and time that the family had, in the past, spent trying to keep these areas mowed and trimmed.  This was one of the advantages that our Nevada Township farmer looked forward to about having sheep on the farm.  However, there were also disadvantages.  One of the most important disadvantages was that all the fences around the yard had to be improved and reinforced.  Sheep were curious and would explore every portion of the area they occupy in order to find vegetation to eat.  First, the fence between the yard and the cartilage needed to be made more secure to keep the sheep from invading the cartilage and most importantly out of the family garden.  In the garden, the sheep could make quick work of the young succulent plants the family was trying to grow there.  The lawns inside the cartilage would continue to be mowed by the family, just as in the past.  Likewise the fences around the outside of the yard needed to be strengthened to prevent the sheep from getting into the fields where the farm crops were being raised. 

            Additionally, our Nevada Township farmer needed to take special precautions to protect the sheep.  He installed a gate across the driveway of his farm.  This was to keep the sheep from getting out onto the road and being struck by cars and/or trucks.  Also he obtained an old baby chick brooder house at an auction in his neighborhood.  The old brooder house was in fairly good shape with a shingled roof to repel rain and wooden siding for warmth in the winter and three windows along the back of brooder house to let in light.  These windows could be closed in the winter to keep the sheep warm and opened in the summer to let in the cool breezes on summer nights.  Our Nevada Township farmer wanted to convert this brooder house into a sheep shed for his farm.  The brooder house was mounted on four “six inch by six inch” wooden beams which ran the full length of the small building.  These beams acted as skids and allowed the building to be towed along on the ground by a tractor or team of horses.  Because the auction had been held not far from his farm, our Nevada Township farmer used his Oliver/Hart-Parr Model 28-44 tractor to drag the little building back to his own farm.      

            A secure sheep shed was needed to protect the sheep at night.  The worst predator for sheep on the typical Midwestern farm is the domesticated dog.  With the master and family gone to bed, their pet dog might slip away from his homestead in search of excitement.  Dogs will band together at night and chase and attack anything that runs.  Sheep habitually seek flight from danger by running every time they are chased.  Although thoroughly domesticated as pets, dogs will, nonetheless, revert to their wild nature and join together in packs at night to chase and kill the fleeing sheep.  Most times these are pet dogs from neighboring farms.  Our Nevada Township farmer knew that owners of these dogs, his own neighbors, will passionately deny that their dog ever leaves their own farm, much less has ever killed any sheep.  They just could not believe it about their family pet.  The neighbors would continue in their denials even when shown wool caught in their teeth the next morning, following any such attack. 

            Our Nevada Township farmer surely could not afford to lose one of these expensive purebred ewes due to a dog attack that could have been prevented.  Accordingly, the only way to avoid problems with neighborhood dogs was to lock the flock up in a secure sheep shed every night.  Thus, locking the sheep in the sheep shed became the last chore that our Nevada Township farmer completed every evening after the milking was done.  Although this chore was usually done after dark when the mid-day heat was past, the fall of 1941 was warmer than usual.  Consequently, on these warm nights, the sheep resisted going voluntarily into the sheep shed.  They preferred sleeping outside on the ground rather than being locked up in the sheep shed.  Accordingly, it took a little effort to round them up and get them into the sheep shed. 

            Our Nevada Township farmer made some improvements to the sheep shed/brooder house by nailing a couple of one inch by four inch boards to the inside frame of the windows.  These boards were nailed over the lower portion of each window in the brooder house no higher than the height of an average mature sheep.  These boards would prevent the windows from being accidentally broken by sheep moving boisterously about inside their new sheep shed during the night.  By protecting these windows from breakage, the windows could be closed in the winter for warmth and opened in the summer to catch the cool summer night breezes. 

            In one corner of the sheep shed, our Nevada Township farmer fixed a little hay rack to hold a single bale of hay.  With the “killing frost” expected any day, our Nevada Township farmer knew that soon he would have to feed the ewes hay to replace the vegetation that would no longer be available to the sheep after the frost.  He also built a little frame on the floor of another corner of the sheep shed.  This little frame was just the right size for a salt block.  On the next trip to Lyle, our Nevada Township farmer reminded himself that he would have to pick up a block of iodized salt at the Hunting elevator.     

            Since dogs only chased sheep in the night time hours, the arrival of early morning brought safety for the sheep.  Accordingly, the sheep could be let out of the sheep shed even before sunrise each morning.  Knowing how the sheep disliked being locked up in warm weather, our Nevada township farmer wanted to let the ewes out of the sheep shed as soon as possible in the morning.  Accordingly, he made sure that his first chore in the each morning was to walk out to the sheep shed and open the door of the shed to let the sheep out for the day.  On his way to the sheep shed, he made his way up the small hill in the back of the house to the windmill.  At the based of the windmill, our Nevada Township farmer unlatched and turned the crank connected to one of the four legs of windmill.  This crank was connected to a cable which ran up the leg of the tower to the head of the windmill located at the top of the tower. Unlatching the crank and loosening the crank allowed the vane of the windmill to swing loose and bring the wind wheel of the windmill around to face the direction of the wind.  Then the wind wheel began to turn and draw water up out of the ground.  Ordinarily, the water would be drawn up to a pipe that lead to an underground cistern.  Because this cistern was buried underground on the small hill, this cistern was actually at a higher level than the house and the barn on the farm.  Accordingly water could flow by means of gravity through an underground pipe down to the house and through another underground pipe to the barn.  Being underground the cistern was protected from freezing in the winter.  Therefore, the cistern and gravity provided “running water to both the house and the barn on the farm.  However, by turning a valve at the base of the pump jack, water could be diverted from flowing to the underground cistern and would be pulled by the windmill to the top of the pump jack where the water would flow out the pump jack and fill a tub that was sitting on top of the ground outside wooden fence that surrounded the base of the windmill.  This tub was the watering tank for the sheep. 

            Sheep needed fresh water available to them at all times.  Fresh water was important to sheep for a number of reasons.  Unlike cattle who can drink water of a wide variety of temperatures, sheep need water of 50°F in order to stay cool during hot weather.  Water also aided the transportation of nutrients around the body of the sheep and aided in the removal of waste matter from the body.  Additionally, water was required for some of the chemical reactions that were occurring inside the bodies of the sheep and water helped keep the cells of the bodies of the sheep hydrated and healthy.  The water now pouring out of the pump jack was of the correct temperature and came from a well that was around 300 feet deep and, thus, was fresh and free of any unhealthy bacteria that might be found in surface water.  After being locked up all night, the sheep came out of the shed in the morning and headed straight for their water tank.  Throughout the day they would find their way back to their water tank for another long drink. 

            After drinking water, the sheep would begin grazing.  Because they were exclusively planter eaters, the sheep would have to graze most of the day just to gather enough grass and plant life to sustain them.  The stomach or rumen of the individual sheep was divided into chambers or individual stomachs.  The rumen is designed to allow the sheep their graze for a couple of hours until their first stomach was full.  Then, they would lie down for about an hour to “chew their cud.”  During this process the “cud” or partially digested material in the first stomach would be regurgitated a mouthful at a time back up into the mouth for re-chewing.  After the cud had been sufficiently re-chewed, the cud would be re-swallowed into the second (regular stomach) and make its way through the regular digestive tract of the sheep.   Mouthful by mouthful the cuds would be chewed, until the first stomach was empty. 

            Cattle have the same type of digestive, however, sheep are much more efficient than cattle.  Any weed seeds that are ingested by cattle will pass through the entire digestive tract and will be discarded on the ground with the manure.  After the manure, has dried out and been incorporated into the soil, the individual weed seed may start growing again.  However, individual weed seeds will not survive the digestive system of the average sheep.  Accordingly, weeds that depend on seeds for propagation will not survive in any sheep yard like weeds in a cow pasture.  Only those plants that propagate from growth of the roots will survive in a sheep yard.   

            The Suffolk ewes grazed the outer yard and the grove and kept the grass and weeds under control much more efficiently than our Nevada Township farmer could ever have done the lawn mower or the scythe, even if he had had the time to do that chore.  They even ate the grass and weeds down around the old abandoned machinery that was parked in the grove. Evidence of the sheep’s recent grazing location could be seen in the little round marble-sized balls of fresh sheep manure, that could be seen around the yard.  Our Nevada Township farmer always felt that these little “marbles” of dung were neater and less messy than the “cowpies” of cattle.  Additionally, sheep manure was more valuable than cow manure.  Indeed, sheep manure, was richer in soil nutrients than any other manure on the farm.  Sheep manure has almost twice the nitrogen content of horse manure and more than twice the nitrogen found in cow manure.  Accordingly, when he cleaned out the sheep shed once a year, our Nevada Township farmer spread the sheep manure on the garden rather than taking it to the fields with the barn manure.  

            Nonetheless, having sheep in the outer yard took some adjustment of the family’s daily habits.  In the past, they might leave the granary door open as they moved back and forth from granary to the chicken house carrying pails of oats to feed the chickens every morning.  Now they had to be aware that the sheep were constantly watching for an opportunity for a chance to steal into the granary to get a few mouthfuls of shelled corn.  The family had to remember to close the granary door every time they made the short trip to the chicken house with pails of oats and corn for the chickens.  In the past the various gates to the inner yard might be left open for the better part of the day.  Not any longer.  The sheep seemed intent on taking any opportunity to invade the inner yard.  Having done so, they would not content themselves with eating the grass on the lawn, which might have been acceptable.  Instead, the sheep would head straight to the “salad bar”—the family garden— where they could eat all the tender young tops of the carrots or the rows of young, green lettuce plants or the English pea plants or the bean plants.  In a very short time the sheep could destroy the family garden.  Indeed, they were hesitant to leave even under threat of a family member running to the garden with a stick in hand or the rapid approach of the family dog, sent to “sic ‘em.”  They would watch the approach of the threat with one eye cocked toward the approaching threat.  Their bodies would be leaning toward the gate like a sprinter ready to start a race but still they would continue to eat as fast as they could to get every last mouthful before they were forced to run for the gate as fast as they could go.  Everywhere the family went in the yard, un-noticed eyes of the sheep were watching for any opportunity to pass through an open door or open gate into some forbidden area.  Once these patterns of behavior were adopted by the family members, the sheep began to find their niche on the farm.   

            Keeping the outer yard clear of weeds and overgrown plant life was just one of the benefits of the sheep, but our Nevada Township farmer also wanted to earn cash income from the sheep.  Although sheep have wool which can be sold as a product on the market, this did not amount to much in Suffolk sheep.  Suffolk sheep had only a moderate amount of wool.  They were primarily “meat sheep” not “wool sheep.”  The most money could be made from the sheep by the sale of their lambs.  Lambs which are fed a supplement of rolled oats and corn could reach market weight in as little as five months.  To be ready for the market in August or September, 1942, the lambs would have to be born in early spring—March or April of 1942—rather than in the late spring—May or June of 1942.  Lambs born in March and April would have the advantage of not having to contend with flies and other insect pests during their early life, as would lambs born in May and June.  From breeding until lambing, ewes have a five month gestation (pregnancy) period.  Thus, in order to have lambs in March, the ewes would our Nevada Township farmer needed to allow a ram to graze with the ewes as early as early as October in 1941.  

            Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer made arrangements with Earl Subra to purchase a registered purebred Suffolk ram.  Once again, our Nevada Township farmer received the N.S.S.A. registration certificate for this ram.  If he were to register any of the lambs of his new flock, he would need both the registration numbers of the sire (father) and dam (mother) of the lamb.  He brought the ram to his farm in mid-September, 1941.  However, he kept the ram segregated from the ewes for about the first two weeks on his farm until the first of October of 1941.  Reproductive activity in sheep increases as the days shorten in the fall and winter.  The estrous cycle of the average ewe lasts from 14 days to 19 days.  Accordingly, when the ram and ewes had been together for 34 days, our Nevada Township farmer assumed that two complete estrous cycles had passed.  Consequently, he assumed that by the first part of November, all the ewes had been bred. 

            The unusually warm “Indian summer” type of weather, they had been enjoying that autumn of 1941, ended abruptly during the night of  October 26, 1941 when the temperature fell to 26°F.  Now all the grass and green plant life around the yard and in the grove was dead and turning brown.  Now our Nevada Township farmer began to put out a bale of hay every morning for the sheep.

            Mild as the winter of 1941-1942 was, it was a dramatic winter in the life of the citizens of the United States.  With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941, the United States was suddenly thrown into the World War that had engulfed Europe since 1939.  There very little snow fall accumulation during the winter.  Five inches of show fell in the second week of December, 1941.  However, all traces of this snow were gone in about three days.  Only the one-inch snow that fell over on Christmas Eve allowed for “white Christmas” and the additional one-inch of snow on New Years Day, along with a brief cold snap kept accumulations of on the ground until second week of January 1942.  Except for some brief snow falls in February, this was the extent of the snowfall during the whole winter. 

            Despite the “open” winter, with very little snow our Nevada Township realized that there existed very little nutritional grazing material around the outer yard for the sheep.  Accordingly, he continued to put out a bale of hay every day during the winter for the sheep to eat.  Also in January of 1942, as his ewes’ pregnancies developed, our Nevada Township farmer began to take a pail of oats with him down to the sheep shed in the morning.  He let the ram out first.  He began to walk over to the hay bale in the outside hay rack that our Nevada Township farmer had constructed for the sheep.  Meanwhile, he took the pail of oats inside the sheep shed and dumped the oats into a long low trough for the ewes to eat.  Later, in their pregnancy in he supplemented the oats with molasses.  He also made sure the ewes had access to as much water as they wanted.  As their pregnancy moved into the latter stages, he increased their feed.  Finally in mid April of 1942, at the end of the 147 to 153 day gestation period (about five (5) months), the ewes began to deliver their lambs.  When first born, the lamb’s rumen (stomach) still only 10% developed.  At this stage the lambs are unable to digest any cellulose.  This meant that they were totally dependent on their mothers’ milk.  For the first 24 hours of life, the milk that the ewes produced in their udders was colostrum.  This milk was strong in antibodies and nutrients to provide the new-born lamb with a real boost right at the start of life.  Within two or three days after their birth, our Nevada township farmer “docked” (cut the tails short) the lambs.  A short tail, about an inch long, was more sanitary that the long tail the lamb was born with.  Wool grew on the tail and the long tail would accumulate a lot of manure in the tail if it were not cut short.  One of the advantages of an early birthing of the lambs was that the docking of the tail was could be done in April when there were less flies and other insect pests that could trouble with the wound on the end of the tail when the tail was cut short.  Our Nevada Township farmer also wanted to castrate some of the male lambs that he wanted to market.  If this could be done in April at the age of two or three days, this procedure could also avoid the flies and insects.  However, at this point he was unable to determine which of the male lambs were “market” lambs and which male lambs that he might want to sell as breeding bucks.  He needed some time to watch their future development to determine which to market and which keep as breeding stock.  He knew that he could make three times as much money selling lambs as breeding stock than he could as selling the lambs as “wethers” (castrated male sheep) to Hormel’s.  He wanted to see more of how the young lambs developed before deciding which to keep and which to market, so he postponed the castration of the lambs until later. 

            Although totally dependent on their mother’s milk at birth, the average lamb’s stomach develops very fast.  As early as 5 to 14 days after birth, the lambs begin to nibble at some hay and solid feed.  To take advantage of this development, our Nevada Township farmer put up a “creep feeder” for the lambs.  He put fresh hay and rolled oats in the creep feeder.  He wanted this feed to be available to the lambs at all times, and did not want the adult sheep to eat it all up.  Thus, the creep feeder had a limited access entrance.  The entrance was large enough to let the lambs pass through and get the feed, but the adult sheep could not pass through the entrance.  Thus, the feed inside the creep was only for the lambs.  Later, he put a little cracked shelled corn in the feed mixture in the creep feeder.  This would add a bit more calories to the feed and would fatten the lambs more and bring them to a market weight faster.

            Late April of 1942 was incredibly warm with temperatures creeping up to 80°F on many days in the last two weeks of the month.  Our Nevada Township farmer began to worry the sheep would begin shedding their wool before he could get them sheared.  He wanted to get them sheared and sell the wool, before the wool was lost through the sheep shedding the wool naturally.  As a consequence, he contacted George (The Bachelor) Wright, a farmer and custom sheep shearer from Beaver Township in neighboring Fillmore County.  Our Nevada Township farmer scheduled a day in the last week of April to have his flock of Suffolks sheared.  George William Wright lived on a farm on U.S. Route #63 south of Spring Valley, Minnesota.  He was a 44 year-old, life-long bachelor (thus his nickname “The Bachelor”) who lived on his farm alone.  He was a professional shearer and he was also the local wool buyer.  He would buy the wool from our Nevada Township farmer at price that was less than the market price of the wool.  This discount off the market price would pay the expense of shearing the sheep.  Our Nevada Township farmer did not worry about the money that he would receive for the wool.  Wool was nothing more than a by-product of his ownership of the flock.  The real income from the flock was derived from the sale of the lambs either to the market or as breeding stock to other sheep growers.  Anything that he received for the wool was looked upon as surplus income. 

            The last week of April proved to be a week of frequent and heavy rains.  Accordingly, on the day before George Wright was scheduled to arrive on his farm to shear the sheep, our Nevada Township farmer kept his flock enclosed in the sheep shed all day.  He fed the sheep in the shed, that day and made sure that the sheep had sufficient hay and water in the shed all day.  Consequently, he fed the sheep in the shed and made sure they had plenty of hay and water in the shed all day.  He took this precaution to make sure the wool would be dry for the scheduled shearing process.  Additionally, on the scheduled day, because the weather looked like rain, our Nevada township farmer kept the sheep locked up on the morning of the scheduled day.  Sure enough on the scheduled day for shearing, it rained.  George Wright drove into our Nevada Township farmer’s yard just as our Nevada Township farmer was finishing up the morning milking and feeding chores.  His old Model T Ford pickup was a quite dilapidated and was missing the right rear fender in its entirety.  Thus, the right side of the cab and, indeed the entire right side of the truck was covered with more than the usual amount of mud from driving down the dirt roads of the wet spring of 1942. 

            Our Nevada Township farmer directed George Wright to sheep shed and returned to the barn to finish up the chores, while George Wright set up his shearing operatin in the crowded quarters of the sheep shed full of sheep.  It was a confusing time for the sheep.  When our Nevada Township farmer arrived at the sheep shed after his chores, he helped George capture all the lambs and put them outside the sheep shed to reduce some of the congestion in the shed.  Being alone outside the shed the six (6) week old lambs began bleating mournfully for their mothers who were still inside the shed.  As the shearer sheared the ewes one at a time, they were released to go outside to their lambs.  It was expected that with each mother released outside the number of panic-stricken lambs would be reduced.  However, as the mother emerged from the sheep shed, she was un-recognizable to her own lamb in her new shaved appearance.  Thus, the lamb continued to bleat and the mother continued to bleat in response in an attempt to assure the lamb of her identity as the lamb’s own mother.  This trauma continued for a few moments until the lamb start to trust his sense of smell and his hearing more than his eyesight and, finally, accept his mother back again and begin to nurse. 

            During the shearing process the individual sheep was placed up on its rump with the feet sticking out forward.  In this position the individual sheep tended to be helpless and usually did not struggle.  During the shearing process the fleece fell off the individual sheep and onto the floor at George’s feet.  At the end of the shearing of each sheep, George would release the sheep.  Sometimes he let the sheep fall over from the helpless position and the individual sheep would hit their head on the floor.  Seeing this upset our Nevada Township farmer who saw potential injury to his prize ewes.  Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer made George aware of his displeasure.  As a result, George began to hold the head of the subsequent ewes as they were leaned over from the helpless position and the ewe began to scramble to its feet.  After the individual sheep was released, George picked up the fleece left behind by the shorn sheep and put the fleece on a collapsible box located on the floor.  This collapsible box had been flattened out on the floor and twine string had been threaded across the flattened out box.  When the fleece was placed upon the flattened out box, George began to pull the various sided of the box up into position, the compressed fleece bulged out of the top of the box.  Accordingly, George pulled the twine strings protruding from the sides of the box and tied them together on top of the box of fleece.  The fleece was tied and crossed tied at the top of the box.  Thus, when George released the box back to its flattened position, the fleece remained in a tight square bale.  George took the bale outside and put the bale under a canvas tarp which covered the other bales on his Model T pickup.  Then he re-threaded the flattened out box with twine and then grabbed another ewe and set her up on her rump and began the shearing process again. 

            The ram was the last sheep to be sheared and released outside the sheep shed.  Just as the buck was released and George packed up all his gear and the bales of wool; paid our Nevada Township farmer for the wool and jumped into his Model T pickup and drove off.  (George Wright continued shearing sheep through the early 1960s until he retired from farming and moved off his farm and moved into the LeRoy Hotel in the nearby town of LeRoy, Minnesota. The LeRoy Hotel had, originally, been built in 1898 and opened to the public by the Sweet family under the name “Sweet’s Hotel.”  On February 10, 1972, merely one day after his 74^th birthday, George Wright passed away at the LeRoy Hotel.  Later in the early 21^st Century, Rick Lamon, a local boy made-good, returned to LeRoy, Minnesota, purchased the LeRoy Hotel and undertook the restoration of the hotel and opened the newly restored hotel to the public under its original name—Sweet’s Hotel.  Part of the legend that surrounds the LeRoy Hotel, and the newly restored Sweet’s Hotel is that the hotel is haunted.  It is suspected that because of his death at the hotel, one of the ghosts currently roaming the halls of the at Sweet’s Hotel is George Wright.  The current author, who met George Wright, when he sheared sheep on the author’s childhood farm, has vacationed at the newly restored Sweet’s Hotel in hopes of meeting George Wright again.  However, this attempt at a meeting has thus far been unsuccessful.) 

            Our Nevada Township farmer, pocketed the money he had received for the wool from his flock.  It had started to rain again.  The sheep, who had been busy trying to normalize their relationships again and get back to the task of grazing again, suddenly dropped every thing and ran as fast as they could for the shelter of the sheep shed.  This was quite humorous to observe.  Ordinarily the sheep would not be distracted from grazing by any amount of rain, but now, with no wool to protect them, the sheep really felt how cold the rain was and sought immediate shelter from the rain on their bare bodies.  Not only was this behavior strange to the people observing the behavior, but was also strange for the lambs.  The lambs, who had not been shorn, could not understand the panic of their mothers to avoid a simple little rainfall. 

            During the early part of May, when the lambs were about 45 days old, the lamb’s rumen is sufficiently completed that the lambs could be weaned.  At 45 days of age the lambs were too big to fit through the entrance to the creep feeder.  Thus, to continue them on a rich diet of feed so that they might be ready for market in the shortest amount of time, it might be necessary to isolate them and wean the lambs forcibly from their mothers at this time.  However, our Nevada Township farmer wanted the lambs to get every bit of nourishment out of their mother’s milk, so he let the lambs remain with the flock until natural weaning.  This occurred over the weeks in June, about 60 and 90 days after birth.  During June he noticed that the mothers began to refuse nursing to the lambs.  By this time the lamb’s rumen was fully developed and at this time he isolated the lambs that he intended to finish off for market.  These lambs needed a good thirty days of confinement feeding to reach their market weight of between 103-130 pounds. This meant that the lambs were ready for market in about the middle of August. 

            There were a couple of ewe lambs among the crop of lambs that he wished to hold back from the market for breeding stock, either to sell to other breeders or to add to his own flock.  In the rising market for sheep that was being created by the war, our Nevada Township farmer knew that he could make up to three times more money by registering and selling the best of his ewe lambs and young rams as registered purebred breeding stock rather than selling them to the Hormel meat packing plant in Austin.  Accordingly, he filled out applications for N.S.S.A. registrations for these lambs.  In the appropriate blanks on the application he filled in the re registration numbers of the ram (the lamb’s father) which was taken from the ram’s own registration form which he retained.  He also filled in the registration number of the mother of each lamb from his registration records.  He sent these registration applications off to the N.S.S.A.  Within a couple of weeks, the registrations on these lambs arrived in the mail signed by Clare Williams, the N.S.S.A. breed secretary. 

            To advertise these new registered purebred Suffolk ewe lambs that he hoped to sell and to advertise his flock generally, our Nevada Township farmer intended to enter the two ewe lambs in the “open class” judging competition at the Mower County Fair in Austin.  The week long fair lasting from August 3-9, 1942, was divided into three different shows.  For the first two days, the 4-H exhibits were judged.  During the second two days, all the Future Farmers of America (F.F.A.) exhibits were judged.  These shows were exclusively for 4-H members and for FFA members respectively.  Finally during the last However, the last three days of the fair were for judging the “open class” exhibits.  In the sheep barn, many different breeds of sheep were judged each in their own “registered purebred” division or class.  To be exhibited as a registered purebred Suffolk, our Nevada Township farmer needed to produce the registration certificates on his two ewe lambs.  The registration papers needed to be shown to fair official at the time the lambs were entered in the pure bred Suffolk class.  All sheep of whatever breed without papers would be admitted to only the “crossbred” class at the fair. 

            Our Nevada Township farmer knew that the open class sheep judging at the Mower County fair was good advertising for his small breeding flock.  Accordingly, in addition to cleaning up the two newly registered ewe lambs, our Nevada Township farmer also cleaned up the ram of the flock and a couple of his best looking ewes.  He wished to discover how the best of his flock compared with other purebred Suffolks in Mower County—especially he wished to see how they compared with the sheep owned by Earl Subra.  If during the fair or immediately there after, if anyone expressed an interest in buying any of his sheep he would strongly consider selling them—if the price was right. 

            During the open class judging, our Nevada Township farmer was pleasantly surprised to find that he did get a number of blue ribbons.  At the end of the fair, he did receive an offer to purchase his ram.  It was an offer he could not refuse.  Accordingly, he headed home with a little more money than he had expected as a result of the fair.  However, he was now without a ram for his flock for this coming breeding season.  Luckily, he also established some contacts with other breeders at the fair—one in particular from Fillmore County.  When he saw the flock of this Fillmore County Suffolk breeder, he had noticed the heads on a great number of his Suffolk sheep had a good form, a better form than was present in a lot of the lambs born to his flock.  This was one of the favored judging features of Suffolk sheep that he had learned from his experience at the Mower County Fair. 

            In the weeks following the Mower County Fair, our Nevada Township farmer purchased a ram or buck from this Fillmore County Suffolk breeder.  This ram seemed to have a very good “head.”   A good shaped head was the trait that our Nevada Township farmer wished to introduce into his flock.  Our Nevada Township farmer received the registration certificate for the new ram from that breeder.  This was proof that the ram was a registered purebred ram.  Thus, our Nevada Township farmer felt that he was back on track again for the next crop of lambs to be born in March of 1943.  By the simple addition of a new ram to his flock, our Nevada Township farmer would change 50% of the genes of the new 1943 crop of lambs as opposed to the 1942 crop.  This new ram would be the father of the whole crop of lambs born in 1943.  If he ended up breeding the two ewe lambs from the 1942 crop, our Nevada Township farmer would begin to the new ram would be contributing half the genes to the whole crop of lambs.  Thus, the trait of a well-shaped head from the bloodline of the new ram should be plainly evident in new crop of lambs to be born in 1943.  If our Nevada Township farmer did not sell the two new ewe lambs from his 1942 crop of lambs and kept them for his own breeding stock, at least some of their offspring should represent the best features or traits of the old ram and the best features of the new ram.  This crossing of the bloodlines of the Earl Subra bloodlines with the bloodlines of the purebred flock of the Fillmore County breeder line would begin a unique new bloodline.  This bloodline would be the “creation” of our Nevada Township farmer.  This new bloodline would be “his” bloodline.  Accordingly, our Nevada Township farmer would watch the descendents of these two ewe lambs with interest.  Once again, when the new ram arrived on the farm from Fillmore County, our Nevada Township farmer isolated the ram from the ewes of his flock until October, 1942. 

            While his mind and a most of his efforts had been concentrated on the two ewe lambs that he was registering and showing at the fair, all of the unregistered lambs on the farm had also been confined and were confined and were fattened on a feed containing rolled oats and rolled corn.  When they did go to market in August of 1942, his lambs were part of the new record number of 1,840,000 lambs going to market in a single month.  (From USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service monthly records of “Sheep and Lambs Slaughtered Under Federal Inspection found on the Internet.)  Despite the new record number of sheep going to market that price of sheep remained at high levels.  Our Nevada Township farmer received $6.80 per hundred weight for these lambs at the Hormel meat packing plant in Austin.  However, even this was not the high tide.  It seemed that, each new month in 1942 saw another new record in lamb production across the nation.   In September, 2,223,000 lambs came to market and in October of 1942, 2,344,000 lambs were marketed.  (Ibid.)  However, despite this record number of lambs in the market, there was no glut created that might have caused the prices to topple.  With the great amount of government buying of lamb for C-rations for the thousands of troops around the world, sustained the price of lamb throughout 1942.

            The winter of 1942-1943 was one of those “closed” winters with a great deal of snow fall—and it was cold.  The snow accumulation did not come from huge blizzards.  Rather the snow accumulations were the result of a continuous series of small snow falls.  Starting in the middle of December, 1942, and continuing through to middle of February, 1943, there were consistent small storms and cold temperatures.  Along with the snow, the winter of 1942-1943 was cold.  In the middle of January the temperatures reached down to -31°F.  There were no intermittent warm days which might allow for the melting of some of the accumulated snow.  The snow just kept piling up and piling up.  For the whole period between mid-January and mid-February, 1943, there was more than 12 inches of snow on the ground.  Our Nevada Township farmer and his wife were caught in the grips of “cabin fever” after having spent too much time hunkered down on their own farm with no social interaction with the neighbors.  Thus, when an opportunity arose in late February to go to an auction in the neighborhood, both he and his wife attended the auction. 

            It was a warm day with temperatures reached up to 40°F.  The sun was shining down on the glistening snow.  It felt good to get out among people for a while.  At the auction, there was a 1935 tricycle-style Oliver Model 18-27 tractor.  This tractor was usually designated as the Model 18-27 (dual wheel), to distinguish it from the single front-wheeled Hart-Parr/Oliver Model 18-28 tractor—the first row crop tractor that the Oliver Farm Equipment Company had ever produced.  Although this particular Model 18-27 (dual wheel) was already eight (8) years old, our Nevada Township farmer was greatly interested in the tractor.  Nobody had been able to obtain new tractors of farm machinery since the start of the war.  Yet with prices for farm products at record highs, our Nevada Township farmer was desperate to get a tricycle style tractor to modernize his farming operation.  A tricycle-style tractor would allow him to totally convert to mechanized power for all his farming operations.  This included the cultivation of corn—the only field task for which he still used horses.  Ever since he had acquired his Model 28-44 standard four-wheel tractor in 1940, he had greatly reduced the number of horses on his farm.  He had noticed that he did not need to raise as much oats and hay on his farm as in the past.  A tricycle style tractor would allow him to eliminate all horses on his farm. 

            Not only that, but this particular Model 18-27 (dual wheel) was being offered at the auction with Oliver two-row mounted cultivator which belonged to the tractor.  This cultivator would allow him to cultivate his corn two-rows at a time and cultivate taller corn at faster speeds than with the horses.  As he looked over the Model 18-28 (dual wheel), our Nevada Township farmer recognized several features which were similar to his Model 28-44 at home.  Both tractors shared the Donaldson oil-bath air cleaner, and an American Bosch U-4 magneto.  Indeed the Ensign KZ carburetor on the Model 18-28 seemed to be a smaller version of the Ensign K carburetor found on his Model 28-44 at home.  This Model 18-27 (dual wheel) was fitted with steel wheels all round.  The rear steel wheels were the self-cleaning very narrow steel wheels which Oliver advertised as the “Power on Tiptoe” wheels.  The front gangs of the mounted cultivator were attached to a round steel pole that fit through a round hole on the frame of the tractor.  The gangs were then bolted onto this steel pole.  This is how the cultivator was mounted each time the cultivator was put on the tractor. 

            The auction was well-attended and it was clear that many other people were also happy to get out and as the bidding started on the tractor and cultivator, it was also clear that our Nevada Township farmer was not the only person at the sale with the idea of finding a tricycle style tractor to mechanize their farming operation.  Bidding went higher than our Nevada Township farmer had expected.  He stayed with the price as it rose and in the end, he was the owner of the tractor and cultivator.   He used the money he had made from the sale of his lamb crop to pay for the new tractor.  This most recent addition to his farming operation had paid off.  It was the sheep that had allowed his to purchase the tricycle style tractor.  He felt that he had probably paid more for this eight-year old tractor than he should have, but the tractor would mean a real improvement in his farming operation.  He now had a promise of getting his cultivation completed in 1943 much faster than ever in the past.   

            Indeed our Nevada Township farmer held great hopes for the coming growing season of 1943.  No changes appeared evident in the sheep market in the immediate future and he was now not only well-situated to sell lambs to market but also to sell registered purebred stock to breeders.  With the promise not having to feed horses all year around, he would have more acreage to devote to the production of cash crops.  He might be able to plant more corn.  However recently, his attention had been drawn to a new product for his farm which offered more diversification of the family farm income—the soybean.  (Our Nevada township farmer’s foray into soybean raising is contained in next article in this series called “Oliver Farm Equipment [Part II]: Soybeans.)

                                                            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 28^th Street between Cedar Street and Spruce Street.  Despite a petition signed by 85 residents of the neighborhood, objecting to the proposal to close 28^th 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.    

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 16^th 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 28^th 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 20^th 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.

                                                            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 30^th anniversary of the purchase of the P. & O. Company and the 21^st 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.

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.

                                                                            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 whole.  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. 

            However the soybean lacked a lucrative market for itself or any of its many by-products.  Henry Ford set out, in the 1930s, to develop a market for the soybean.  First he sought to make a bio-fuel from soybeans which would power the growing number of automobiles that were starting to populate the nation.  (Robert Lacey, Ford: The Men and the Machine [Little Brown Co. Pub.: Boston, 1986] p. 231.)  Only later, did he and his Ford Company engineers create a plastic from soybeans that could be used in the Ford car.  (Ibid. p. 233.)  In 1937, Ford built a soybean processing plant right on the grounds of the Ford Company Rouge Works factory located on the banks of the Rouge River in Detroit Michigan.  (Ibid.)  Soon, plastics comprised about two pounds of the weight of every Ford car manufactured.  However, the two pounds of plastics in Ford cars were limited to small parts like insulated casings and knobs and buttons on the interior of the car.  (Ibid.)  This was still did not represent a major market for soybeans and their products. 

            Despite all this early attention and product research, the potential of soybeans remained unrealized—a promising product without a real market.  Accordingly, soybeans remained a side line venture in agriculture until the Second World War.  With the United States’ sudden entry into the war, there arose a real demand for clear lightweight plastics products—especially, for windshields and cowlings on military aircraft.  Stimulated by military purchases of airplanes fitted with plastic cowlings and windshields, the price of soybeans soared.  Farmers began planting soybeans in a big way.  The farmers of Blue Earth County followed this trend.  In 1941, the last year before the war, only 3,400 acres of the arable land in the whole of Blue Earth County had been planted to soybeans.  However, in 1942, soybean acreage in the county tripled—reaching 11,100 acres.  By 1945, the acreage devoted to soybeans in Blue Earth County would nearly triple again—up 31,000 acres.  

            Butternut Valley Township along with the other Blue Earth County townships had an advantage in the soybean marketing because of the close proximity of a soybean processing plant in located Mankato, Minnesota (1940 pop. 15,654.)  Mankato is the county seat of Blue Earth County and is only about 25 miles straight east of Butternut Valley Township.  This particular soybean processing plant in Mankato had begun as an idea in the mind of a retired county extension agent, by the name of Riley Lewis.

            Riley Lewis had been persistently extolling the prospects of soybean farming for some years.  He felt the soybean may be the reliable “cash crop” of the future for many farmers in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa.  To aid the development of a market for soybeans, Riley had recently been advocating (to nearly anyone that would listen) that a soybean processing plant be built in the southern Minnesota or northern Iowa area.  In 1938, his idea finally fell upon fertile ground.  Riley was traveling across southeastern Minnesota and stayed a night at a boarding house in Winona, Minnesota.  While there he struck up a conversation with William Blethen, a lawyer from Mankato, Minnesota who was staying at the same boarding house.  William Blethen had traveled to Winona to handle a legal case for a client of his.  William enjoyed the diversion of a pleasant conversation which passed the time that evening after supper.  Not long into the conversation, however, Riley Lewis turned again to his favorite subject.  This time he found a willing listener.  William Blethen was intrigued by the prospects of soybeans as described by Riley.  Soybeans could become a marketable cash crop, and William was persuaded that a soybean processing plant could spur development of a market for soybeans.  William Blethen, however, felt the best location for such a processing plant was his own home town of Mankato, Minnesota. 

            Consequently, upon his return to Mankato, he began to recruit investors for the project of building soybean processing plant in Mankato.  Soon he had a group of investors willing to invest $50,000 as initial startup capital for the project.  The first $7,500 of this initial capital was directed toward the purchase of the old abandoned Minnesota Pipe and Tile Company site located on the west edge of Mankato along the east bank of the Blue Earth River, at the mouth of that river, where it emptied into the meandering Minnesota River.  Thus in 1939, the new processing plant was opened under the name, Mankato Soybean Products, Incorporated.  Riley Lewis was hired by the newly-formed company to be the first plant manager.  In 1941, Ed Ober, replaced Riley Lewis as general manager of the soybean plant.  So weak was the market for soybeans during these years that the soybean plant did not make a profit.  However, shortly after becoming general manager, Ed Ober, hired Fran Bergemann.  Fran Bergemann was key to the early profitability of the new company—because he developed a flax-processing capability at the plant.  Only with this flax processing ability did the plant finally begin to make a profit.  It was another sign that the market for soybeans had not yet matured.     

            News of the new soybean processing plant was carried in all the local newspapers of western Blue Earth County.  One of these newspapers was the weekly Lake Crystal Tribune.  Based in the town of Lake Crystal, Minnesota, (1940 pop. 1,319), this paper was published and mailed to subscribers in and around Lake Crystal such that the newspaper would be post boxes of many farmers of the community on Thursday each week.  One such rural post office box was at the end of a long driveway leading to the farm of one particular farmer in Butternut Valley Township located eight (8) miles north and west of Lake Crystal. 

            Our Butternut Valley Township farmer and his wife farmed one of the ubiquitous 160 acre farms that were spread all over the southern Minnesota.  He and his wife had lived on this farm since they were married in 1919.  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 to feed their horses and chickens.  Their largest crop, however, 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.  He also raised hay which he fed to the cattle. 

            Until recently they had been assisted in farming the land by their four boys.  However, all the boys had grown up and left the farm.  Two of them were now in the military in the Pacific.  One had become a Naval pilot and the other was a sailor in the Navy.  His wife worried incessantly over the two sons away at the war.  However, now, in the early spring of 1943, it was, once again, just he and his wife on the farm, the way it was when they were first married, except now he was older than he had been in 1919.  Accordingly, he was looking for a way to ease his workload on the farm. 

            Earlier, he had farmed exclusively with horses as a source of power on the farm.  However, in 1937, he  purchased a used 1929 Farmall to modernize his farming operation.  (These pre-1932 Farmalls were now being called “Regular Farmalls” to distinguish them from the newer more modern post-1932 Farmall Model F-20 tractors.)  Because of the Famall Regular, he had been able to get rid of some of his horses.  While his boys had been home they had loved operating the Regular in the fields during the summer.  He had kept some of the horses on the farm because he felt that, he and his sons might be able to work in the fields simultaneously with both the Regular and the horses.  As his sons left the farm, one by one, he had begun using the Regular on a more frequent basis to do all the farm work.  However, in the spring of 1940, he had an experience which indicated to him that a new tractor could ease his work on the farm even more.

            In the spring of that year, a neighbor became ill with pneumonia.  He was bed ridden for a number of days right in the midst of spring-time field work.  All the neighbors banded together and pitched in to help their ill neighbor with the field work.  Being the neighbor living the closest to the ill neighbor, however, it was not surprising that most of the work fell on our Butternut Valley Township farmer.  As a consequence, our Butternut Valley Township farmer was able to use his neighbor’s brand new rubber-tired Farmall H tractor.  As a means of repayment to our Butternut Valley Township farmer for all the help, the bed-ridden neighbor urged our Butternut Valley Township farmer to use the Farmall H on his own farm as well.  Using his neighbor’s tractor during this time, our Butternut Valley Township came to appreciate the electric start and the rubber tires on the tractor as he drove the tractor back and forth, to and from the neighbor’s farm over this period of time.  Rubber tires in the front and the back of the Model H allowed him to use the 16 3/8 mph road speed on the tractor.  So he could make the trip down the road in a very short amount of time. 

            He came to appreciate all the new features of the Model H in that spring of 1940.  Discing of plowed ground with the Regular had always been a rough task.  As the steel wheels of the Regular rolled over the rough plowed ground the steering wheel was always trying to break loose from his grip and spin wildly out of control.  Both the steel wheels on the front of the Regular and the bevel-gear and sector-plate style of steering of the Regular transferred every shock directly to the steering wheel.  However, the rubber tires on the front and the worm gear type of steering of the Farmall H greatly reduced this need to fight the steering wheel while discing the plowed ground.    

            The first time over the rough plowed ground, our Butternut Valley Township farmer could proceed no faster than second gear at 3½ miles per hour (mph).  On the second time over the field with the disc, our Butternut Township farmer drove the tractor and disc in a diagonal pattern across the field.  Even though, the contour of the furrows had been blunted somewhat by the lengthwise discing of the field the first time, the steering wheel still jerked one way then the other with each furrow the front wheels rolled over on this diagonal discing pattern.  On the third pass over the field with the disc, he pulled the disc in the opposite diagonal pattern.  Finally, the ground was getting smoother and the furrows were not evident any more.  He could now shift up to third gear and pull the disc across the ground at 4¼ mph. 

            It had been a fairly dry spring in 1940, thus, three times over the field with the disc and he was ready to use the drag harrow to finish the seed bed.  Dragging the seed bed could be done in fourth gear at a speed of 5-1/8 mph with the Model H.  Thus, he completed the seed bed preparation much faster than he ever had done in the past.  He would never have been able to complete so much field work so fast with his Regular. 

            Additionally, he could work longer hours in the field, if it were needed.  The electric lights on the front and back of the Model H allowed him to work in the field after sunset to complete the field work.  Sometimes when rain was threatening, he felt the needed to work late into the evening to get some field work done before the rains came.  He enlisted his wife to finish the evening chores in the barn, while he continued to work in the field with the Model H.  After sunset he turned on the lights of the tractor to work a while longer.  The faster working speeds and the electric lights allowed him to “beat the rain.”  The Model H made field work easier and more efficient.  

            Consequently, following his experience with his neighbor’s Model H, every time he and his wife went to New Ulm to do some shopping, he would find himself wandering into the his local International Harvester Company (IHC) dealer—the Fesenmaier Hardware and Implement Dealership.  New Ulm, Minnesota was the county seat of Brown County Minnesota.  Both as a larger town (1940 pop. 8,743) which offered wider variety of stores for shopping than the nearby Lake Crystal and as a closer destination (located about 15 miles north and west of their farm) than was Mankato, Minnesota (located 25 miles to the east), New Ulm was one of their favorite shopping areas.  While at Fesenmaier’s  our Butternut Valley Township farmer casually inquired as to the possibility of purchasing a Model H Farmall.     

            The Fesenmaier Hardware Dealership was one of the oldest dealerships in the state of Minnesota.  Robert Fesenmaier began work, in the 1890s, as an employee of the Klossner and Miller hardware store located at the corner of Minnesota Street and 2^nd Street South in New Ulm.  When Louis Miller suddenly died in 1897, the young 30-year old Robert Fesenmaier and his wife, Agnes (Siedo) Fesenmaier purchased the interest of the deceased partner.  Later, in 1900, Robert purchased the interest of the retiring Jacob Klossner.  Now, that he had all the stock of the hardware in his own name, Robert moved the location of the hardware business two and a half blocks north to a building located at 13 North Minnesota Street and changed the name of the business to “Fesenmaier Hardware.”    Robert Fesenmaier wanted to expand his business into the promising market of the sales of farm equipment.  Accordingly, Robert Fesenmaier purchased the building across the alley behind the new hardware location.  This other building bore the address of 18 North Broadway Street and became the home of farm equipment sales portion of the new business.  In 1901, Robert Fesenmaier began selling McCormick grain binders.  One year later on August 12, 1902, the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company merged with the Deering Harvester Company and a series of other farm equipment companies to form the International Harvester Company (IHC).  From this beginning IHC soon became the leading “full line” farm equipment manufacturing company.  In New Ulm, Robert Fesenmaier’s new grain binder dealership blossomed into a dealership offering a wide range of IHC farm equipment.  Now in 1940, he was busy trying to sell the new Farmall “letter-series” tractors to the farming public of Brown County. 

            The International Harvester Company had introduced the new streamlined “letter series” Farmall tractors (the Models A, B, H and M) to replace the “unstyled” Model F-12, F-20 and F-30 tractors on July 3, 1939.  The letter-series tractors were completely new tractors re-designed from the ground up.  Although it appeared that the Model H was intended to replace the mid-range F-20 tractor and the Model M was intended to replace the F-30 tractor, both the Model H and the Model M inherited more from the design of the small F-12 tractor than they did from either the F-20 or the F-30 tractor.  (Guy Fay and Andy Kraushaar, Farmall Letter Series Tractors [MBI Publishing Company: Osceola, Wisc., 1998] p. 59.)  Foremost in this regard was the design change made to the rear end of the new tractors.  The final drives of the F-20 amd F-30 were eliminated in the letter series tractors.  This allowed the rear wheels of the Model H and Model M to be adjusted to a wide variety of wheel spacings for use in crops of any row widths. 

            Robert Fesenmaier soon discovered that the two-plow Farmall Model H was the most popular tractor in the new letter series.  Nationwide 10,151 Model H tractors were built and sold in 1939. 

            Our Butternut Valley Township farmer had, of course, been aware of the new “letter-series” Farmall tractors ever since their introduction on July 3, 1939.  Indeed, he had seen an ever-increasing number of these sleek, new “styled” letter-series tractors at work in the fields of his neighbors.  Most of these new tractors in his neighbors’ fields were two-plow Farmall Model H tractors.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer had heard many of his neighbors express fears that the larger three-plow Farmall Model M tractor would be too much like the F-30.  The fear was that the Model M would be too bulky and hard to handle.  Additionally, his neighbors feared that the Famall M was also hard on gas. 

            These complaints seemed perfectly logical.  After all, the Farmall M appeared to be the direct successor of the three-plow Farmall F-30 tractor.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer knew first-hand about  the F-30 tractor.  He and his neighbors belonged to a neighborhood threshing ring and cooperated every year to thresh their oats and wheat.  This was an occasion during which farmers would often drive other tractors that belonged to their neighbors.  During one threshing season he had opportunity to operate a Farmall F-30 tractor that belonged to one of his neighbors.  This experience had not only convinced our Butternut Valley Township farmer about the bulkiness of the F-30, but had shown him how “thirsty” the F-30 was.  It seemed as though he was always filling the gas tank of the F-30.  In the mind of our Butternut Valley Township farmer, it stood to reason that the three-plow Farmall M would share these characteristics of the three-plow F-30 tractor.  Accordingly, our Butternut Valley Township farmer was never inclined toward considering a three-plow Farmall Model M, but, rather, always had his mind fixed on the two-plow Farmall H. 

            Our Butternut Valley Township farmer was strongly tempted to purchase a new Farmall Model H tractor in 1940.  As he stood in Fesenmaier’s dealership in late 1940, IHC was already well on its way toward manufacturing some 41,734 Model H tractors at the Farmall Works factory located in Rock Island, Illinois.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer had harvested a bumper corn crop in 1939.  However, the rest of the country had also enjoyed a bumper crop.  Accordingly, when this corn came to market in February of 1940, the price of corn fell to only 62¢ per bushel.  Consequently, our Butternut Valley Township farmer felt insecure about taking the risk of purchasing a new tractor at the time and so put off the purchase of a new tractor until another year.  It was a decision that he would come to regret because conditions in the world were changing, rapidly. 

            Just after Christmas of 1940, on December 29, our Butternut Valley Township farmer and his wife listened to President Franklin Roosevelt delivered a speech which since that time had became known as the “Arsenal of Democracy” speech.  In the speech, the President asked for sacrifices on the part of the United States citizens to produce arms and ordinance for Britain, and China in their fight against the totalitarian governments of Germany, Italy and Japan.  At the time he heard the speech, our Butternut Valley Township farmer was not cognizant of the full implications of this speech.  However, as the new year (1941) progressed, the full impact of the speech became clear. 

            During his visits to the Fesenmaier Hardware Dealership in 1941, he saw far fewer new tractors and new farm machinery in the inventory of the dealership.  He learned that dealership was finding it hard to obtain farm equipment and farm tractors from the International Harvester Company district warehouse or “block house” facility located at 426 North Front Street in Mankato because IHC as a whole was being restricted in the amount of equipment they were allowed to make.  Industrial raw materials, such as iron ore and, especially, rubber for civilian use were being severely restricted, by the United States government and these products were channeled into military production to supply Britain and China in the war.  This meant that there was precious little in the way of new farm implements that would be available for sale to individual farmers.  Bad as the situation was in 1941, it soon became worse. 

            On December 7, 1941, the United States suddenly found itself at war.  New farm machinery, which had been difficult to obtain, now became impossible to obtain as raw materials were restricted even more for use in military production.  Industrial factories all across the nation were re-tooled for military production.  The International Harvester Company, for example, was busily producing military trucks, tanks, gun carriages, automatic aircraft cannons, anti-aircraft gun loaders, tank transmissions, torpedoes and much more.  (Barbara Marsh, A Corporate Tragedy: The Agony of International Harvester [Doubleday and Co. Pub.: Garden City, N.Y., 1985] p. 71.)  Production of Model H tractors had already sustained a 2.1% drop in production in 1941, but in 1942 production of Model H tractors was decreased by another 29.4%.  Furthermore, what few Farmall Model H tractors that were being manufactured at the Farmall Works were being fitted with steel wheels front and rear and, commonly, did not have electric lights, electric starting nor did these tractors have the “lift all” hydraulic system.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer was less inclined to purchase one of these Farmall H tractors.  He realized that the lack rubber tires and the lack of electric starting on the Model H would severely limit the advantages of the new Model H over his present Farmall Regular.  Top speed of the steel wheeled Model H would be confined to fourth gear—5-1/8 mph and although the Model H would be furnished with the worm gear type of steering, the steel wheels on the front of the Famall H would reduce steadiness and effectiveness of the steering of the tractor on rough ground. 

            The sales staff at Fesenmaier Hardware offered to place our Butternut Valley Township farmer’s name on a list of buyers the dealership was compiling.  Dealerships all across the United States had been authorized by IHC  to put the names of potential tractor buyers on a list in chronological order, according to the date of their request.  As the tractors trickled into the dealership, the individual tractors would be offered to the buyers on the list, starting at the top of the list.  If the buyer rejected the offer when the tractor arrived at the dealership, the tractor the tractor would then be offered to the next buyer on the list.  In this way the dealership would work its way down the list as the tractors came in to the dealership.  Meanwhile, new buyers who came into the dealership wanting to buy a tractor would be added to the bottom of the list.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer, however, rejected the offer to be placed on the list of buyers at this particular time.  A Farmall H tractors fitted with steel wheels and without electric starting would be little better that the Regular he already owned.  Accordingly, the decision to purchase a new tractor was once again deferred.  His attention now was being drawn in another direction as a means of improving his farming operation.  

            Our Butternut Valley Township farmer had been following the development of the soybean market and the establishment of the processing plant in Mankato.  He knew that the building of the processing plant would make it easier to market soybeans.  However, he remained uninspired about the prospect of growing soybeans as a cash crop until 1941, when the price of soybeans suddenly rose from its 1940 average price of $.89 per bushel to an average price of $1.55 per bushel for the entire year in 1941—a 74.2% increase in the price in just one year.  This startling increase in price definitely captured the attention of our Butternut Valley Township farmer.  Accordingly, in the spring of 1942, our Butternut Valley Township farmer planted one of his smaller fields to soybeans. 

            While corn could be planted when the soil temperatures reached 50º to 55ºF, soybeans were should be planted only when the soil had reached a temperature of 55º to 60ºF.  Accordingly, soybeans were traditionally planted only after the corn had been planted on diversified farms.  The spring of 1942 was warm and presented no problems about soil temperatures.  However, because of the frequent spring rains in 1942, our Butternut Valley Township farmer was delayed in getting into the field only by the need to let the soil dry out. 

            Since soybeans needed to be planted in rows, he used his McCormick-Deering two-row corn planter to plant the soybeans.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer had shortened the tongue of the corn planter to convert the planter from a horse-drawn implement into a planter that could be pulled behind his Farmall Regular.  Unlike corn, which was planted in “hills” of three or four seeds per hill, along the row, soybeans were “drilled” into the rows in a long continuous stream.  Accordingly, our Butternut Valley Township farmer adjusted both planting units on his planter for drilling seed rather than “check” style planting that he had used to plant his corn.  However, he also needed to replace the round planter plates at bottom of the two seed containers on his planter.  Accordingly, in the early spring of 1942, our Butternut Valley Township farmer purchased these two “soybean” planter plates from Fesenmaier Hardware. 

            Our Butternut Valley Township farmer was not alone in his decision to plant soybeans in the spring of 1942.  The number of acres planted to soybeans in Blue Earth County increased from a mere 3,400 acres in 1941 to 11,100 acres in 1942.  From planting to harvest, soybeans need 120 days for a full growing season.  Mature soybeans grow to a height of about 36 inches.  The growing season of 1942 was glorious for soybeans.  With just the right amount of rain and under the bright sun all summer, temperatures stayed within a range of 68° to 86°F—the ideal temperature range for growing soybeans—the soybeans thrived in 1942. 

            Because the soybeans were a row crop, they could be cultivated lengthwise.  However, because the soybeans were drilled into rows rather than spaced out in hills along the rows like corn, soybeans could not be “cross cultivated.”  In order to remove those weeds that were growing up within the rows of soybeans, our Butternut Valley Township farmer would “walk the beans” in the summer with a hoe and chop out the weeds that were missed by the cultivator.  Ordinarily this might have been the task of the young children of the family.  However, all his children had moved off the farm.  Consequently, he hired on some of the younger members of the Butternut Valley Boosters, the local township 4-H club, to walk the beans with him.  However, when the soybeans reach a height of 15 to 18 inches in about mid-July the flowering of the soybeans begins.  At this stage the soybean plants had be begun to bush out and narrow the pathway between the rows.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer knew that he should be done with his cultivating by this time.  Driving the Regular and cultivator through the soybeans at this stage of growth would unduly disturb the soybeans and knock off the purple colored flowers.  Less flowers would mean less soybean pods and less yield during the harvest in the fall.  As the soybeans continued to grow and they reached their full mature height of 36 inches in August, they would totally obscure the pathway between the rows.  At this stage, our Butternut Valley Township farmer knew that even walking the beans was counter productive because of the flowers and newly formed, still developing fuzzy little seed pods that might be knocked off by a person passing between the rows.  Besides with soybeans totally shading the whole pathway between the rows, weeds had no sunlight to start growing at all.  Better to stop all walking of the soybeans at this stage and stay out of the fields altogether until harvest. 

            Thanks to the magnificent growing season in 1942, our Butternut Valley Township farmer, harvested a bumper crop of soybeans on his farm.  Indeed, the average soybean yield for all of Blue Earth County set a new record of 19 bushels per acre.  (From the National Agricultural Statistics Service page on the United States Department of Agriculture website.)  Production of soybeans in 1942 in Blue Earth County mushroomed to 210,900 bushels, almost four times the production of 1941—54,400 bushels.  Nationwide the 1942 soybean crop was also a bumper crop for soybeans.  Production of soybeans rose by 57% in just one short year (from 107,197,000 bushels in 1941 to 187,524,000 bushels in 1942).  Still despite this huge glut of soybeans coming onto the market in the fall of 1942 there was no decrease in the price of soybeans.  Indeed, so strong was the wartime demand for soybean products, that the average price of soybeans continued to rise.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer received $1.60 per bushel for his soybeans in the fall of 1942. 

            The soybean was quickly becoming an important cash crop on the farm of our Butternut Valley Township farmer.  Still, corn remained the ace in his diversified farming operation—the first and primary cash crop on the farm.  Just like his soybean crop, the corn crop of 1942 was also a bumper crop.  Blue Earth County set a new record for the production of corn in 1942, with 6,484,400 bushels produced that year.  The average county-wide crop yield of corn in 1942 for Blue Earth County reached 52 bushels of corn per acre—also setting a new record for the second year in a row.  Nor was Blue Earth County an exception in this regard.  As with soybeans, the bumper crop in corn was also a nation-wide phenomenon.  Nationwide corn production reached 2.8 billion bushels.  Unlike soybeans, which are usually dry enough to be marketed straight from the field following harvest, corn cannot be sold directly from the field following harvest.  Corn must be dried first.  The ear corn needed to be stored on the farm in corn cribs to allow the cold dry air of winter to dry the corn. 

            The corn harvest in the fall of 1942 had been so large that our Butternut Valley Township farmer was hard pressed to store all the ear corn from the field.  He had corn stored every where on his farm.  The double corn crib was filled to the eaves.  He piled corn in the alley way of this corn crib.  He would have to find somewhere else to store the wagon and other machinery that he usually kept in the alleyway.  His cylindrical wire mesh Siebring Manufacturing Company corn crib was full to the top and he also had constructed a temporary corn crib made from his two wooden slatted “snow fences” unrolled with the ends wired securely together to form a circular storage crib for the ear corn.  Then a canvas tarp was placed over the top of this temporary corn crib to keep rain off the corn. 

            The ear corn picked by our Butternut Valley Township farmer was harvested in the fall of 1942 and spent the winter of 1942-43 drying “on the ear” in the corn crib.  For drying ear corn the weather of the winter of 1942-43 was almost perfect.  The winter was colder than normal with some temperatures reaching down to -31°F below zero.  Cold air is dry air and the colder the drier. 

            The corn was to be shelled in the early 1943.  However, not only was the winter of 1942-1943 very cold, it was also was also a “closed” winter with about 14 inches of snow covering the ground for most of the winter.  The deep snow accumulations made it difficult to get around the yard.  Consequently, our Butternut Valley Township farmer was forced to delay shelling the ear corn until a sudden warm spell in mid-to-late February melted the snow.  Saving out only the shelled corn that he needed for feed for the animals on his farm, our Butternut Valley Township farmer sold the rest of the corn to the grain elevator in Lake Crystal, Minnesota.  As the bumper crop of corn from across the nation began hitting the market in early 1943, everyone expected the price of corn to decline precipitously.  This might have happened in a normal year.  However this was not a normal year.  The United States was at war and the strong demand for corn created by military buying to feed the large armies in Europe and the Pacific kept the price of corn high.  The price of corn actually rose despite the glut of corn coming onto the market.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer received a price of $1.06 per bushel for his corn.  This relatively high price had not been seen since September of 1937.  For our Butternut Valley Township farmer as for farmers across the nation, this was an ideal situation—a relatively high market price and plenty of crop to sell at that price.  (In the following months, however, our Butternut Valley Township farmer wished that he had more corn to sell.  Despite the glut of corn coming onto the market, the price kept on rising, reaching $1.11 per bushel as an average for the month of March, $1.13 for April and $1.15 for the months of May and June, 1943.) 

            As he reflected back on the previous year, our Butternut Valley Township farmer realized that, now with two row crops instead of one, he would be spending more time in the fields in the summer cultivating his row crops.  Cultivating the row crops was a time consuming task in the summer.  Our Butternut Valley Township farmer knew that a modern farm tractor with hydraulics, electric starting, electric lights and rubber tires would greatly increase the speed with which he could cultivate his row crops and reduce the time he would spend in the fields each summer.  Consequently, he began to think seriously about obtaining a new, more modern farm tractor to upgrade his farming operation.

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. 

            Based on the contracts from farm equipment manufacturers, F.& H. came dominate the market for rims for pneumatic rubber tires.  This position of dominance was inherited by F.& H.  Prior to the introduction of rubber tires on farm equipment, the French and Hecht Company had also dominated the steel wheel market.  F.& H. all-steel wheels with the familiar “round spokes” were installed on wagons, threshers, hay loaders, sulky plows and other farm equipment. 

            The F.& H. Company inherited the basic design of the all-steel wheel itself.  In the beginning, the all-steel wheel was known as the “Bettendorf  steel wheel” which originally had been the brain child of William Bettendorf.  Thus, our story does not begin with a person named “French” or “Hecht.”  Rather our story actually begins with two men named Bettendorf—William Bettendorf and his brother Joseph W. Bettendorf.  William P. Bettendorf had been born to German immigrant parents—Michael and Catherine (Reck) Bettendorf—in Mendota, Illinois, on July 1, 1857.  William’s father, Michael Bettendorf, had arrived in the United States at the age of 16 years with his parents (William’s grandparents) in 1853.  In about 1856, Michael had married Catherine Reck, whose family had come over from the Prussian part of the German Confederation in 1846.  The couple settled in Mendota, Illinois, where Michael found work as a school teacher.  William P. Bettendorf was the couple’s first born child.  Later, the young family moved to Sedalia, Missouri, where Michael operated a grocery store.  In 1864, the family moved again to Leavenworth, Kansas, where Michael worked as a clerk for the United States government in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  While at Leavenworth, a second son, Joseph W. Bettendorf was born to the family on October 10, 1864. 

            Young William began to become independent at a very early age.  In 1870 he became a telegraph messenger in Humboldt, Kansas.   He also worked as a clerk for the G.Y. Smith Boot and Shoe Store.  In 1872, at the age of 15 years, William moved back to Illinois, accepting a job working in a “dry goods” or hardware store owned by A. L. Shepard located in Peru, Illinois.  In the following year, 1873, William’s parents and brother also moved back to Illinois, to taking up farming near Peru.   

            Even while working as an apprentice at Shepherd’s dry good store, William Bettendorf, began to show a startling mechanical ability.  One day at the dry goods store William found a drawer full of knives.  The knives had been placed in the drawer because they were regarded as “un-saleable.”  William fashioned a buffing wheel and attached it to a sewing machine.  With this apparatus, William buffed all the knives in the drawer and soon had all the knives polished and ready for sale again.    

            The same mechanical ability that had led him to build this buffing machine proved to be William’s true calling.  Accordingly, he became apprenticed to the Brunner Foundry and Machine Shop in Peru.  Following this apprenticeship, William became a machinist working for the Peru Plow Company.  In 1878, while working for Peru Plow and while still only 21 years of age, William invented a power-lift mechanism for a sulky plow by attaching a ratchet to the hub of the wheel of a sulky plow.  The power lift mechanism was connected to the plow bottoms and allowed the operator to merely touch a control latch to allow the wheel of the plow to pull the plow bottoms out of the ground at the end of the field.  This was a very handy invention that permitted the sulky plow operator to remain in his seat while lifting the plow bottoms.  Soon this labor-saving improvement was adopted by nearly all the major plow manufacturers and became universally employed on horse plows and, later, on tractor-drawn trailing plows. 

            A year, later in 1879, the up and coming inventor married Mary Wortman, the 21 year-old daughter of John and Henrietta Wortman of Peru, Illinois.  In 1880, William went to work as a foreman in the factory of the Moline Plow Company located in Moline, Illinois.  Later he worked for another plow company—the Parlin & Orendorff (P. & O.) Company of Canton, Illinois.  By 1882, William was back in the employ of Peru Plow, this time in the position of superintendent. 

            At about this time, another idea began floating around in the back of William’s very creative mind.  William thought of a re-design of the simple wooden wagon wheel.  William’s idea was to make the wheel of metal and to drill sockets in the hub of the traditional wagon wheel and attach the spokes to the hub by firmly fixing each spoke in its respective socket on the hub.  William built the first of these metal wheels in 1884.  By 1887, he had obtained a patent for this wheel in his own name.  Peru Plow began mass production of the William’s wheel even while the patent was still pending.  This wheel and later variations of it were known as the “Betterndorf” wheel.  Interest in the strong, new, Bettendorf wheel mushroomed as other farm manufacturers began to submit large orders for the wheel.  So impressed was the company with the prospects for the new metal wheel, that the company changed its own name to the Peru Plow and Wheel Company. 

            William saw that the production facilities of the Peru Plow Company were insufficient to keep up with the skyrocketing demand for the metal wheel.  William continued to draw attention to this problem.  However, the Peru Plow Company was unwilling to undertake any expansion of their manufacturing facilities.  At the same time, they refused all of William’s suggestions that the metal wheel operation be spun off into an independent corporate concern.  Accordingly, William eventually, was forced to take his patent and leave Peru Plow to start a company of his own to manufacture his metal wheel. 

            Needing capital to start his new business venture, William, as a second generation German-American, turned to the German Savings Bank in nearby Davenport, Iowa.  C.M. Voss and L.P. Best of German Savings, were known for favoring corporate projects of German-Americans of the Davenport community.  As part of a financing package, German Savings Bank put William Bettendorf in contact with E. P. Lynch, one of the owners of the Eagle Manufacturing Company.  E. P. Lynch was interested in investing in the new business enterprise with his own money.  Additionally, he put William Bettendorf in contact with George H. French, the current president and original founder of the Eagle Manufacturing Company.  At the suggestion of E. P. Lynch, George H. French and both of his sons Nathaniel and George Watson French provided part of the initial startup capital for the new company.  Both of the French sons would later become very closely associated with the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company.  Currently, however, they arranged for the new company to rent factory space called “the old Donahue factory” in Davenport, which was currently owned by the Eagle Manufacturing Company.  The old Donahue factory is situated on the banks of the Mississippi River at the corner of Front (now River Street) and Ripley Streets in Davenport, Iowa.  Thus, on September 12, 1886, William P. Bettendorf officially opened the doors of his own new company under the name the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company at the old Donahue factory.  He and his family moved to Davenport, Iowa and settled in a house located at 402 E. 6^th Street in Davenport. 

            It was a glorious time in the prosperous up and coming river town of Davenport, Iowa.  (The optimism of Iowa during this time is captured in the 1962 movie, The Music Man.)  Being located on the banks of the Mississippi River, Davenport was on the border between the state of Iowa and the state of Illinois.  Directly across the river, from Davenport were the towns of Moline and Rock Island, Illinois.  During this time, Davenport, Moline and Rock Island were gradually becoming integrated into a single economic unit.  On August 8, 1888, a group of Chicago investors bought out the street car lines of Davenport, Iowa, Moline and Rock Island Illinois.  This new street car organization then built a bridge across the Mississippi River from Davenport to Rock Island which accommodated the rails of the street cars.  Accordingly, the street car lines of all three cities were then physically linked together.  On Christmas Day 1888, the first street car ran across the bridge connecting Davenport and Rock Island.  By this physical connection the three cities took another long step toward becoming a single economic entity.  

            The 1880s may have been an optimistic time, however, even in the best of times isolated adverse economic incidents can occur.  Witness the “run” on the German Savings Bank which began in late 1886, almost the same time William P. Bettendorf opened the doors of his new company.  Patrons of the bank began withdrawing their funds from the bank.  The “run” continued until November 26, 1888 and severely weakened the bank’s largest corporate customers, including the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company.  Without the help of their bank, the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company was driven into the arms of the French brothers.  The French brothers were called upon to put up more capital or to arrange for new investors and they did so, increasing their own share of ownership in the Bettendorf Wheel Company.      

            Still the Bettendorf all-metal wheel remained a very popular sales item.  Sales continued to flourish.  The company’s main problem was to expand its manufacturing base to keep up with the rising demand.  In 1890, the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company opened another factory works in Springfield, Ohio, just to keep up with the growing demand for all-metal wheels.  In 1888, William’s younger brother, Joseph W. Bettendorf joined the business as superintendent.  With the opening of the new factory works in Springfield, Ohio, Joseph became “President” in charge over the new factory in Springfield.  However, even with the new Springfield facility, continuing growth in the sales of the Bettendorf metal wheel, forced the company to obtain a still larger manufacturing base.  Accordingly, the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company sought to expand their main factory in Davenport.  Thus, in 1889, the Company moved its Davenport works to new larger facilities located a few blocks away at 4^th and Farnam Streets in Davenport.  These new facilities were, now, the largest factory works in Davenport, Iowa. 

            At about this time, William developed an all-steel wagon gear which incorporated many new ideas that sprang from his mind.  The new all-steel wagon gear also proved to be a sales success.  Flushed with  excitement and success over sales of the new all-metal wagon gear, William and Joseph sent an excited prospectus out to all the other investors in their company which outlined new business directions in which William and Joseph wished to take the company.  These plans alarmed the more conservative investors, including the French brothers, who wished to start reaping the dividends of the success of the all-metal wheel rather than seeing the profits plowed back into new corporate adventures.  Especially, in light of the recent expansions of the company, the investors on the board were now much more cautious. Accordingly, the board imposed controls on William’s ability run the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company.  Conflict arose between William Bettendorf and the board.  The board, controlled in large part by the French brothers, sought to protect their interests. 

            Hoping to appease the Board, William stepped down as president of the company, but he installed his brother, Joseph W. Bettendorf, as his successor.  The Board continued to be suspicious because William retained a position as vice-president in the company.  The board and the French family were not satisfied with this arrangement.  In 1889, George Watson French and a majority of the board of directors demanded that Nathaniel French be installed as a Vice President of the Bettendorf Wheel Company to protect the interests of the board in the day-to-day management of the company.  Thus, the French brothers began to participate in the day-to-day affairs of the company.   

            In 1890, the Bettendorf Wheel Company was officially incorporated in the State of Iowa as a legal corporation with $1,000,000 of initial capital.  William was bubbling over with ideas.  However, he knew that, the present board of the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company would surely not agree to these risky new endeavors.  Consequently in 1892, William resigned his position as vice–president in the company and sold a substantial part of his own interest in the company to Nathaniel and John Watson French.  William also sold the numerous patents he owned on the Bettendorf wheel and the Bettendorf all-metal wagon gear to the French brothers. 

            On May 1, 1893, the Columbian Exposition in Chicago (nick-named the “Chicago World’s Fair”) opened.  The Bettendorf all-metal wagon gear was exhibited at the 1893 Fair and created a sensation.  However, even by the time that the World’s Fair had opened, William had already made up his mind that he would have form a new corporate entity.  In that same year, (1893), William’s brother, Joseph W. Betttendorf left the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company and joined his brother in the new venture. 

            On January 1, 1895, William and his brother Joseph P. Bettendorf organized another separate corporate entity called the Bettendorf Hollow Steel Axle Company which made axles for wagons.  The new corporation occupied factory space at Scott and Ripley Streets in Davenport to produce the wagon axles.  The primary customer of the new company was the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company, (now under the control of the French brothers).  Despite their disagreements about corporate strategy, the French brothers, nonetheless, found that the “hollow axle,” made by William’s new company, was an ideal axle for the all-metal wagon gear the French Brothers were now producing.  

            William was enthusiastic about the promising future of his new company.  William’s new company was established as a corporation with publicly traded stock.  This meant that shares of ownership in the corporation would be sold to the public and then the shares were generally resold innumerable times on a public stock exchange—perhaps the New York Stock Exchange.  The pool of investors would be much larger and, as a rule, each individual investor would usually own much less than 1% of the total corporation.  With such a large pool of investors and considering the frequent buying and selling of the company stock on the public exchange, any stockholder opposition to William’s business plans would be would be hard to organize.  Given this situation, William P. Bettendorf expected that he would have far less interference from the investors than he had experienced with the small number of investors in the “privately held” Bettendorf Wheel Company.  Thus, William Bettendorf felt he would, finally, have the freedom to pursue his dreams and innovations in this new corporate setting. 

            Starting in 1897, the new company started selling wagon axles to many wagon companies.  The French brothers were no longer the primary customer of the new company.  However, William Bettendorf’s vision for the company was much wider than a mere vehicle for the manufacture of farm wagon axles.  William was aware that, by the 1890s, the farm wagon market was a limited market.  On the other hand, the new and growing railroad industry seemed limitless.  He felt that he would have a more promising future by making axles for the railroads rather than making axles for farm wagons.

            While studying railroad axles, William Bettendorf became aware that there was a strong need among the railroads for a better-designed side-truck frame.   The side-truck frame was the wheeled unit located at either end of a typical railroad car.  Each side-truck frame contained two axles and four railroad wheels.  At the turn of the 20^th Century, the side truck frame in use, typically, consisted of as many as 41 separate pieces of metal which were bolted together.  In operation, these pieces could sometimes accidentally become un-bolded due to vibration.  Once sufficiently unbolted the side-truck frame could easily fall apart and cause a derailment of a train.  William, saw this problem as an opportunity for his new company.  He began working on a design for a new cast-iron side-truck frame for railroad cars as early as 1894.  William Bettendorf attempted to design a side truck frame with many fewer parts.  Indeed, he, eventually, designed a side-truck frame which consisted of only a single piece.  The single-piece design of the side-truck frame would result in a much safer railroad car which would stand up to vibration.    

            In 1899, the Bettendorf Hollow Axle Company started mass production of William’s single-piece side truck frame.  The single-piece side truck frame was a great success and sales of the single-piece side-truck frame propelled the Bettendorf Hollow Axle Company to success and made the fortunes of the Bettendorf families.  By January of 1902 the Bettendorf Hollow Axle Company was employing 400 workers on its day shift and 300 on its night shift. 

            Just when all seemed to moving smoothly for the Company a fire broke out at company’s factory.  The fire, which started at about 12:50 PM in the afternoon of January 28, 1902, eventually caused $200,000 of damage to the company facilities.  William Bettendorf tried to rebuild.  However, another fire occurred a mere three (3) months later on May 1, 1902, causing an additional $250,000 worth of financial loss to the Company.  William was convinced that he needed to move his company out of the crowded riverfront area of Davenport.  Consequently, the Bettendorf Axle Company moved out of Davenport, altogether, and relocated its facilities on a 60-acre site in the “Gilberttown District,” located a few miles to the east of Davenport.   

            The people of the Gilberttown community were so thankful for th new large corporate employer that had moved into their small unincorporated community, that on June 5, 1903 the citizens of the Gilberttown District chose to incorporate their community as a village and name the village, “Bettendorf.”  With that incorporation, there were now four towns (Bettendorf and Davenport Iowa and across the Mississippi River Moline and Rock Island, Illinois) located adjacent to each other.  Bettendorf was soon drawn into the orbit of the three larger cities.  This new four-city entity became known as the “Quad Cities.”  William Bettendorf’s anticipation of a grand future being a supplier to the railroads proved to be prophetic.  The Bettendorf Hollow Axle Company made both William P. and Joseph W. Bettendorf very wealthy. 

            Both brothers built mansions in Bettendorf, which remain as local landmarks to this day.  In 1909, William and his second wife, Elizabeth (Staby) Bettendorf, began work on a 22-room Spanish/Moorish-style house located at 2500 Grant Street overlooking the factory works of the Bettendorf Hollow Axle Company.  However, William died in 1910, before his dream house was complete.  The house was finished only after his death.  Today the home serves as part of the Iowa Masonic Health Facilities’ in the Masonic Village section of Bettendorf.  In 1914, Joseph W. Bettendorf and his wife, Elizabeth (Ohl) Bettendorf, began constructing a 30-room English Manor-style mansion on 17 acres of land located 1821 Sunset Drive in Bettendorf.  Today this building is part of the Rivermont College campus.  

            While the Bettendorf brothers were finding their success in the new city of Bettendorf, their former company, the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company, now controlled by the French brothers, was also starting to meet with success.  The all-metal wagon gear was proving itself to be vastly more superior and more rugged than the ordinary wood and iron wagon gear.  Thanks to the sensation created by the new all-metal undercarriage wagon gear at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, orders for the new all-metal wagon gear now poured in from as far away as South America and the Caribbean.    

               In order to raise money for the building his new house, in 1909, William P. Bettendorf had sold the remaining shares he owned in his old company—the Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company—to the French brothers and their new investor, Joseph Hecht.  With all the shares of the company now in their own hands, Hecht and the French brothers now re-organized and renamed the company.  Accordingly, the French and Hecht Company came into existence.  Nathaniel and George Watson French naturally gravitated toward the corporate end of the business.  The 41 year-old Joseph Hecht was another of those inventive personalities who, like William Bettendorf, enjoyed working with his hands.  Thus, Hecht gravitated toward engineering and plant management side of the business.  Soon Joseph Hecht, himself, was the owner of a number of patents for improvements on steel wheels and the wagon gear. 

               F.& H. continued in its role as a B. to B business, serving as a wholesale supplier of steel wheels to other farm equipment manufacturers.  Over the years, many companies signed supply contracts with F.& H.  These companies included Deere and Company of Moline, Illinois; the Massey-Harris Manufacturing Equipment Company of Toronto, Ontario, Canada; the Huber Manufacturing Company of Marion, Ohio; the Fate-Root-Heath Company of Plymouth, Ohio (maker of the Silver King tractor); the International Harvester Company of Chicago, Illinois; the Ford Motor Company of Dearborn, Michigan and as noted above, the Allis Chalmers Manufacturing Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  In addition to producing wheels for tractors and farm equipment, F. & H. supplied metal wheels to the Mack Company of Allentown, Pennsylvania, especially for use on the famous Mack “Bulldog” which was used extensively by the U.S. Army in Europe during the First World War.  

               Like so many other companies, F.& H. experienced some difficulty returning to the peace time economy, following the First World War as a post-war recession settled over the United States’ economy  from 1920 through 1921.  To make matters worse, Nathaniel French died at the age of 65 years of age on February 14, 1920.  Joseph Hecht now moved over to management side of the business to fill the vacancy left by the death of the older French brother.  The mid-1920s brought a return of prosperity following the post-war recession.  Needing more capital than could be mustered as a “private” company, the French and Hecht Company, in 1927, incorporated as a publicly traded corporation and made , H,Han initial public offering (I.P.O.) of the shares of the company to the investing public.    

               As previously noted, many of the farm equipment manufacturers of North America had supply contracts with the French and Hecht Company.  Based on these supply contracts, F. & H. was able, in 1928, to advertised itself as the “world’s the largest producer of steel wheels.”  Indeed, F. & H. was the dominant source of steel wheels for the whole nation.  Accordingly, when the Allis-Chalmers Company introduced pneumatic rubber tires for farm tractors and farm machinery, it was natural that they turned to F.& H. to supply the rims on which to mount those rubber tires.  To meet the requirements of Allis-Chalmers for rubber tire rims, F.& H. took their familiar round spoke steel wheel and merely cut off the outer steel band or “tire” of their traditional steel wheel and welded on rims suitable for mounting a rubber tires. 

               Other major farm equipment manufacturers were not slow following the lead of Allis-Chalmers in offering rubber tires as an option on their farm equipment.  Because these farm equipment manufacturers were not immediately able to (or, perhaps, were not inclined to) design and make their own metal wheel rims for the small amount of farmers that were requesting rubber tires on their tractors or farm equipment in the mid 1930s, these manufacturing companies also turned to F.& H. to supply them with the rims they needed for the limited rubber tire market.  F.& H. used their familiar round spoke design, now modified and adapted for mounting rubber tires, to fill all these contracts.    

            Although F.& H. was called upon by the Allis Chalmers Company as early as 1929, to help lead the way in making rubber tires available for farm tractors, F.& H. still resisted full-scale production of rims for rubber tires for a retail market.   Even in 1932, when F. & H. again worked together with Allis Chalmers to design a new improved demountable rim for mounting rubber tires, F. & H. still did not immediately use this opportunity to get into mass production of either the demountable rims for rubber tires or the single piece rims for rubber tires for the retail market.   F.& H. made only the rims for rubber tires, that were necessary to fill the various supply contracts they signed with their corporate customers.  Part of this reluctance to plunge ahead into full-scale production of metal rims for rubber tires may be explained by the onset of the Great Depression which began in late 1929 and extended until 1933.  Also on November 27, 1934, the company lost another of its founders when George Watson French died.  In his absence, Joseph Hecht now became president of the entire company.  

            By the late 1930s, the demand in rubber tire market had grown considerably.  Recognizing the possibilities for more profit in this market, some farm equipment manufacturers started making their own rims for rubber tires.  (The International Harvester Company was one such company.  They began making cast-iron drop-center wheels with demountable rims for both the front and rear wheels of their famous Farmall tractors in 1937.)  F.& H.’s share of the new market of rims for rubber tires shrunk as these farm equipment manufacturers began to cancel their contracts with F.& H.  Without the sales network they might have had, if the company had started mass producing rims for the retail market, the F.& H. Company could not recoup the market share they were loosing through the cancellation of these contracts. 

            The resistance on the part of the F.& H. to launch into full-scale production of rims for rubber tires created opportunities in the wheel rim market for other more aggressive companies.  One of these aggressive new companies that began making wheel rims for rubber tires was the Electric Wheel Company of Quincy, Illinois.  (The history of the Electric Wheel Company is the subject of another article contained in the blog on this website.)  The scrappy little Electric Wheel Company was nearly as old as the French & Hecht Company and also made spoke-style steel wheels.  However, the Electric Wheel Company was never able to capture enough market share of the steel wheel market to compete effectively against F.& H.  Nonetheless the scrappy little Electric Wheel Company took advantage their inferior position in the market to actually listen to the complaints coming in from the field regarding the design faults of their wheels. 

            At first, the famous “Bettendorf wheel” was produced with all the round spokes on the wheel extending from the center of the hub to the center of the steel rim or “tire” on the outside of the steel wheel.  However, as the steel wheels began to be used on the steerable (front) wheels of self-propelled equipment like steam engines and/or farm tractors, the problem of side pressure (or side stress) on the wheels began to develop.  Steered wheels on the front of a steam engines or, especially tractors, are subjected to a great deal of side pressure when the front (steerable) wheels are used in the soft ground of the fields when preparing the seed bed.  Under this side pressure, a steel wheel with straight spokes would tend to buckle.  To solve this problem, the old Bettendorf Wheel Company began to build a steel wheel with a “staggered” set of spokes in which each of the spokes was attached, alternately, to the inside and the outside of the hub of the wheel.  This created a slight triangular pattern to the spokes that greatly strengthened the steel wheels against side stress.  With its slightly triangular arrangement of the spokes within the wheel, the same steel wheel would have less tendency to buckle when side stress was applied to the wheel. 

            However, the problem of side stress on the front wheels of tractors returned with the rise of the “tricycle” design of tractors following the introduction of the famous “Farmall” tractor in 1924.  The tricycle-style tractor had been introduced for the purpose of allowing a mechanical means for cultivating row crops.  To facilitate the cultivation of row crops the tricycle-style tractor had been equipped with “fifth-wheel” type of steering, rather than the automotive-style of steering that was typical of “four wheel” or “standard” style tractors.   Automotive-type steering provided each steerable wheel in the front of a standard tractor with its own vertical pivot point located on a journal behind the wheel.  The “fifth-wheel” type of steering on the tricycle tractor, on the other hand, provided only a single vertical pivot point on which both front wheels were turned.  This vertical pivot point is called the “bolster” and is located at the very front of the tricycle-style tractor.  Fifth-wheel type steering allowed the front wheels of the tricycle style tractor to be turned to an angle approaching 90º from the straight line of the tractor.  This facilitated making the sharp 180º turns required at the end of the rows when cultivating corn and allowed the tractor to start cultivating the next two adjacent rows of row crops.  However, in making these sharp turns at the end of the rows, the front wheels on the tricycle tractor tended to “bulldoze” the soft soil of the corn field rather than bring the front end of the tractor around.  Usually the tractor operator was required to apply the brake to the rear wheel on the side of the tractor nearest the direction of the turn just to help bring the front end of the tractor around in the turn.  Farmers found that using the tricycle-style tractors in the field and making very sharp turns in the soft ground of the average field created a great deal of side stress on the round-spoke wheels on the front end of the tractor. 

            This side stress on front wheels of tricycle tractors was further compounded when the tractor was fitted with rubber tires on the front.  In this case, the staggered spokes of the wheel rim transferred the side stress to 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 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.  Both of these articles have also been attached to the blog of this website.) 

            Clearly the F. & H. Company had been warned that a redesign their rims for rubber tires was needed.  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 making steel rims for rubber tires for the relatively small market demand.  No single company could make sufficient profit and, thus, have capital enough to dedicate sufficient resources to financing a drastic redesign of their wheel rim. 

            Even though growing, the market for rubber tires on tractors and farm equipment, in the late 1930s, was 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.  F.& H. management probably felt that any re-design of the wheel rim for this small section of the limited 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 money on 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 for mounting 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.   

            The Electric Wheel Company, on the other hand, began to redesign their rims for rubber tires and, eventually, introduced into the market a new “disc type” wheel rim for mounting rubber tires.  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.  These new pressed steel disc-type wheel rims would still bend or buckle if a great deal of side stress were placed on the wheel.  However, the bent rim would not automatically puncture the inner tube of the tire.  As anticipated, the F.& H. Company lost market share directly to the Electric Wheel Company as a result of this development.  However, the shrinking market share in the wheel rim market was not the only problem that the F. & H. Company faced at this time.  In early 1941, the company’s work force sought to organize into a collective bargaining unit. 

            The National Labor Relations Act (or Wagner Act), signed into law on July 5, 1935, had promoted collective bargaining as an effort to stabilize the economy as the country emerged from the Great Depression.  The provisions of the Wagner Act established a new United States government agency—the National Labor Relations Board—to regulate and police organizing efforts of labor unions in the private industrial sector of the economy.  Immediately after passage, it was expected that local unions of the American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L) and/or the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.) would immediately start organizing campaigns in every industrial company in the United States.  However, this did not happen.  Because of the recent spate of decisions coming from the United States Supreme Court, declaring many parts of the New Deal program to be “unconstitutional,” both the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O. were taking a “wait and see” attitude toward large scale organizing efforts under the Wagner Act.  Labor union organizers were worried that they could waste a great deal of effort and money on attempting to organize local unions under the Wagner Act, only to have the entire Wagner Act declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.  Thus, active, large scale organizing efforts under the Wagner Act were postponed while everybody waited for a case to come before the high Court, which would challenge the constitutionality of the Wagner Act.  Indeed in 1937, one such case was making its way up through the courts and finally on April 12, 1937, the Supreme Court rendered its decision in the case styled N.L.R.B. v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation 301 U.S. 1 ; 57 SCt. 615 (1937).  To everyone’s surprise, the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Wagner Act. 

            The favorable decision from the Court in the Jones & Laughlin Steel case was the starting gun that set off intensive organizing efforts by both the A.F. of L and C.I.O in various industries across the country.  The A.F. of L. and the C.I.O. competed with each other in seeking to represent the workers in a variety of factory locations.  The A.F. of L. differed from the C.I.O., in their labor union philosophy.  The A.F. of L. believed in the traditional “guild theory,” that skilled workers should be organized into unions according to the type of work they performed or their “craft” e.g. carpenters, masons, pipefitters, etc.  Unskilled workers and even workers outside the particular craft of a particular union were not included in this type of labor union organizing effort. 

            The C.I.O. on the other hand believed that all workers at a particular location or factory should be organized in the same industry wide union despite the differences in the type of work they performed.  All workers, even unskilled workers were included in this industrial type of labor organization.  The A. F. of L. and the C.I.O. fought bitterly over this difference in labor organizing effort.  The labor organizing efforts at F. & H. provides a clear example of this difference.  The organizing effort at F. & H. began at the smaller factory works in Springfield, Ohio. 

            Ever since 1890, when the old Bettendorf Metal Wheel Company had purchased the Springfield Works, the smaller factory had functioned quite independently from the rest of the company.  Indeed, the Springfield Works operated under its own “president” and local management headquartered at 903 Wheel Ave. in Springfield, Ohio.  (As noted above, Joseph W. Bettendorf once served as president of the Springfield Works.)  Under the F. & H. Company the same corporate arrangement was continued.  The Springfield Works was quite self-contained and had its own foundry at the site which cast the hubs, wheel weights and made other cast iron parts used in the assembly of the F. & H. steel wheels and rims.  Welding and assembly of the various component parts of the wheels was completed in the main factory of the Springfield Works.  The Springfield Works seem to thrive under this self-contained arrangement.  Despite the strong trend toward rubber tires on farm equipment, F. & H. still derived substantial income from the manufacture of steel wheels.  Indeed, income from steel wheels alone in the small Springfield factory works amounted to $129,400 for the fiscal year ending August 30, 1940.

            However, workers at the Springfield Works were becoming dissatisfied.  They felt, they deserved a better share of the profits the company was making from their labor—especially, in light of the fact, that inflation in the United States at this time was starting to seriously erode the purchasing power of their wages.  Thus, they looked to collective bargaining for help.  Organizers for the International Molders and Foundrymen Union of the A. F. of L. set about collecting pledge cards from the workers in the foundry at the Springfield Works.  The organizers did not approach, nor accept cards from, workers outside the foundry.  Assembly workers at the Springfield plant were not approached by the union organizers.  The assembly workers were simply outside the job description of “foundrymen” or “moulders” and, thus, the International Molders and Foundry Workers Union did not attempt to organize the assembly workers.    

            Accordingly, after being assured that a large majority of the workers in the foundry supported the union, the International Molders and Foundrymen Union of the A.F. of L. filed a petition, on January 17, 1941, with the National Labor Relations Board (N.L.R.B.) to represent F. & H. foundry workers at the Springfield Works in collective bargaining negotiations with the Company.  On April 18, 1941, the N.L.R.B. ordered that an election be held among the foundry workers at the foundry located at F.& H.’s Springfield Works.  The election was held on May 1, 1941, resulting in a 41 to 19 majority vote in favor of Local #72 of the International Molders and Foundrymen (A.F. of L.) being selected as the sole collective bargaining agent for all the molders and foundrymen working in the foundry at the Springfield plant.  The workers outside the craft of “molder” of “foundrymen” and those workers in assembly plant at Springfield remained unrepresented by the union. 

            Meanwhile, over in Davenport, Iowa, the Organizing Committee of Local #123 of the Farm Equipment Workers Union (C.I.O.) filed a petition with the N.L.R.B. on April 3, 1941 to be the sole bargaining agent for all workers employed at the F. & H. plant in Davenport regardless of their job description.  On June 20, 1941 the N.L.R. B. ordered an election be held among all the employees at F. & H.’s Davenport Works.  An election was held on July 18, 1941 which resulted in 178 votes in favor of the union and 131 votes opposed to the union.  Accordingly, Local #123 of the Farm Equipment Workers Union, (C.I. O.) became the sole bargaining agent for all workers employed at F. & H.’s Davenport plant. 

            Without any movement toward developing a newly designed and stronger metal wheel on which a rubber tire could be mounted, it looked as though F. & H. would continue to lose market share in the agricultural wheel market.  However, on December 7, 1941, the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States was, suddenly, at war.  The manufacturing capacity of the nation for civilian goods was converted to production of war materials.  Nearly all sources of steel, aluminum and other raw materials for civilian use were all severely restricted.  The productive capacity of the farm manufacturing companies was greatly curtailed because of unavailability of raw materials.  Rubber for civilian use was, probably, the most severely restricted raw material.  Consequently, what small amount of tractors and farm equipment could be made under the government restrictions had to be fitted with steel wheels. 

         For F. & H. this was a boon.  The company could return to its traditional strong suit—making steel wheels and they did not have to worry about a redesign of their wheels with rims for mounting rubber tires.  It was as if the 1920s (the pre-rubber tire era) had returned.  As a result, F. & H. anticipated that they soon would be automatically obtaining a larger share in the farm wheel market.  The name “French and Hecht” was still synonymous with the production of steel wheels and, because the market was, once again, limited to just steel wheels, F. & H. now regained their predominant share of the current agricultural wheel market.  Economically, F. & H. was now a more valuable property than it had been in the immediate past.  This favorable position within the steel wheel market made F. & H. an acquisition target.  Consequently, corporate buyers came looking and some of them made bids to purchase F. & H.  One of these bidders was the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company of Jackson, Michigan.  Kelsey-Hayes made an offer that F. & H. could not refuse.  Subsequently, directly in the middle of the war, a determination was made to sell the French and Hecht Company to Kelsey-Hayes. 

            The Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company was another B. to B. business which had been formed from the 1927 merger of two other wheel manufacturing companies.  Since that merger, Kelsey-Hayes had grown into a major supplier of wheels to the automobile companies of Detroit, Michigan–especially the General Motors Company.  However, as the war progressed the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company had experienced even more growth based on government contracts to supply machine guns, tank wheels, aircraft wheels, brakes, and made other accessories for ordinance vehicles as part of the war effort.  Kelsey-Hayes Wheel was an inventive company and had developed a great number of innovations, including a new improved brake drum which had become universally adopted by all automobile makers.  However, the management and board of Kelsey-Hayes knew that the war would eventually end and they worried about the company’s conversion to a peace time economy.  They saw that F. & H. was the leading producer of wheels for the agricultural and construction markets.  Kelsey-Hayes Wheel had not previously served either of these markets.  Accordingly, Kelsey-Hayes expected that the acquisition of F. & H. would instantly make them the leader in both of those markets at the end of the war. 

            Accordingly, Kelsey-Hayes acquired the French and Hecht Company with great expectations of security and relative prosperity when the war ended.  Although, F. & H. became a division within Kelsey-Hayes, F. & H. would continue to operate under its own name and the F. & H. logo would continue to appear on the wheels they made.   

With the acquisition complete, however, Joseph L. Hecht, now in his 70s, stepped down as president of the French and Hecht Company and retired from business altogether. 

            During the war, the F. & H. Division of the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company was awarded its own series of contracts from the United States government as a part of the war effort.  These contracts were for the manufacture “pelican hooks” for use by the military.  The “pelican hook” was a clasp device attached to a rope or “line” on a ship or harbor crane which would be attached to pallets of cargo when loading or unloading cargo from the holds of ships.  The pelican hook had been developed by Robert MacCluney and he owned a patent for the pelican hook.  Anticipating the war contract with the United States government, the F. & H. Division of Kelsey-Hayes Wheel had signed a contract with Robert MacCluney to obtain a license to manufacture the MacCluney pelican hook.  In exchange for this license, the F. & H. Division agreed to give MacCluney a royalty of 10% of all income received from the sale of the pelican hooks.  On February 3, 1945, the last of these contracts for pelican hooks was awarded to F. & H.  The term of the contract extended to 1946 and called for the manufacture of 157,380 pelican hooks for the United States Navy.  Pursuant to this contract, the United States Navy agreed to pay $3.74 for each pelican hook.  F. & H. immediately set about making pelican hooks pursuant to this contract.  However, on August 22, 1945, Japan surrendered and the Second World War came to an end.  Accordingly, the United States government began legally terminating all the war contracts it had with businesses around the nation.  By August 22, 1945, the F.& H. Division of Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company had completed and delivered 7,720 pelican hooks to the Government.  The Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company was paid, $28,842.80, for these completed and delivered pelican hooks.  According to the terms of the contract, all un-delivered and/or partially completed pelican hooks were to be destroyed and no payment was made to Kelsey-Hayes for these un-delivered or un-completed pelican hooks.  Pursuant to the licensing agreement, that the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company had with Robert MacCluney, F. & H. paid the agreed-upon 10% royalty payment of $2,884.28 to MacCluney for these pelican hooks.  

              (This last contract for pelican hooks is noteworthy, because it became the subject of litigation after the war.  The litigation arose as a result of MacCluney’s assertion that he was owed a royalty on all 157,380 pelican hooks that Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company had “sold” to the Navy pursuant to the contract whether they were made or not.  Short of that MacCluney alleged that he should be paid a royalty on all completed pelican hooks which were not delivered to the Navy before August 22, 1945 and further that he should be paid a royalty for the pieces of the pelican hook which were made but not assembled into complete pelican hooks before August 22, 1945.  The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of the Michigan, Southern Division, held for the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company and against MacCluney on all counts in an opinion issued on October 21, 1949. [MacCluney v. Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company et al., 87 F. Supp. 58 (1949)]).    

            When the war ended, the Kelsey-Hayes Company looked forward to their newly acquired F.& H. Division resuming its pre-war dominant position in both the agricultural and construction wheel markets.  With the end of the war, a tremendous buying surge on the part of farmers was released.  Having been unable to purchase new farm equipment for almost four years, farmers were now hurriedly attempting to update their farming operations with new tractors and new farm machinery.  Now that rubber was available for civilian use, many more farmers purchased tractors and farm equipment fitted with rubber tires than ever before.  The Kelsey-Hayes Company expected that profits would flow into the company from their F.& H. Division, as the division began supplying rims to the farm equipment manufacturers for all this new machinery that was being produced.  In this expectation, the F. H. Division moved out of Davenport and into a new facility in Walcott, Iowa, a suburb of Davenport, Iowa.   

            However, the French and Hecht Division of the Kelsey-Hayes Company, now faced the same situation it was facing when the war broke out.  The company had no adequately re-designed wheel with a rim for rubber tires that would withstand the large amount of side stress to which the wheels were subjected when the wheel was mounted on the front wheels of modern farm tractors. 

            Without a wheel that could be used on the front end of modern farm tractors, the F.& H. Division of the Kelsey-Hayes Company was closed out of that section of the wheel rim market altogether.  However, as during the pre-war era, the F. & H. Division expected to sell round-spoke rims for mounting on the rear wheels of tractors or for mounting on pull-type farm equipment, like plows, balers, combines and wagons. 

            However, over the course of the war, an association had formed in the mind of the buying public that associated the spoke-type wheel rim with the pre-war era.  On the other hand, the disc-type wheel rim was associated with the post-war era.  Consequently, the disc-type wheel was seen as a “modern” wheel whereas the spoked wheel rim was regarded as “old fashioned.”  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, worked against the F.& H. Division of the Kelsey-Hayes Company and worked in favor of the Electric Wheel Company.  Indeed, this point 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 F.& H. Division continued to lose even more market share in the post-war era.  Indeed, the drop in market share was precipitous.  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.  In all these cases, the pull-type implement had been offered to the public in the pre-war era on rubber tires mounted on F. & H. 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, despite the fact that no other changes had been made to those implements at all.    

            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.) 

            Although losing market share, F. & H. continued as a Division of the Kelsey-Hayes Company through many historic ups and downs in the economy.  In September of 1973, the Yom Kippur War between Israel and her Arab neighbors united the entire Arab World as never before.  Although officially formed in 1960 the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (O.P.E.C.) became much more active in 1973 in promoting the political agenda of the Arab World, through economic means.  The O.P.E.C. cartel sought agreement from all oil producing Arab nations to restrict the amount of oil that those nations released onto the world market.  This Arab “oil embargo” caused a gasoline shortage in the United States and resulted in a rise in gasoline prices to previously unheard of levels.  A severe economic crisis for the United States auto industry followed as Americans ceased buying U.S.-made cars and started buying more fuel-efficient foreign-made cars. 

            As a leading supplier of wheels and braking systems to the United States auto industry, the Kelsey-Hayes Company also found itself in a crisis.  The company became heavily over-extended in credit markets and its stock value plummeted.  This greatly reduced stock value made the company an easy target for a hostile corporate takeover.  Accordingly, the Fruehauf Corp. of Detroit, Michigan, started buying shares in Kelsey-Hayes and soon had control of the company.  Accordingly, in 1973, Kelsey-Hayes and their French and Hecht Division became a wholely-owned subsidiary of the Fruehauf Corporation. 

            However, Fruehauf’s acquisition of Kelsey-Hayes fell afoul of United States Federal Trade Commission which claimed that the acquisition tended to create an unfair monopoly within the market of automotive (and truck) braking systems.  Anti-trust litigation over this allegation continued into the 1980s and weakened the Fruehauf Corp.  In 1988, the Fruehauf Corp., itself, became the target of a hostile take-over by the K-H Corporation.  K-H employed the “leveraged buyout” strategy to take over Fruehauf.  This meant that K-H took out a loan to finance the takeover.  Collateral for the loan was, actually, the combined assets of the target company itself—Fruehauf Corp.  Once the takeover was accomplished, parts of Fruehauf were sold off to pay back the loan.  Accordingly, in 1988, the French and Hecht Division and their factory site located in Walcott, Iowa were sold off to the Can-Am Company of Quincy, Illinois.  Can-Am was the new name of the corporate entity that had originally been Electric Wheel Company of Quincy, Illinois.  Thus, 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.

                                   (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 same 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 2^nd 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.