The Tractor 
 
 and its influence upon 
 the agricultural im- 
 plement industry 
 
 By barton W. CURRIE 
 Of the Editorial Staff of 
 The Country Gentleman 
 
 A reprint of a series 
 
 of articles 
 
 ivhich appeared in 
 
 The Country Gentleman 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 1916 
 

 Copyright, 1916 
 
 Curtis Publishing Company 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 JUL -5 1916 
 M /OJL 
 ICI,A431741 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THIS IS, we believe, the first com- 
 plete story of that vast business, 
 the manufacture and sale of agricul- 
 tural implements and farm tractors. It 
 first appeared serially in The Country 
 Gentleman. 
 
 To the business farmer, implements 
 and machinery are of primary impor- 
 tance. It was as a part of its service 
 to the progressive farmer that The 
 Country Gentleman undertook the 
 task of gathering and presenting this 
 material. 
 
 The Country Gentleman is pecu- 
 Harly the publication of the business 
 farmer. It is national, it is weekly, it 
 covers the entire country. It touches 
 on all crops and all agricultural topics, 
 and always from the point of view of 
 the man who farms to get back out of 
 the land more than he puts into it. 
 
 Within the past year there have 
 been two developments which have 
 
made it more important than ever that 
 all the facts about this implement in- 
 dustry be brought together and given 
 thorough consideration. 
 
 One is the rapid development of the 
 farm tractor, which is having consid- 
 erable effect upon methods of manu- 
 facturing and selling all implements. 
 
 The other is the increased agitation 
 for shorter retail credits, a reform 
 which would have far-reaching effect 
 upon the implement dealer and the ser- 
 vice which he renders to the farmer. 
 
 It has been the purpose of The 
 Country Gentleman to treat these 
 vital topics in such way as to assist 
 toward a wider and more economical 
 distribution of farm machinery. 
 
 THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Philadelphia, June, 1916 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PART I PAGE 
 
 I On Time I 
 
 II The Slaughter of the Innocents — Then the 
 
 Tractor 9 
 
 III Plows 18 
 
 IV Senseless Diversification 28 
 
 V Legless Heroes as Mechanicians 34 
 
 VI Squeezing Out the Jobber 41 
 
 VII Elaborate Systems of Merchandising 49 
 
 VIII The Long Credit Spectre 55 
 
 IX Auto-mania on the Farm 63 
 
 X A ^200,000,000 Burden 71 
 
 XI The Sins of the Dealer 79 
 
 XII Lack of Quality or Price Standards 86 
 
 XIII Sir James, Jim and No-' Count Jimmy. ... 93 
 
 XIV A Hoosier Who Woke Up loi 
 
 XV The Farmer's Elusive Cash iii 
 
 XVI The New Get-Together Epoch 115 
 
 XVII How the Bankers May Help 123 
 
 PART II 
 
 I A Mighty Industry in the Making 131 
 
 II The Big Tractor Boom Collapse, and Why 137 
 
 III A Modern Miracle in Selling for Cash. . . . 145 
 
 IV How the Miracle Was Brought About. ... 150 
 
 [vH] 
 
CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 \^ V Tractors are Not for the Physically Unfit. i6o 
 
 VI Visualizing the Tractor Market i66 
 
 VII Knowledgeof Farm Management Essential 173 
 Ji^VIII The Great Selection Problem for the 
 
 Farmer 179 
 
 -ViX Shall the Tractor Fit the Farm or the Farm 
 
 Fit the Tractor 187 
 
 X Design, Parts, Service — The Big Little 
 
 Things 193 
 
 XI Building for Service 199 
 
 ^i<XII The Horseless Farm 206 
 
 XIII Government Selection 214 
 
 XIV No Fixed Rules to Guide 223 
 
 [ viii ] 
 
M' 
 
 On Time 
 
 ILLIONS in junk on the farms of America. 
 Waste millions! Who's to blame? The farmer, 
 partly — but not wholly. The man who made 
 these miracle-working implements that have been cast 
 on the scrap-pile long before their time must shoulder 
 his share of responsibility. Not so much because of the 
 way he contrived these wonder-tools as because of the 
 way he sold them. 
 
 Let us focus on one of innumerable cases. Here's 
 Farmer Jim Average Jones; a rather likely looking 
 place he's got, but what about that pile of junk in the 
 barnyard ? 
 
 Once it was a mower. It came up from the dealer's 
 looking like a bridegroom. Ma and the kids came out 
 and shaded their eyes from the glare of the paint. 
 
 Now look at it — and it has just been paid for! The 
 junk-man is coming up tomorrow in that spring-halt 
 old wagon of his to carry it off to his scrap-iron ceme- 
 tery. He'll trade in a new cookstove for it, and next 
 spring Jim Average Jones will go down to the dealer's 
 and get a new mower. 
 
 That's all he cares about it. That poor old mower 
 is the product of a great industry, but that doesn't 
 seem to interest Jim. 
 
 [I] 
 
The American farmer buys a plow or a planter or a 
 corn sheller or a mower or a side-delivery rake or a 
 silage cutter. It works to his satisfaction or it doesn't. 
 He got it from the dealer on credit, and in the course of 
 time he may pay for it. 
 
 As the majority of farmers size up the farm im- 
 plement industry, tools either work or don't work. If 
 they work the incident is closed, and in the course of 
 time the farmer pays for them. Generally he pays for 
 them after all the shiny paint and gaudy veneer have 
 worn off — not a great while before Bill Binks, the 
 junkman, comes round to trade a new cookstove for 
 it. It looks so cheap and scrappy when Binks carts it 
 off that the farmer is naturally sore at having to pay 
 for it as if it were new. 
 
 But the honest farmer pays for it, nevertheless, after 
 he has cashed in his crop, and the dealer in turn pays 
 the manufacturer. The manufacturer in his turn buys 
 some more raw material with which to manufacture 
 other implements. 
 
 The sort of purchaser who has had good service from 
 his tools doesn't give a thought to the manufacturer or 
 his problems or his troubles. To him the source of 
 production is some indefinite nowhere just as vague 
 as the mythical workshop of Santa Claus. The other 
 sort of purchaser, who has bought shoddy equipment 
 that didn't work, or just fairly good stuff that was not 
 sufficiently foolproof, as the manufacturer would say, 
 does give a thought or two to the source of production. 
 He whines that he has been stung, gouged, robbed by 
 a trust or some little cousin of a trust. He takes his 
 howl to the dealer and tells him he'll be darned if he'll 
 
 [2] 
 
pay. He calls the dealer names and the dealer retorts. 
 It was an open-account transaction, and the dealer 
 has no documentary proof of purchase. They bicker 
 and threaten each other and at last they go to law 
 about it. In the course of the suit the dealer may go 
 bankrupt and the farmer may move. The lawyers in 
 the case have their fees and that is all the real money 
 that passes. All the manufacturer gets out of it is a 
 few vain regrets. 
 
 Indeed, the manufacturer doesn't appear in the 
 matter save as a remote greedy monster who turns out 
 tools from some smoky urban lair. The defendant's 
 lawyer may draw a caricature of him and embellish it 
 with lurid misrepresentations. Nor does the dealer's 
 counsel make kindly mention of the manufacturer. It 
 is a case of the poor downtrodden farmer versus the 
 just-as-poor downtrodden dealer. The manufacturer 
 has no definite shape in the matter. He isn't familiar 
 enough to anybody to be known by his first, middle, or 
 family name. He really doesn't exist, so why bother 
 about him? 
 
 The American farmer is buying some ^200,000,000 
 worth of farm tools a year, and it is estimated that our 
 farms are today stocked with about a billion and a half 
 dollars' worth of implements. They are the best farm 
 implements manufactured on the globe. They repre- 
 sent Yankee ingenuity at its highest, revolutionizing 
 Yankee ingenuity. The evolution of our farm imple- 
 ments has accomplished one of the marvels of two 
 centuries. In 1830 we expended three hours and three 
 minutes of human labor to produce one bushel of 
 wheat. Now, thanks to mechanized efficiency, we cut 
 
 I3] 
 
the fundamental processes of production down to 
 approximately eight minutes per bushel. 
 
 Every farmer who has sat in at a farm-implement 
 lecture has heard this. In recent years the achieve- 
 ment has been vitalized on the moving-picture screen. 
 First you are shown an undernourished, bullet-headed 
 ninety-nine per cent naked Egyptian or Syrian fellah 
 guiding a vest-pocket wooden plow over the dirt and 
 scratching up an inch or so of soil from beneath the 
 surface. This pitiable prehistoric chap is plowing at 
 the rate of an acre or so a fortnight, and in the course of 
 time he will cut by hand about eight bushels — if the 
 gods are kind — of wheat, and a little later you will see 
 his grandmother, his mother, his wife and all the kith 
 and kin that swarm the family hut threshing out the 
 grain with some things that resemble slapsticks. Still 
 later you will see them milling it in stone cuspidors and 
 then concocting it into loaves of durable and enduring 
 bread. 
 
 Having marveled at a reel or so of this you next 
 glimpse the modern tractor and gang-plows at work 
 on the virgin prairies, followed by harvesters, binders, 
 threshers, and so on. There is a baffling array of 
 machinery, each separate contrivance performing its 
 ingenious function, cutting labor costs and raising the 
 vocation of the farmer from the slavish drudgery of the 
 days of peasant serfdom to the dignity of a scientific or 
 professional calling. 
 
 At least, so you may read the pictures if you are 
 endowed with imagination. It is a skillful selling argu- 
 ment and it is a page of American history that is 
 mighty important to understand. It is the secret of 
 
 [4] 
 
why the man power of the American farmer is higher 
 than the man power of any other farmer in the world, 
 not excepting the European farmers with their meth- 
 ods of intensive farming. 
 
 The Europeans may throw us into total eclipse when 
 it comes to the employment of thrift and the exercise 
 of self-denial, but when it comes to gaiting 150-acre 
 and 500-acre farms they simply have to trail and take 
 our dust. The whyfor of this takes us back to the 
 Deeres and Olivers, the McCormicks and Deerings, 
 just to mention a few names engraved high on the 
 tablet in the hall of fame of the farm-implement in- 
 dustry. They were the Watts and Stephensons and 
 Edisons of American agriculture, and it might be well 
 for the farm boy to learn something from his school- 
 books concerning what they accomplished in the way 
 of revolutionizing the agricultural industry of the 
 world. Unhappily, our educational system prefers to 
 teach how Cincinnatus left his plow to rust in a Roman 
 field and returned to lead his legions to gory battle. 
 Cincinnatus was a romantic figure because he helped 
 rivers to run with the blood of barbarians, just as Von 
 Hindenburg is a modern Colossus, having abandoned 
 his country estates at the behest of the Kaiser to direct 
 the slaughter of tens of thousands of Russians. 
 
 Now that the patents have run out on chilled plows, 
 binders, threshers, mowers and innumerable other 
 implements that were in common use on the farm a 
 generation ago, nobody seems to give a rap how they 
 were evolved or what were the improvements made in 
 the last several decades. You might as well try to 
 weave romance round the buttonhook. The fact that 
 
 Isl 
 
they are articles of commerce and that the inventors 
 and their successors made millions out of them gives 
 them a sordid, commonplace aspect that fails to thrill. 
 
 But, coming up to date and studying the farm- 
 implement industry as a huge and necessary modern 
 enterprise, one need not search far to find a multi- 
 plicity of interests. The industry has now become a 
 great and exciting game for those who are in it. The 
 leaders in the industry speak of it as the *' farm-imple- 
 ment game,'* and they also inform you that the game 
 has now reached a phase of evolution or even revolu- 
 tion which will involve a lot of strenuous gambling for 
 future profits. So far as scores of the little fellows in 
 the industry are concerned it will require some tall 
 gambling to keep out of bankruptcy. 
 
 The grit in the gears of the farm-implement business 
 is long credits. For two decades it has been recognized 
 as the bane of the industry, but big manufacturers 
 winked the other eye, confident their gears were 
 strong enough to stand it. If the little fellows' gears 
 were ground to bits, that was up to them — they were 
 merely the hop-o'-my-thumbs of industrial competi- 
 tion. But during the past few years the long credits 
 grit has proved a serious menace to the big fellows' 
 transmission, causing them to flock together in sober 
 conclaves, pass resolutions and enter into gentlemen's 
 agreements to readjust. 
 
 The readjustment problem was recognized as a 
 tough proposition — one of the toughest propositions 
 that any industry ever tackled. It involved a great 
 variety of causes and effects. It involved the auto- 
 mobile industry and its growth and what its growth 
 
 [6] 
 
has done to hurt the implement game. It involved 
 the beginnings, sudden temporary collapse and recent 
 sensational rebirth of farm-tractor manufacturing and 
 distribution. 
 
 The Great War and its influence were involved. 
 Fundamentally and of primary importance was the 
 farmer himself and his hereditary disinclination to 
 pay cash for anything he could get on time. It may 
 not be quite true that he inherited this disinclination, 
 as to lay faults to heredity is simply a lazy habit of 
 passing the buck to our ancestors. 
 
 What was undeniably true, however, was that the 
 present generation of farmers found the custom ready- 
 made and of simple, effortless attainment. They 
 bought on time, trusted to the gods who fostered crop 
 production to help them pay out, and let it go at that. 
 They bought from the dealers, the majority of whom 
 had been farmers and were therefore accustomed to 
 doing business on time and without the annoyance 
 of keeping books or estimating the cost of overhead 
 charges, or anything of the sort. 
 
 It is reckoned that three out of every four imple- 
 ment dealers are former farmers. It is also estimated 
 that one of every four implement dealers goes out of 
 business each year. 
 
 In the Eastern districts, particularly in New Eng- 
 land, the majority of dealers are just farmer or black- 
 smith agents, with no stock on hand and not so much 
 business system as a pushcart peddler. In the New 
 England district the majority of the retail business is 
 in the hands of men who have each less than $300 in- 
 vested in stock. 
 
 [7I 
 
Naturally there were multitudes of slow accounts 
 and bad accounts, yet way back in the eighties the 
 competition for this slow-pay and no-pay business 
 was fierce. No other word will describe it. In 1880 
 there were 2000 manufacturers of farm implements. 
 Patents had run out and anybody who had a forge or 
 a small foundry or something resembling a factory 
 could manufacture plows and things and put them out. 
 The prices seemed to hold up high enough to take 
 care of the immense amount of waste. But as com- 
 petition sped up, the waste for the little fellow in- 
 creased. Doing business on a narrow margin of capital 
 became more and more risky. With a small and none 
 too efficiently operated plant the cost of manufacture 
 became a bogy. Raw material scaled up in price. 
 Labor was organizing and demanding higher wages. 
 As costs rolled up, prices did not mount to support 
 them in the difficult ascents. The big fellows were 
 saving themselves by increasing the volume of output 
 and cutting production costs. 
 
 [8 
 
II 
 
 The Slaughter of the Innocents — Then the 
 
 Tractor 
 
 A GRAPHIC chart has been made to illustrate 
 the competition squeeze in the farm imple- 
 ^ ment industry, or what has been called the 
 slaughter of the innocents. This chart shows that in 
 1880 there were 2000 concerns doing business on a 
 total capital of ^60,000,000. By 1890 between 1000 
 and 1 100 of these manufacturers had been laid to rest 
 in bankruptcy or else had thrown up their hands and 
 pulled out with what little capital they could rescue. 
 During the next ten years several hundred more 
 dropped out. Ten years ago there remained some six 
 hundred competitors. The shrinking process has con- 
 tinued down to date, and the prospects are that it will 
 continue until the industry is confined to several com- 
 paratively small groups and several combinations of 
 groups that were organized during the sweating-out 
 stages of the past decade. 
 
 This does not necessarily mean that the farm-imple- 
 ment industry is becoming a close corporation or is 
 tending toward any gigantic combination or trust. 
 Energetic independents are liable to spring up from 
 time to time and intrench themselves so solidly that 
 no sort of combination can dislodge them. There is 
 
 I9] 
 
V 
 
 still room for inventive genius backed by a competent 
 sufficiency of capital and modern business skill, and 
 always will be. But the small tradition-following 
 competitor with a narrow, insecure margin of working 
 capital is caught between the long-term-credit mill- 
 stones and seems to have no hope of prolonged exis- 
 tence unless some of the big combinations should find 
 it profitable to absorb him. 
 
 At any rate this was the situation in 1916 so far as 
 the farm-implement industry, properly so called, was 
 concerned. When we come to discuss the new-bloom- 
 ing tractor industry the case is altered somewhat. 
 The cards are just being dealt in the tractor game, and 
 some of the big hands are as likely to fall outside as to 
 fall inside the farm-implement industry. The appear- 
 ance of the small general-purpose tractor and the meas- 
 uring of the immense possibilities for its development 
 are bound to draw vigorous new blood and brains to 
 the immediate environment of the farm-implement 
 industry. 
 
 During 1915-1916 the tractor industry had an 
 amazing mushroom growth — in some aspects an un- 
 healthy growth, in other aspects a benign growth. It 
 had begun to follow the trail of the automobile in- 
 dustry on a cash-sales basis, and was accomplishing 
 the impossible in this direction, just as the automobile 
 industry did. It bled real hard money from the farmer 
 where real hard money did not seem to exist before, 
 and quickened the farmer's interest in machinery and 
 mechanics as the farm implement never did. 
 
 Later I shall give some striking examples of this 
 influence and attempt to analyze it. For the present I 
 
 [10] 
 
shall simply offer a brief review of the widening farm 
 tractor field and the possibilities it seemed to open up 
 for the makers of farm implements equipped to manu- 
 facture tractors. 
 
 It should be inspiring to the imagination of future 
 gas-tractor Napoleons to learn that our "inefficient 
 underpowered" farms — to quote the present secretary 
 of agriculture and several captains of industry — now 
 employ approximately 24,000,000 mechanical horse 
 power. This is allowing -^-^ mechanical horse power to 
 the farm horse and the farm mule. On January i, 
 1915, the Department of Agriculture took a census of 
 farm animals and stated that the aggregate of horses 
 and mules was 25,411,000, worth about ^3,000,000,- 
 000. These horses and mules developed 14,230,000 
 mechanical horse power. 
 
 Add to this 750,000 windmills developing 75,000 
 horse power, 100,000 steam tractors with 4,000,000 
 horse power, 1,000,000 gas engines developing 5,000,- 
 000 horse power and 20,000 gas tractors developing 
 600,000 horse power, and we have our grand total of 
 23,905,000 — a grand total, indeed, when you consider 
 that the total power used in all our great and little 
 manufacturing enterprises is only 18,755,286 horse 
 power. The great difference is that the farm power is 
 merely the available power that is applied only as it 
 is needed. Manufacturing power is practically a con- 
 tinuous load. During the war-munition-making period 
 much of it was going day and night. There is no way 
 of estimating the power units applied each year, but 
 undoubtedly they are enormously greater than the 
 power units a year applied on the farm. 
 
 In] 
 
^i 
 
 That is just where this infant gas tractor is going to 
 fit into the picture. He can stand the emergency en- 
 durance test where the horse and the mule fall down. 
 He will pull all your tillage apparatus by moonlight 
 as well as by daylight. If there is no moon all you have 
 to do is to attach a searchlight. And when he isn't 
 doing this field work he can do just what the now al- 
 most passe steam tractor is doing in the way of devel- 
 oping belt power. Just how far he will be able to 
 supplant the stationary gas engine for other than 
 pumping and specific household utilities is problemati- 
 cal, but certainly the possibilities are big enough to 
 encourage the gifted promoter and give latitude to the 
 eloquence of the salesman. 
 
 The estimate of 20,000 gas tractors was the Janu- 
 ary I, 191 5, estimate. Kansas was the first state to 
 take a tractor census, but the reports furnished were 
 brought up only to March i, 191 5. The total then 
 was 2500. During the summer that followed Kansas 
 bought more than 500 of the smaller-sized tractors. 
 Just one Kansas City jobbing firm sold 1000 small 
 tractors in Kansas, Oklahoma, Eastern Colorado 
 and Northern Texas in a little more than three 
 months. 
 
 One big manufacturing company was making as high 
 as fifty "baby'' gas tractors a day during part of the 
 summer and thirty a day as the demand began to 
 slacken. Forty new tractor concerns came into being 
 in 1914-1915. In a 1916 list of 170 concerns making 
 or assembling and selling tractors two-thirds of them 
 were as new as the modern use of asphyxiating gas as a 
 weapon for offensive warfare. 
 
 [12] 
 
The steam tractor did not come into extensive use 
 until after the Civil War, and it was then employed 
 chiefly to run threshing outfits, small sawmills and 
 feed grinders. Steam tractors never made good at 
 pulling tillage apparatus because of their great weight 
 and the difficulty in getting water to them on the dry 
 Western plains where they could be used for breaking 
 vast areas of virgin sod. The failure of the steam 
 tractor for this purpose paved the way for the gas 
 tractor, and along about the beginning of this century 
 the big gas tractor came in. 
 
 Western Canada was opening up, the Dakotas, 
 Montana, Western Kansas and the plateaus of the 
 mountain states were calling to the plungers in grain 
 to come in and make a killing. It looked like a golden 
 market for the big gas tractor, and the manufacturers 
 went to it. There was an exhilarating boom and then 
 a bang, followed by a sudden collapse. The big gas 
 tractor had been overexploited and oversold. 
 
 Numberless excuses were offered and a large variety 
 of causes were carefully dissected. On the ruins of the 
 collapse the long-credit specter sat and grinned. Then 
 there was the human factor that had been too lightly 
 considered. The big gas tractor had been far from 
 foolproof. It was not a simple mechanical device. Its 
 intricacies demanded the control of experts and there 
 were not enough experts to go round. The automo- 
 bile had not yet begun to teach mechanics to hun- 
 dreds of thousands of farmers. There was no perma- 
 nent employment for high-priced mechanics on the 
 farm. Just as is the case with harvest hands — when 
 they were needed most they were scarcest. 
 
 [13] 
 
There was a depressing lull in the gas-tractor in- 
 dustry during a period of five years and more, and it 
 was within the period of this lull that the automobile 
 began going out to the farm in enormously increased 
 consignments. During the ten-year period that saw 
 the rise and fall of the big gas tractor, farm-implement 
 products increased in value 44.6 per cent. In the same 
 interim automobile products increased in value 5148.6 
 per cent. How much of this increase was due to the 
 farmer's purchasing power cannot be determined. 
 
 The farmer was not a heavy buyer of automobiles 
 during the experimental and testing-out years. City 
 men carried the burden of pioneering costs for the 
 automobile industry. The automobile had to be sim- 
 plified and cheapened before the farmer could come 
 into the market and buy for cash. The automobile 
 manufacturer had been compelled in the beginning to 
 distribute his product on a cash basis because of the 
 high cost of the product, and the great depreciation in 
 the value of the product immediately it had come into 
 the hands of the purchaser. Practically every motor- 
 car manufacturer who experimented with long credits 
 went to the wall. 
 
 The farm-implement people at first watched the 
 automobile begin its rural inroads with small appre- 
 hension. They were not prepared for the wave of 
 buying that suddenly set in. It didn't seem possible 
 or at all likely that the farmer could or would pay cash 
 for automobiles when he wouldn't for his harvesting 
 machinery or even his tillage tools. But he did. He 
 had to or go without. He dug up the cash somehow. 
 He overcame his natural reluctance to borrow rather 
 
 [14] 
 
than owe. He went even farther than that — he laid 
 by money with the distinct object of purchasing an 
 automobile. He saved by purchasing fewer farm im- 
 plements or by making those he had go further than 
 was his custom. 
 
 The implement manufacturers complain that he has 
 carried this skimping to excess, with the result that 
 his farm is not nearly so efficiently equipped as it was 
 before he began buying automobiles. It is estimated 
 that in the year 191 5 American farmers bought almost 
 ^200,000,000 worth of automobiles. Iowa farmers 
 alone bought 68,000 cars. The earless Kansas farm is 
 almost a freak. This means that farmers are paying 
 practically as much cash for automobiles as they are 
 owing for implements. 
 
 Of course, it is an uneconomic situation and a galling 
 one to the farm-implement group. It has made it more 
 difficult to sell farm implements. Selling costs of both 
 manufacturer and dealer have increased out of all 
 proportion to actual sales. 
 
 What the implement manufacturers all seem to have 
 fought shy of is a direct appeal to the imagination of 
 the farmer by modern publicity methods. The auto- 
 mobile manufacturers on the other hand have done 
 this with overwhelming success. Then there are the big 
 mail-order competitors who are regarded by the ma- 
 jority of farm-implement dealers as monstrous devour- 
 ing ogres. The mail-order catalogues are teaching the 
 farmers to buy for cash. The dealers able to meet this 
 competition complacently are those who are able to 
 pay up and take cash discounts and then sell for cash 
 themselves. 
 
 [IS] 
 
Service and improved selling methods seem to be 
 the best defensive weapons with which to meet the 
 big mail-order-house competition. Nor is the service 
 end of it without its complications, as I shall endeavor 
 to explain in a later chapter. So far the farmer has not 
 gained a very distinct idea of just what the service 
 advantages are. The automobile industry has done 
 more in two or three years to bring this fact to his 
 door than the farm-implement industry did in fifty. 
 With the inclusion of the small farm tractor he should 
 have a double awakening. 
 
 It is very probable that many of the smaller manu- 
 facturers will not be able to survive the pinch and 
 strain due to the stocking up of the farm with auto- 
 mobiles at the expense of purchasing farm implements. 
 But the ultimate educating processes cannot fail to 
 exercise a benign influence. 
 
 The stationary internal combustion engine is a 
 humdrum contraption by comparison with the auto- 
 mobile. Undoubtedly it has served to supply a primer 
 course, but that is about all. The automobile, you 
 might say, has taken the whole farm family unto itself 
 and compelled it to examine and understand its in- 
 tricacies. It has given a new interest in the farm to the 
 boy and the girl. It has awakened an interest in trac- 
 tors in tens of thousands of farmers to whom the 
 tractor would otherwise have remained an object of 
 awe that they would prefer to let the other fellows 
 tinker with; and, still more potent in its direct in- 
 fluence, it has at least begun the education of the 
 farmer in the advantages of paying cash in advance 
 and assuming the full responsibilities of ownership. 
 
 [i61 
 
You don't see many farm automobiles ditched in fence 
 corners gathering rust and rot, and you won't see a 
 great many tractors that have been paid for on the 
 nail standing out in the field to collect dust and grit 
 in their gears. 
 
 [17] 
 
Ill 
 
 Plows 
 
 WHEN you see the womenfolks traipsing along 
 Main Street wearing pill-box hats stuck up 
 with goose quills or upside-down coal scuttles 
 draped with little tomatoes and poison-ivy leaves you 
 throw up your hands and wonder wherever these crazy 
 notions will stop. 
 
 Men may not wear such fool clothes, maybe, but 
 how about plows ? Do you know that there are just as 
 highfalutin notions in plows? Well, there are. 
 
 The out-for-the-vote sex may have gone in for mul- 
 tifarious fashions in clothes in the course of a few de- 
 cades, but so has the farmer gone in for multifarious 
 types in plows. And still does. 
 
 Down in your valley, or up in your hill country, you 
 may not see so many different sorts and shapes and 
 makes — possibly not more than a dozen different 
 kinds. There may be a couple of types of riding plows, 
 half a dozen varieties of walking plows, and some little 
 old eight-inch plows that a farm chunk can pull along 
 comfortably. There may be a few gang plows about of 
 different makes — probably one or two of the bigger 
 farmers have engine gangs. New big and little tractor 
 gangs began pouring into the market in 1914 and by 
 the spring of 1916 there was a teeming diversity of 
 
 [18I 
 
them. Also, very likely there is at least one man in 
 the neighborhood who is trying out a deep-tilling de- 
 vice. 
 
 But your general impression is that plows is plows, 
 just as pigs is pigs. 
 
 That isn't so at all. There are more different kinds 
 of plows than there are breeds of dogs. There are 
 immensely more selected types of plows than there are 
 selected breeds of dogs, pigs, dairy cattle, beef animals 
 and horses. 
 
 In one of the big plow establishments I visited in 
 Moline, Illinois, I was informed that they made and 
 carried in stock about looo varieties of plows. A 
 neighboring plant carried about half a hundred types, 
 but could further vary this line with attachments and 
 adjustments. In these plants the steel plow was the 
 leader, though they were equipped to satisfy most any 
 plow shopper that came along, whether from the sand 
 dunes of Long Island, New York, or from the tule 
 islands of the San Joaquin Delta, California. 
 
 But the catalogue listings of today are not the end 
 in stock by a good deal. No one in the plant where 
 they made and distributed looo varieties could tell 
 the exact number in stock or in the process of fabrica- 
 tion on that specific date. Possibly there were 998, 
 just as likely 1 1 16. New patterns were coming in every 
 few days. 
 
 The farmer is every bit as fickle in the matter of 
 plows as ever woman was in the matter of her ward- 
 robe. 
 
 No plow maker who is playing the game in a big 
 way lets anything new in plows get away from him. 
 
 [19] 
 
His agents are out searching the forty-eight states, the 
 Canadian provinces, the South American repubHcs, 
 all the countries involved in the great war, and the 
 neutrals not involved. 
 
 The plow makers abandoned the imitation of new 
 styles in plows in the war zone. Instead they browsed 
 round in Patagonia, British South Africa, Madagas- 
 car, Java, Burma, the Philippines and the Sandwich 
 Islands. At least one or two sent scouts to Iceland. 
 You heard of quite a squadron of style-scouts nosing 
 about in Siberia, the Caucasus and also in the Euph- 
 rates Valley until the warring Turks and Russians 
 drove them out. If you could follow these chaps about 
 in their wanderings, you would acquire a most com- 
 plete and liberal education in geography. 
 
 These are just a few facts about plows that should 
 contain a general interest appeal; also they ought to 
 convince you that the modern farmer, wherever he 
 farms, is considerably coddled and petted by the plow 
 manufacturers. They not only give him an ample 
 sufficiency in plow patterns but add to that about 900 
 surplus variations — what you might call notional var- 
 iations — for which there is no adequate justification. 
 
 As for present-day plow patents, they are about as 
 elusive and intangible as millinery patents. Funda- 
 mental patents in the processing of steel and chilled 
 iron have run out. The shaping of shares and landsides 
 and moldboards has evolved kaleidoscopically. There 
 are as many different designs as there are geometrical 
 patterns and curlicues in a jigsaw puzzle, and if you 
 get round enough you will hear from dealers and selling 
 agents that there is a selling argument for each one. 
 
 f 20I 
 
The history of the evolution of the plow is fairly- 
 absorbing, if not thrilling. Few of us who as school- 
 boys did or who as schoolboys do recite passages from 
 the immortal oratory of Daniel Webster know that 
 the great Dan'l invented a plow. He did, 'way back 
 in 1836, the year before John Deere made his first steel 
 plow. But the Webster plow never became a gracious 
 commodity of commerce, notwithstanding that it was 
 considerable of a plow. The trouble was that it was 
 too much of a plow. Furthermore, Webster was only a 
 statesman of the old school, with very little business 
 keenness. 
 
 The Webster plow was a little matter of thirteen 
 feet long from the bridle to the tip of the handles; 
 length of beam, nine feet; height of beam, two feet, 
 one inch. The landside was four feet and two inches 
 long. The bar and share were forged together. The 
 moldboard was of wood, with a strip of iron. The 
 breadth at heel of moldboard to landside was eighteen 
 inches. The spread of the moldboard was twenty- 
 seven inches, and the lower edge of the beam was 
 two feet four inches above the sole. The width of the 
 share was fifteen inches. The plow weighed 372 
 pounds. 
 
 The Webster plow might have amounted to some- 
 thing had the gas tractor preceded it. As it required 
 four yoke of oxen to pull it, Webster's neighbors looked 
 on unenviously. There was no rush to duplicate it. 
 
 Folks round about Marshfield, Massachusetts, where 
 Dan'l farmed, were very fond of their famous neigh- 
 bor, but they simply couldn't see his plow. No Marsh- 
 field blacksmith sought to plagiarize it. 
 
 [21I 
 
This historic plow is today housed in the machinery 
 room at New Hampshire College, Durham, N. H. 
 Moreover it is splendidly preserved. I am indebted to 
 Dean Taylor, of the Agricultural Division of New 
 Hampshire College, for the authentic history of the 
 Webster plow down to date. Upon the death of Web- 
 ster it was secured by the New Hampshire Historical 
 Society and taken to Hanover. At the opening of 
 Culver Hall in 1871 David M. Clough, the then **Corn 
 King of New Hampshire," plowed with it, turning 
 several furrows. In 1891 the plow was removed to 
 Durham with the New Hampshire College. It was 
 exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 
 1876, and at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. 
 
 The first American plow patent was granted to 
 Charles Newbold of Burlington, New Jersey, in 1797. 
 Our colonial forebears had worried along with a plow 
 of which the moldboard and standard were of wood. 
 The moldboard was sometimes plated with sheet iron. 
 In Newbold's plow the moldboard, share, landside 
 and point were a solid piece. 
 
 This was an improved plow and a great American 
 achievement, according to the recorded opinion of 
 Thomas Jefferson. But it was not the first metal plow 
 by a margin of tens of centuries. Turning to I Sam. 
 xiii, 20, which was written into the Old Testament 
 about 1 100 B.C., you read: ''But all the Israelites 
 went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his 
 share, and his coulter. ^^ The Romans plated their plows 
 with iron, and so did the early Dutch. But for twenty- 
 nine centuries no radical improvement worth mention- 
 ing was made in the plow. 
 
 [22] 
 
The Newbold plow had a serious defect in the fact 
 that landside and point were cast in a solid piece. 
 When the point wore out, the plow was worthless. 
 Jethro Wood came along then, about 1819, and made 
 a plow in sections, so that the worn parts could be 
 renewed. William H. Seward, writing of Wood, said: 
 *'No citizen of the United States has ever conferred 
 greater benefits on this country than Jethro Wood.'* 
 But the reward of merit did not come to Wood. He 
 was one of that luckless legion of inventors who do 
 not make good commercially with their inventions. 
 He died in want, after furnishing a model for plows 
 that made many other men rich. 
 
 The next great advance was not so inadequately 
 rewarded. John Deere gave the West the "plow that 
 would scour" back in 1837, and John Deere made 
 good both as an inventor and as a manufacturer. 
 Some plow historians record that one John Lane 
 antedated Deere by four years in making a steel plow, 
 and there is no doubt that John Lane in 1869 did con- 
 ceive of and patent soft-centered steel which was 
 another epoch-making step in plow manufacture, as 
 was the Oliver process of chilling cast iron which pre- 
 ceded it by a year. 
 
 Deere made his steel plow at Grand Detour, Illi- 
 nois. The moldboard and share of his experimental 
 plow were formed of strips of steel cut from an old 
 saw. Three strips of steel of different lengths were 
 used for the moldboard and one for the share. 
 
 The texture of Illinois prairie sod was in a way the 
 Mother Necessity of this invention. The iron plow 
 might serve in the gritty, gravelly and stony lands of 
 
 [23] 
 
the East, but out there in the Mississippi Basin it was 
 a difficult tool for the pioneer. John Deere's invention 
 is recorded as a good deal similar to the fabled revela- 
 tion of the law of attraction and gravitation to Isaac 
 Newton. Newton reclined under a tree and watched 
 an apple descend. Deere watched a saw blade "scour" 
 under friction. He was a plow maker, and inspiration 
 came to him to bend a saw blade over a log and see 
 how it would operate as a moldboard. It worked 
 beautifully. The longer it worked the higher the polish 
 and the smoother and easier the pull. 
 
 Deere was really a frontiersman when he moved 
 from Grand Detour and set up his little factory at 
 Moline in 1847. So was William Parlin, when he 
 entered the industry at Canton, Illinois. But the great 
 mass of us never hear of these gentlemen, or if we do 
 we are apt to catalogue them in our memories as we 
 do purveyors of soap or patent candles or porous plas- 
 ters. Nor are their names, brought down to date by 
 the great manufacturing corporations they founded, 
 so familiar to our ears or vision as some of the soap- 
 and patent-medicine-making groups. I recall a time 
 when Plymouth Rock three-dollar pants were better 
 known than any standard make of plow in New Eng- 
 land. The pants sold for cash and the plows didn't. 
 The pants were advertised on hillside, fence, barn and 
 factory wall by pioneer Yankee advertisers. The plows 
 were not. 
 
 The harrow evoluted even as the plow. There do 
 not seem to be any early Egyptian or Chaldean records 
 of this very important modern implement, but as they 
 didn't do much more than scratch the surface of the 
 
 [24I 
 
soil with their wooden plows in those days such a 
 thing as harrowing was probably regarded as an aesthe- 
 tic pastime. But we do learn from the old Roman 
 records that the first empire builders made some crude 
 advances in the development of the harrow. 
 
 The prehistoric husbandman did all his harrowing, 
 when he harrowed, with the branch of a tree attached 
 to the tail of whatever beast of burden he employed as 
 a draft animal. At the time when human slaves were 
 cheaper than draft animals probably a little group of 
 husky barbarians clanked along in their chains, pulling 
 the heavy tree branch that was employed to smooth 
 the furrows. 
 
 Some centuries before the beginning of the Christian 
 Era, however, progressive Roman farmers discarded 
 the tree branch and contrived a wooden crotch armed 
 with wooden teeth or iron spikes. From time to time 
 they varied the shape of their harrows. Beginning 
 with an implement of triangular construction, they 
 gradually changed until they had evolved the oblong 
 or square harrow, fitted with improved teeth or spikes 
 of divers hard woods and metals. 
 
 This sort of contrivance served the unimaginative 
 and tradition-following peasant and serf through the 
 Dark Ages and beyond. The renaissance of art and 
 letters brought no improvement or perfection to the 
 harrow. The let-well-enough-alone complacence of 
 the man on the soil preserved the antique in all its 
 crudities well into the last century, when the Yankee 
 pioneer demanded something different. 
 
 Not that the Yankee pioneer voiced his demand. So 
 far as the advance of all farm implements is concerned, 
 
 [25] 
 
the farmer has been practically a silent accepter and 
 tryer-out. The man behind the forge, or later the 
 skilled mechanic, was the inventor in ninety -nine 
 cases out of a hundred. True, he may have farmed in 
 his youth and in many cases he was the son of a farmer, 
 but it was the gift of inspiration and imagination in 
 mechanics that made him the trail blazer. He studied 
 the deficiencies of the good-enough implement and 
 then made improvements. He studied the new soil 
 conditions that called for different and improved im- 
 plements and created those implements. 
 
 That was how the colter-harrow came along in 1857. 
 Here was a harrow that pressed down and cut into the 
 soil and scraped the surface to some extent. The disk 
 harrow was a very real and permanent improvement. 
 So, of course, was the spring-tooth harrow for rough 
 and stony ground. The luxury of the riding harrow 
 followed hand in hand, you might say, with the luxury 
 of the riding plow. The development of the lever har- 
 row overcame some of the more serious objections 
 to the rigid-tooth harrow, giving a variable pitch to 
 almost any kind of tooth. 
 
 The important varieties of the tooth harrows are 
 straight fixed tooth; adjustable tooth; curved tooth — 
 pulverizers; spring- tooth — weeders. The chief varia- 
 tions of the lever harrows are straight tooth, cultiva- 
 tor tooth, spring tooth and combination spring and 
 spike tooth. In disk harrows we have the main 
 branches — full disk, cutaway, spading, orchard — and 
 numerous variations. And among notably important 
 later developments there is a pulverizing harrow, clod- 
 crusher and leveler. 
 
 [26 1 
 
The diversification of types in the harrow as in the 
 plow is almost endless. You may look for something 
 new in harrows as in plows almost any day of the week. 
 Undoubtedly many new and important inventions in 
 harrows will come in behind the small tractor. Like- 
 wise will there be freaks and oddities sprung by some 
 of the frenzied competitors in the trade. 
 
 The cultivator line is not so long. The concern I 
 mentioned that makes one thousand types of plows 
 offers the farmer only sixty different kinds of cultiva- 
 tors. 
 
 The cultivator, naturally, evolved from the hoe to 
 the horse-hoe, to the double-shovel plow, and to the 
 straddle-row cultivator, which came in in the later 
 fifties, consisting of two double-shovel plows, one on 
 each side of the row. This implement, pulled by two 
 horses, was really a tremendous gain over its prede- 
 cessors and a revolutionizing force in tillage methods. 
 The riding type of the straddle-row cultivator was 
 merely a refinement. The disk cultivator came in the 
 wake of the disk harrow. 
 
 [27] 
 
IV 
 
 Senseless Diversification 
 
 THE Eastern farmer is more to blame for the 
 seemingly senseless diversification in tillage tools 
 than the Middle Western or Western farmer. 
 Eastern farmers never made any attempt to standard- 
 ize their planting methods. Often you will find half a 
 dozen adjoining farmers planting half a dozen different 
 widths of rows. As for the South, the width of row 
 seems frequently left to the guiding whim of the mule. 
 And in the implement industry the exploiters of tillage 
 apparatus have sought more strenuously to satisfy than 
 to control whims. 
 
 The small beginnings of plow and tillage-tool manu- 
 facturers do not interest us as they would had some of 
 them been scalped by Indians or besieged in block- 
 houses, or even if they had painted up the landscape 
 with monster presentments of their wares. The plow 
 industry does not seem to have devoted itself so much 
 to attaining definite standards as to diversifying va- 
 rieties. After visiting one great plow plant in Indiana 
 I came away with the impression that if a farmer only 
 possessed nerve enough to ask for it he could have a 
 new type of plow made for him while he sat down and 
 smoked his pipe. 
 
 In this plant, where the chilled plow was the spe- 
 cialty, but where they also made an extensive side line 
 
 [28 1 
 
of steel plows, they made as a matter of routine manu- 
 facture 350 varieties of shares, and every plow they 
 made could be put up in seventy-five different ways. 
 Of some of the varieties of shares carried they sold 
 only one a year. They still carried in stock and made 
 as demand called for it the identical product that the 
 founder of the concern had contrived 'way back in the 
 later sixties. 
 
 To list all the varieties of plows that have come into 
 existence during the past forty years would fill a 
 small volume with agate type. An infinity of village 
 blacksmiths had been devising plows to meet local 
 soil conditions round about their villages or hamlets or 
 to meet the wants of newcomers from distant parts 
 who desired to perpetuate the kind of plow their fore- 
 fathers used. Husbandmen from overseas brought 
 peculiar plow ideas with them. 
 
 Now and then neighbors grew to dislike one another 
 to such a bitter intensity that they must have some- 
 thing different to plow with than the contraption the 
 hated Jones was using. Smith, having convinced him- 
 self that Jones was a low-down, no-account cuss, 
 easily persuaded himself that Jones' plow was just 
 as low-down and no-account, for no other reason than 
 that it was Jones' plow. 
 
 When plow manufacture was firmly established and 
 the manufacturers began to devise methods of sale 
 and distribution they were confronted with the prob- 
 lem of meeting local taste and competing with local 
 blacksmith production by imitating the local black- 
 smith's product. In the course of time many of these 
 local blacksmiths expanded into plow makers and got 
 
 [29] 
 
into the manufacturing game and established a local 
 patronage that was mighty difficult to uproot. It was 
 a long-credit business generally and competitors were 
 compelled to buck it on a long-credit basis. 
 
 The aggregate economic waste due to this sort of 
 competition must have been enormous. In a thickly 
 settled civilization the industry could never have stood 
 the strain nor could the farmer have supported the 
 burden. But our agricultural resources and oppor- 
 tunities were sufficiently great to take care of billions 
 of waste. The uneconomical methods of the farm- 
 implement industry were only one phase of this waste. 
 Scientific economies were not only unnecessary but 
 impossible. 
 
 New business for the plow maker grew up over- 
 night in many different directions. Farmers were 
 moving West every year by the tens of thousands. 
 Generally they left their old implements behind them, 
 or if they brought them with them they found them 
 practically useless in the new regions they had gone 
 to pioneer in. 
 
 The shrewd manufacturers who cast out their ten- 
 tacles for this ever expanding business and nailed it 
 down were the ones who made great fortunes. They 
 expanded their manufacturing plants and their sales 
 organizations in unison. They could buy their raw 
 materials in greater quantity and save on production, 
 and the savings they made in this way could be spent 
 in extending their sales organizations. 
 
 For at least a generation the smaller competitors 
 have seen that the only solution of their problem was 
 "to expand or die." Those who had not the courage 
 
 [30I 
 
or the means to expand were recorded in the mortality 
 lists. 
 
 After the chilled plow with removable point and the 
 prairie breaker and black-land steel plows had estab- 
 lished themselves, and had forced into the discard the 
 cruder and old-fashioned types, there was very little 
 worth recording in plow advance so far as the plow it- 
 self was concerned until the sulky or wheeled plow was 
 developed during the later sixties and early seventies. 
 
 The riding plow was purely a Yankee product. The 
 first successful one was invented by F. S. Davenport 
 in 1864. The rolling colter and a three-horse evener 
 were added by Robert Newton, of Jersey ville, Illinois. 
 Then came the Gilpin Moore and the W. L. Cassaday 
 patents in 1875 ^"^ 1876, and since then innumerable 
 improvements and additions have been made to the 
 sulky plow. The reversible hillside plow was probably 
 the most notable. 
 
 The jointer or skim plow, as an attachment, was a 
 mighty important improvement, and so was the disk 
 plow in localities where conditions were well adapted 
 to its use. Then came the deep-tilling plow, the engine 
 plow, and a great variety of engine tillage apparatus 
 that just now is very much in the limelight and is 
 occupying the attention of all the inventive genius in 
 the industry. 
 
 It is safe to say that the market for engine plows 
 will in less than a decade be greater than the market 
 for sulky plows. The engine plow is still in the infancy 
 of its evolution. Originally devised for heavy, high- 
 powered tractors, and slightly modified for the twenty- 
 five to thirty horse-power tractor, it has yet to come 
 
 [31] 
 
to its highest efficiency behind the small, general- 
 purpose tractor that promises to become within the 
 next few years almost a raging fashion among farmers. 
 
 The plow makers watch the development of the 
 smaller types of gas tractors warily and proceed with 
 extreme caution. The general manager of the biggest 
 plow-making establishment — as an exclusive producer 
 of plows — said to me in this connection : 
 
 "During the summer of 191 5 a succession of gas- 
 tractor people urged us to make engine plows to meet 
 the special needs of their tractors. Many of these 
 tractor concerns had barely come into existence. 
 Their product was untried. Their stability was more 
 than questionable. They bought parts from specialty 
 manufacturers and assembled them into ' something 
 that resembled a tractor and which, under the most 
 favorable conditions, would pull two or three bot- 
 toms. 
 
 "These concerns had had no opportunity to test out 
 their tractors under varying soil conditions, nor did 
 they seem likely to have such an opportunity with 
 their limited capital. If we should build a special plow 
 for their special tractor and that tractor should fail, it 
 would be perfectly natural for the farmer to charge up 
 some of the blame for the failure against the plow that 
 we had made. 
 
 "Forty of these new concerns have come into exist- 
 ence during 1915, and the scramble will undoubtedly 
 continue. At present we make engine plows to meet a 
 variety of requirements and we shall continue to ex- 
 pand our engine-plow business as the demand governs. 
 But we shall follow a steady, dependable demand. 
 
 [32] 
 
"We shall also endeavor to protect our dealers by 
 selling our engine plows through them, just as we sell 
 our walking plows and sulky plows. At least, that is 
 the way the situation seems to shape itself just at 
 present. We cannot predict what may happen within 
 the next few years.'* 
 
 The situation is bound to be complex if the tractor 
 manufacturers succeed in selling their tractors for 
 cash and the plow manufacturers continue to sell 
 plows on long credits. 
 
 There does not appear to be any good economic 
 reason why the engine plow and the engine harrow 
 should not become an integral part of the gas tractor, 
 just as the self-starter has become an integral part of 
 the automobile. 
 
 So far as the farmer is concerned he should dis- 
 tinctly benefit by buying his tractor and plows or other 
 essential tillage apparatus as a fully tested one-piece 
 mechanism rather than be compelled to take the word 
 of various and sundry dealers concerning the plow 
 that will specially fit his needs. 
 
 Of course, some of the big implement concerns that 
 are making tractors are also making plows peculiarly 
 adapted to their tractors. The biggest of all the imple- 
 ment concerns does not make plows, notwithstanding 
 that it has gone into the small-tractor game with a 
 rush and is producing in its own plants more small 
 tractors than any of its rivals. This great corporation, 
 however, is in a dominating position so far as the 
 engine-plow situation is concerned. It can get what 
 it wants in the way of engine plows and sell them as 
 it sees fit. 
 
 3 [33] 
 
Legless Heroes as Mechanicians 
 
 THIRTY-TWO one-legged mechanicians were 
 recruited from the trenches to study American 
 farm machinery. They were just patriotic 
 Frenchmen when they went to the front. They were | 
 not mechanics. Some were bookkeepers, some drove 
 taxicabs, some were clerks in department stores. A 
 few were the sons of peasants. A few were policemen. 
 All were heroes, and when they came out of the hos- 
 pital they were worshiped as such. 
 
 But sympathy and adulation will not keep the 
 stomach full. Likewise the loss of a leg is a serious 
 handicap in the struggle for bread. 
 
 Why not make them mechanicians in this age of 
 power and machinery? They had learned the intri- 
 cacies of machine guns and light artillery. Why not 
 teach them the intricacies of American reapers and 
 binders, of tractors and threshers .f* 
 
 This was the idea that flashed up in the mind of 
 Doctor Bourrillon, in charge of a great home for con- 
 valescents. He expressed it as follows: 
 
 "Most of all, France needs and will need mechani- 
 cians. Every little country village, no matter how 
 small, should have its trained machinist. For, look 
 you! The work which the French peasant has been 
 
 [34] 
 
doing by hand, as his father has been doing before him, 
 must hereafter be done by machine." 
 
 So he assembled his legless heroes and started a 
 class in mechanics. He set his pupils to work on Ameri- 
 can harvesting and threshing implements, which they 
 must learn to take apart and put together again, as 
 they would have to do when they set up their little 
 machine shops and tractor garages out in the country- 
 side, or when they entered the employment of the big 
 distributors of farm implements. 
 
 This may seem like a random shot or an irrelevant 
 bit of news from the front. On the contrary, it is 
 mighty significant when we take up the discussion of 
 the merchandising of farm machinery and the growth 
 of great companies that absorbed and killed off little 
 competitors. 
 
 The foreign business of our big implement com- 
 panies has been for some years an anchor to wind- 
 ward. It has enabled them to a considerable degree 
 to continue their system of long credits in this coun- 
 try. Primarily it enabled them to increase vastly their 
 output and thereby to cut down the cost of produc- 
 tion. They invaded the world's markets with a su- 
 perior product and sold it for cash on the docks at the 
 same time they were selling the same stuff on long 
 time at home. 
 
 The American farmer has heard a lot about this from 
 the mouths of certain eloquent politicians. It has 
 been noisily declaimed that the implement manufac- 
 turers were selling farm machinery to Siberian peas- 
 ants for less than the American farmer was paying. 
 So in Argentina, so in Bessarabia, so in Australia. 
 
 [3Sl 
 
Possibly this was true to some extent while a market 
 was being opened up and sales were made for cash. 
 The manufacturer offers the excuse that the engineers 
 of export pioneering compelled such price discrimina- 
 tion. The manufacturer also adds this hypothesis: 
 *'If a Hamburg, or Rotterdam, or Vladivostok jobber 
 takes up his bill of lading and pays cash for his ship- 
 ment, also paying freight and whatever duties may 
 obtain, is there any reason why he should not make a 
 better bargain than the dealer at home who demands a 
 year within which to settle accounts and after that 
 year is up will need further extension of time on im- 
 plements unsold?" 
 
 It is further urged that special cheap products are 
 sold in certain foreign districts at a price below the 
 level for similar, but much better quality, products in 
 the United States. This might be called the German 
 method of invading foreign fields. German manufac- 
 turers learned how to beat the world at turning out 
 cheaper products — poorer in quality but just good 
 enough to stand up — and underselling all competitors. 
 Not in the farm-implement line however. Even the 
 Germans couldn't do that without a big home market 
 to back them up. As I have observed before, when 
 it comes to speeding up farms with machinery the 
 Teutons are not one-two-three with us. 
 
 If our implement industry had been confined to 
 plows and small tillage tools, there probably never 
 would have come into being this present-day specter 
 of long credits and baffling intricacies of distribution. 
 Small tools could have been sold outright to the dealer, 
 who in turn could have marketed them to the farmer 
 
 [36] 
 
and got his cash for them, except in extraordinary 
 cases of crop failure. But when expensive machinery, 
 such as threshers, reapers, binders, mowers, and so on, 
 came along it became necessary to do a lot of financing. 
 
 At the top came the manufacturer; one step down 
 was the jobber; then the dealer or farmer agent; and 
 finally the farmer. To work back, the farmer couldn't 
 pay cash for this expensive machinery, as he didn't 
 have it to pay. At the beginning of things he was 
 pioneering. He was in pretty deep himself in a game 
 and a gamble. He was breaking prairie or grubbing 
 sage or making over swamps; likewise was he fighting 
 grasshoppers, Hessian flies, rootworms, blights and 
 mildews. 
 
 The reaper was developed in 183 1 and came into 
 use in the early forties. The crude beginnings of the 
 mower had preceded it. Along in 1864 came the Marsh 
 harvester — a reaper with a platform upon which two 
 men could stand and bind the grain as it was cut. 
 Then in 1875 came the wire-binder, which automatic- 
 ally made and tied the bundles. The automatic twine- 
 binder replaced this five years later. 
 
 All the great advances in farm machinery save the 
 tractor came within this period, and during that same 
 great epoch our armies of pioneering husbandmen 
 marched ever westward, creating new business for 
 the implement men, as the implement men in their 
 turn had created boundless opportunities for the 
 pioneer. 
 
 You can get an insight into the history of these 
 glorious times from the pithy exclamation of an Illi- 
 nois farmer: 
 
 [37] 
 
*'When I first went into the harvest field it took 
 ten men to cut and bind my grain/* he said. **Now 
 our hired girl gets on the seat of a self-binder and does 
 the whole business." 
 
 But the men who began buying this harvesting 
 machinery, or, as one man has said, "these painted 
 chariots that worked the miracle of plenty," were 
 almost hopelessly shy of cash. So were the banks — 
 what banks there were. And the manufacturer in his 
 turn, for a while at least, was hard up for cash. All 
 the money that could be scraped from all the banks 
 wouldn't much more than buy the egg crop of Iowa, 
 Kansas and Illinois today. 
 
 Hence the farmer bought on time. And he paid 
 high. If he hadn't paid high there wouldn't be any 
 survivors in the industry today. Also he bought 
 extravagantly. 
 
 Some manufacturers will attempt to deny this and 
 offer you a scuttleful of statistics to prove that Amer- 
 ican farms are still 'way underpowered in the matter 
 of machinery equipment. 
 
 So they are, tens of thousands of them, if you siee 
 it up in a merely statistical light and don't care how 
 you swallow your statistics. It is always better to salt 
 down and sweat out statistics if you want to get any- 
 where near the truth. 
 
 The farmer not only bought farm machinery extra- 
 vagantly but he used it extravagantly. He still does, 
 but to nothing like the same extent. Sales were pushed 
 at the farmer through three powerful agencies — manu- 
 facturer to jobber, to dealer, to farmer. And there 
 were heavy risks all along the line. 
 
 [38] 
 
If all the dealer's customers came out of their har- 
 vests dripping with profits the dealer collected in full. 
 Presto! the jobber collected in full. But the jobber 
 was selling to more than one dealer. He didn't make 
 good on all his risks unless all his dealer customers 
 made good on all theirs. And still higher up, and 
 carrying a still greater burden of risks, was the manu- 
 facturer. He didn't make good on all his risks unless 
 all the jobbers made good on all theirs. 
 
 As the industry grew up the manufacturer was con- 
 stantly blazing new trails for his distributing organi- 
 zation. He was giving the jobber lessons in selling to 
 the dealer, and the jobber was giving the dealer lessons 
 in selling to the farmer. 
 
 But who was giving the farmer lessons in buying? 
 Nobody. Just now our schools of agriculture have 
 begun to teach the value of farm machinery and to 
 explain what implements are necessary and what are 
 unnecessary or uneconomical. 
 
 Some of the colleges have splendidly equipped engi- 
 neering departments and have begun admirable team- 
 work with the farmer and the manufacturer. And our 
 Federal Department of Agriculture has become almost 
 awake to the fact that machinery is used on the farm — 
 machinery other than plows. 
 
 Not that you could say that the Federal Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture is up and alert on farm machinery 
 in the year of grace 1916. Just go down there to 
 Washington and try to get some official information on 
 the farm-implement industry as I did. Don't go, 
 though, if you desire any down-to-date data. You 
 won't get them. You may find a bulletin on tractors 
 
 [39] 
 
that came out about five years too late to be of any 
 use. You may find another Httle bulletin, Farm Im- 
 plements and Machinery, vintage of 1901, containing 
 tables of statistics showing that six-foot twine-binders 
 sold at ^325 in 1880 and at $120 in 1900. You will also 
 learn from it that the same spring-tooth harrow — 
 sixteen-tooth — that cost twenty-five dollars in i860 
 was selling for seven dollars in 1900. 
 
 [40] 
 
VI 
 
 Squeezing Out the Jobber 
 
 WHAT you do not learn from official govern- 
 ment bulletins is that a generation or so of 
 manufacturing not only has cut down the 
 price of tools, but has enormously increased their effi- 
 ciency; nor do you learn anything about the processes 
 of change that have occurred in the industry. There 
 is not a hint of the gradual elimination of the jobber 
 from the distribution system, of the union of affiliated 
 companies and the combination of competitors into 
 great dominating corporations. There are just a few 
 naked statistical facts with no explanations attached. 
 The jobber was not forced out of the distribution 
 system because he oversold or undersold the farmer 
 through the dealer. He was forced out primarily 
 because he was a weak link in the chain. The closer 
 the relations between the manufacturer and the con- 
 sumer of farm implements the better for both. 
 
 A farm implement is not bought, put on and worn 
 like a pair of shoes. Even a plow is a mechanism of a 
 dozen or more distinct parts. Some harvesting ma- 
 chines have as many as 2500 parts. Parts wear out, 
 some much faster than others. Or they get kinks in 
 them. Or they are busted by bunglers. Or the user 
 gets mad at them and wallops them with an ax. 
 
 [41] 
 
With the jobber between the manufacturer and the 
 dealer, the manufacturer was seriously handicapped 
 in passing along aid, advice and service to the farmer. 
 The dealer was vitally necessary to perform neigh- 
 borhood service, but the jobber couldn't help to any 
 extent, unless he were big enough to carry a pretty 
 full stock of repair parts and shoot them along to the 
 dealer when he needed them. 
 
 The manufacturer wanted closer personal relations 
 with the consumer than he could obtain through the 
 jobber. The jobber built up a personal business of his 
 own, sent his salesmen out and got what business he 
 could, not for one manufacturer but for a dozen or a 
 score. When the jobber died his business died with 
 him. Not always, but pretty much as a rule. Some 
 other jobber, working for other manufacturers, came 
 in and grabbed this business, and the manufacturer 
 whose jobber had dropped out had to begin all over 
 again to work back into the territory. 
 
 The method employed to eliminate the jobber was 
 to establish branch houses or to absorb the jobber and 
 create of his business what was virtually a branch 
 house. A great plow concern in the early days of its 
 expansion persuaded men to establish jobbing houses 
 in new territory and lent them capital to set them 
 going. This plow concern carried a fairly complete 
 line of tillage tools, but in order to stock up the jobber 
 with a necessarily complete line it was compelled to fill 
 out with the lines of other factories. To do this the 
 manufacturer himself had to become a jobber. 
 
 As sales increased in the side lines the men who 
 were making them soon found that their capacity of 
 
 [42] 
 
production had reached the limit. They didn't quite 
 dare to expand, for the plow maker who was jobbing 
 their products with his tillage lines might suddenly 
 decide to drop their lines and take up the wares of 
 rival producers. 
 
 On the plow maker's side he found that his plow 
 business was getting ahead of the special side lines he 
 had taken on. He also figured that he was making 
 money for the manufacturers of the side lines that he 
 might as well make for himself if he could handle 
 both production and merchandising. Naturally this 
 brought up the question of the advisabihty of buying 
 out the plants of the affiliated lines. 
 
 As an example, say the company was making tillage 
 tools and had begun to job wagons or buggies. 
 Through the branch house it was found easier to sell 
 the dealer tillage tools with wagons than tillage tools 
 without wagons. The dealer was going to buy wagons 
 anyhow, and could save in freight by buying in car- 
 load lots. 
 
 But the wagon maker couldn't keep up the produc- 
 tion pace of the bigger manufacturer of tillage imple- 
 ments. Say the proposition was put to the wagon 
 maker to sell out. He was offered a price that was to a 
 certain degree tempting. He might figure that if he 
 remained an independent and expanded he might in 
 the end get more out of it. But if the tillage maker 
 dumped his line and then set up a new wagon plant of 
 his own, where would the wagon maker get off? On 
 the bird-in-the-hand theory, he would better sell. 
 
 And that is what happened in a good many cases. 
 The producers of affiliated lines sold out their plants 
 
 [43] 
 
and their businesses to the dominating concern that 
 was jobbing affihated Hnes. The plants were kept 
 separate and it was undoubtedly possible to obtain 
 higher efficiency in production and to accomplish 
 notable economies in distribution and sales. Also by 
 takmg on noncompeting lines it was possible to skirt 
 round the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 
 
 To show what manufacturing giants might be 
 wrought by this method of absorption and expansion 
 I shall list the various Deere factories and what they 
 make today under the control and direction of a 
 $65,000,000 corporation: 
 
 Deere & Company, Moline, Illinois: Steel plows, 
 1000 varieties; cultivators, 60 varieties; and harrows. 
 
 Deere & Mansur Company, Moline, Illinois: Corn 
 planters, disk harrows and beet tools. 
 
 John Deere Wagon Company, Moline, Illinois: 
 Farm and mountain wagons and teaming gears. 
 
 Marseilles Company, East Moline, Illinois: Shellers, 
 portable elevators, wagon dumps and manure spread- 
 
 ers. 
 
 Davenport Wagon Company, Davenport, Iowa: 
 Roller-bearing steel wagons and gears. 
 
 Dain Manufacturing Company, Ottumwa, Iowa: 
 Hay loaders, stackers, sweep rakes and presses. 
 
 Dain Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Welland, On- 
 tario: Hay tools and spreaders for the Canadian trade. 
 
 Syracuse Chilled Plow Company, Syracuse, New 
 York: Full line chilled plows and spring-tooth har- 
 rows. 
 
 Fort Smith Wagon Company, Fort Smith, Arkan- 
 sas: Wagons for South and Southwest. 
 
 I44I 
 
Van Brunt Manufacturing Company, Horicon, 
 Wisconsin: Grain drills and seeders. 
 
 Deere & Company, harvester department, East 
 Moline, Illinois: Mowers, rakes and binders. 
 
 And all this was built upon a band-saw plow made 
 for the pioneer trade. To show how the jobber has 
 been absorbed as the industry expanded it is only 
 necessary to mention that the John Deere Plow Com- 
 pany has branch houses in Minneapolis, Moline, Des 
 Moines, Milwaukee; Bloomington, Illinois; Omaha; 
 Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Kansas City; Oklahoma 
 City; Denver; St. Louis; New Orleans; Nashville; 
 Atlanta; Dallas; Portland; Spokane; Seattle; Boise, 
 Idaho; San Francisco; Indianapolis; Columbus, 
 Ohio; Lansing, Michigan; Baltimore; Syracuse, New 
 York; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Saskatoon, Saskatche- 
 wan; Calgary, Lethbridge and Edmonton, Alberta; 
 Toronto, Ontario; and Salt Lake City. 
 
 Other big expanders who followed the Deere method 
 of taking on affiliated lines are the Moline Plow Com- 
 pany, Emerson-Brantingham Company, Janesville 
 Machine Company, Rock Island Plow Company, 
 Parlin & Orendorff Company, Rumely Products 
 Company, J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 
 J. I. Case Plow Company, and Massey-Harris Com- 
 pany of Canada. 
 
 In its defense to the Government's anti-trust suit 
 the International Harvester Company sought to show 
 how these expanders were really active and energetic 
 competitors. 
 
 And this was notwithstanding that the methods of 
 expansion had a very different origin. 
 
 [45] 
 
There were the Deere Company selling io8 imple- 
 ments to the International's 59, the Moline Plow 
 Company with 57, the Emerson-Brantingham Com- 
 pany with 47, the Rock Island Plow Company with 
 34, Parlin & OrendorfF with 28, the Rumely Company 
 with 26, the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company 
 with 20 and the J. I. Case Plow Company with 19. 
 
 Deere, it was urged, competed with 49 of the Inter- 
 national's 59 lines, having entered the harvesting 
 trade as a real competitor; the Emerson-Brantingham 
 Company competed with 33; the Moline Plow Com- 
 pany with 3 1 ; the Rock Island Plow Company with 
 21; Parlin & OrendorfF with 17; the Rumely Company 
 with 13; J. I. Case Plow Company with 11, and J. I. 
 Case Threshing Machine Company with 8. The 
 Emerson-Brantingham Company was a vigorous com- 
 petitor, so the International's brief maintained, in 
 mowers and rakes. 
 
 The Emerson-Brantingham Company is a ^50,- 
 000,000 corporation; the J. I. Case Threshing Ma- 
 chine Company has an authorized capitalization of 
 $40,000,000; the Moline Plow Company is an $18,- 
 000,000 company; the Massey-Harris Company has 
 an issued capital stock of $15,000,000 and resources of 
 $30,000,000. 
 
 The Moline Plow Company did not begin the manu- 
 facture and sale of its harvesting line until 1913; the 
 Case Company began the construction of a plant for 
 the manufacture of binders about the same time. The 
 Government suit against the International was then 
 under way. The Deere Company went into the mower 
 business in 1909 by buying the Dain plant. It made 
 
 [46] 
 
its debut in the binder business in 191 1, selling 27 
 binders in that year and 933 the following year. The 
 Acme Harvesting Machine Company entered the field 
 in competition with the so-called Harvester Trust in 
 1907-1908, and in 1912 sold 31,000 harvesting ma- 
 chines. 
 
 This reads a good deal like a record of the survival 
 of the fittest, and to a large extent may be regarded as 
 such. Of course, it is far from a complete Who's Who 
 of the implement trade, though it contains the names 
 of the leading big diversifiers who followed the trend 
 of expansion and worked out elaborate manufactur- 
 ing and merchandising facilities, but remained practi- 
 cally at a standstill on the long-credit sales method. 
 
 To return to the branch-house method of distribu- 
 tion employed by these big fellows, it has been the 
 custom to assign to each branch house an exclusive 
 territory. Each branch-house manager puts his men 
 on the road to sell to the dealer. Nowadays there are 
 many other branch houses of many other big concerns 
 in the same territory and some surviving jobbers. 
 
 The branch houses pretty generally are not so much 
 concerned with extending business for profits that 
 they can show on their books as with increasing the 
 volume of business. This is the big advantage they 
 have had over the jobber, as distinctly a wholesaler 
 doing business for a wholesaler's profits. Probably the 
 majority of the branch houses are jobbing lines manu- 
 factured by independents, but they are jobbing these 
 lines more as a convenience than for the purpose of 
 earning a jobber's profit. Naturally this situation 
 has given the branch houses a big advantage over 
 
 [47] 
 
competing jobbers who were not big enough and strong 1 
 enough with the personal trade they had built up to 
 stay in the game. 
 
 The wholesalers who have stood the gafF are the 
 ones who amplified their lines with specialties that the 
 farm-implement branch houses could not carry and 
 who have been financially strong enough to carry their 
 dealer customers through hard times and thereby 
 strengthen the personal relationship. Some of the big 
 jobbers who have been able to remain in the game 
 have stood to some extent as a barrier between the 
 little independents and the ever-fattening holding 
 companies and combinations that were squeezing the 
 independents against the wall of competition. 
 
 For the manufacturer the branch house is a much 
 more flexible arm of distribution than the jobber ever 
 was or could be. The manufacturer autocratically dic- 
 tates prices and methods of sales and distribution to 
 his branch houses. There is no annual wrangle over 
 prices and sales. 
 
 As the big jobbers were bowled out of it in the great 
 distributing centers for farm implements they were 
 naturally very bitter in their criticisms. Many of 
 them related how they had toiled patiently and dili- 
 gently to build up big trade for implement manufac- 
 turers, only to have the lines taken from them and 
 branch houses established. 
 
 [48I 
 
VII 
 
 Elaborate Systems of Merchandising 
 
 THE International Harvester Company, since its 
 organization in 1902, built up even more elab- 
 orate systems of merchandising than the branch- 
 house method employed by the manufacturers of tillage 
 tools and threshing outfits. Jobbers who have not sur- 
 vived, and some who are barely surviving, declare with 
 bitter vehemence that the I. H. C. method is both more 
 elaborate and more ruthless. 
 
 The tillage-implement route of distribution is: Fac- 
 tory to factory branch house, to retailer, to consumer. 
 The International route is: Factory to general agent, 
 to retailer, to consumer. The general agent has his 
 branch distributing warehouse just as the manager of 
 the branch house has, but he does more than merely 
 send out salesmen to push his wares to the retailer. 
 The general agent divides up his territory among a 
 staff of submanagers called blockmen. The general 
 agent's territory may embrace several states. The 
 blockman's territory will include from one to six 
 counties. 
 
 The blockman is paid a salary and sometimes a 
 commission to supplement the salary. And he is more 
 than salesman, for he not only sells to the retailer, but 
 employs canvassers to assist the retailer in selling. 
 
 [49] 
 
Say the blockman has persuaded a retailer to stock 
 up with a full harvesting line. Having done this he 
 does not leave it to the retailer to let his sales flow 
 along in the natural course of events. It is his func- 
 tion to speed up each retailer by a system of assists. 
 The canvasser provides the assists. 
 
 The canvasser is employed by the month for a few 
 months at a time. He is hired on a salary and is 
 coached by the blockman how to sell to the farmer. 
 The blockman will take his canvasser to the retailer 
 and say something to this effect: 
 
 "Here is a young man to help you sell our line. Just 
 drive him round to any prospects you have and he 
 will make the selling talk for you. You get your com- 
 mission just the same." 
 
 While there is no doubt of the efficiency of this sys- 
 tem, it is open to criticism. It has been criticised. It 
 has been bitterly assailed — chiefly on the ground that 
 these canvasser assists are far from conservative in 
 their selling talks. Taken on for a few months at a 
 time they have no follow-up responsibilities. They are 
 not coming back to the same territory again. When it 
 comes to a selling talk they feel pretty free to go the 
 limit. It is only human nature that they should ex- 
 tend themselves. 
 
 And if all does not turn out as golden and rosy as 
 they pictured it the farmer victim can "holler" in 
 vain and there is no one round to catch the "holler." 
 The retailer can sit back and say: "Well, I didn't sell 
 you. I simply delivered the goods." The dealer may 
 pass the buck — not that he always does. If the kick 
 should be passed along to the blockman he could pass 
 
 [50] 
 
the buck, too, as the real villain in the case — the elu- 
 sive canvasser — has gone his way and is possibly work- 
 ing for some other blockman in some other field. 
 
 It also happens occasionally that the dealer who is 
 taking the canvasser round is handling only one line 
 for the canvasser's company. The dealer may handle 
 somebody else's wagons, another manufacturer's cream 
 separators, and so on. The canvasser will not help 
 him to sell these competing lines. 
 
 On the contrary, if he gets half a chance he will talk 
 up the International competing lines. He may not be 
 following any written rules or explicit instructions in 
 doing this. It is just natural impulse and incentive to 
 make a showing. 
 
 Furthermore, these canvassers are sent out to report 
 on the farmer as well as to sell to him as an assist for 
 the dealer. They must gather data on his financial 
 standing, the size of his farm and the dimensions of 
 his mortgage, the size of his family, the condition of 
 his house and buildings; also and particularly, he 
 must make inventory of all farm implements and 
 mechanical equipment on the place and their condi- 
 tion. 
 
 The International canvasser is a census taker for 
 the International as well as a salesman. By the em- 
 ployment of thousands of canvassers, both here and 
 abroad, this great corporation has obtained more 
 specific information on agricultural conditions than 
 probably any other agency in the world. It can main- 
 tain an accurate statistical focus on the extent of the 
 farm-implement market. It is able to card-index 
 hundreds of thousands of farmers as prospects not 
 
 [SI] 
 
only for this year but for next year and the year after. I 
 And it is keeping just as close tabs on the farmers in 
 Central Siberia as it is on the farmers in North Da- 
 kota. 
 
 In 1912 the branch of the I. H. C. at Omsk, in 
 Western Siberia, did the largest business of any of its 
 branches in the world. The Omsk sales for that year 
 totaled ^3,184,325.63. 
 
 It has been the contention of the International 
 Company that it was organized not for the purpose of 
 creating a monopoly of old lines of farm implements, 
 but for the development of foreign trade and the es- 
 tablishment of the domestic business on a better 
 economic basis. 
 
 There can be no question of the enormous expansion 
 of its business in foreign fields. The increase from 1902 
 to 1912 was from $10,400,000 to $50,896,000. It ex- 
 ported 131,977 binders and reapers in 1913 — more 
 than the number of binders and reapers sold by the 
 International Company in the United States for the 
 same period or in any year since its formation. It is 
 estimated that the International makes more than 
 eighty per cent of the world's harvesting machinery. 
 
 The company has built half a score of great manu- 
 facturing plants in the foreign field to take care of 
 service requirements and the manufacture of parts, as 
 well as to manufacture implements complete in all 
 their units. 
 
 It is not at all unlikely that the foreign business of 
 this giant in the industry and of several of the surviv- 
 ing big rivals in the tillage line will overshadow the 
 domestic business in the course of the next decade, 
 
 [52] 
 
all of which should give a better toe hold for domestic 
 expansion. 
 
 The invasion of the foreign field was begun more 
 than a generation ago. Companies absorbed in the 
 International, and independents that were not ab- 
 sorbed, had pioneered for expansion abroad with 
 great success. Five years ago — in 1910 — when the 
 I. H. C. was being depicted as a devouring octo- 
 pus, one of its smaller rivals, the Walter A. Wood 
 Company, manufacturing harvesting machinery, was 
 shipping more than sixty per cent of its product over- 
 seas. 
 
 Nor was this export expansion confined to harvest- 
 ing outfits. American plows, harrows and cultivators, 
 also threshers and tractors, began to be sought by 
 foreign jobbers and to find a cash market in many 
 foreign countries. At the end of the Civil War our 
 implement exports totaled about $1,000,000. Growth 
 during the next thirty years was very gradual. The 
 1895 total was $4,000,000. By 1900 it had jumped up 
 to $16,000,000. This was just before the consolidation 
 period. 
 
 Following the organization of the International, 
 and the evolution of other big companies by somewhat 
 difi^erent forms of combination and absorption, the 
 foreign business almost doubled within five years. 
 In 1910 the reported total was $30,000,000. For the 
 fiscal year ending June 30, 1913, according to the re- 
 port of the Department of Commerce, the total ex- 
 ports of agricultural implements was $40,572,352 — 
 more than twenty-five per cent of the total production 
 of the industry. 
 
 [53] 
 
It was estimated when the last census was taken 
 that our harvester companies were doing from 
 twenty to sixty per cent of their business in the 
 foreign field; that the plow companies were exporting 
 from ten to thirty-three and a third per cent of their 
 products, and that the threshing-machine companies 
 were shipping abroad from five to forty per cent 
 of their output. 
 
 Since then the export business of the big companies 
 has continued to increase — that is, up to the outbreak 
 of the Great War. The six months following the be- 
 ginning of war were gloomy ones in the industry for 
 the majority of the exporters. The I. H. C. with its 
 foreign factories and great international organization 
 suffered the least. 
 
 At the end of the first year of the war prospects 
 were brighter all round. The tillage companies were 
 increasing their business in South America and coun- 
 tries outside the war zone. Companies manufacturing 
 motor trucks and tractors capable of pulling artillery 
 and commissary wagons got big war orders. 
 
 As for future expansion in the export field, there 
 seems no limit to it if it turns out that central and 
 western Europe will be compelled after the war to 
 revise their agricultural methods. At least, there 
 should be a far greater market for the smaller imple- 
 ments adapted to the smaller types of European farms. 
 Likewise there should be a great opportunity for the 
 utilization of the smaller types of farm tractor. 
 
 Indeed, there is more than a little significance in 
 the recruiting of one-legged mechanics to study 
 American farm machinery. 
 
 [54] 
 
VIII 
 
 The Long Credit Spectre 
 
 HOW will the farmer buy aeroplanes? 
 He won't, you say. 
 How do you know? Ten years ago he looked 
 upon automobiles as pesky contraptions. He called 
 'em red devils. They ran over his chickens. They 
 bumped his cows. They threw dust in his eyes. They 
 scared his horses. They were benzene varmints. Their 
 drivers were idle-rich city fellows for whom hanging 
 would have been tender mercy. 
 
 But those early-day road-burners were too costly. 
 And they came only to him who could pay cash. You 
 could buy plows, harrows, binders — yea, tractors and 
 threshers — with the winged dollar, the transitory, 
 elusive dollar that was spawned in the cornfield in the 
 early spring and seemed likely to hatch out with the 
 early frosts of harvest time. You promised to pay 
 over this winged dollar provided it hatched out, and 
 if, after it hatched out, you were able to catch it on the 
 wing. 
 
 It was always needful to pull down quite a flock of 
 these winged dollars, and after you got 'em down and 
 clipped their wings you must hustle along and pay the 
 grocer, the meat man and sundry and divers other 
 purveyors of necessaries who might stop their credit 
 
 [55] 
 
and put you in a nasty hole. The hired hands had to 
 be paid, too, and the interest on the mortgage — if you 
 had one; not to mention odds and ends of other 
 things. Then and thereafter, if there was anything 
 left of the blow-away flock, you paid the implement 
 dealer. 
 
 The implement man came last. Why? Oh, simply 
 because. It wasn't a case of must. If the implement 
 man didn't like it he could lump it. Suppose he came 
 up and took your tools away. Well, what if he did ? 
 You didn't need 'em till spring. You couldn't eat 
 'em; couldn't wear 'em; couldn't even burn 'em in the 
 stove. If he came and took 'em, why, he could have 
 'em, but if he took 'em he'd never get a dollar you 
 owed on 'em. And when spring came along, why, you 
 could go down to some other dealer and lay in a new 
 stock. There was no end of dealers, and they were all 
 climbin' over one another trying to sell. 
 
 But it won't be that way when the farmer buys 
 aeroplanes. 
 
 It wasn't that way at all when he began buying 
 automobiles. 
 
 Nor is the tendency shaping that way as the farmer 
 gets into the new hurly-burly of a small-farm-tractor 
 market. 
 
 First, let us take the automobile-purchasing pro- 
 clivity of the farmer apart. It is intensely interesting 
 when you analyze it. Take it from the beginning steps. 
 The motor came over the horizon spitting fire and 
 messing things up. It incited dislike. Presently it in- 
 cited sufficient dislike to become interesting. It en- 
 gaged curiosity. 
 
 [56 1 
 
Curiosity was fanned by press agents and boomers. 
 For a while only the very rich owned autos. After a 
 while the not-so-rich began to acquire them. The 
 farmer heard they were getting cheaper. He saw they 
 were getting better — he didn't have to tow so many of 
 them. His opportunities to laugh at the fellow toiling 
 under them thinned away. 
 
 And in the course of time folks he knew in town 
 began to own them. The doctors were running round 
 in them. Pretty soon he saw fellows driving them that 
 didn't have any special right or privilege to own 
 them — fellows who didn't own land or much substance 
 of any kind. 
 
 By this time the farmer's dislike of the automobile 
 had worn itself threadbare. They certainly did fetch 
 a person round the country some. And it was great 
 sport to ride in 'em. Must be greater sport to run one. 
 The germs of desire to own were sown in a fertile 
 seed-bed by the time the automobile salesman came 
 out to run the farmer round a bit and talk things over. 
 
 He talked a good deal and talked winsomely, but, 
 strange to say, he didn't talk long credits. He told the 
 prospect he couldn't talk long credits, no matter how 
 much he loved him and how closely his folks were re- 
 lated by blood or marriage. Why.'' For the simple 
 reason that the only way he could get a car at the 
 freight depot was by the payment of cash on delivery. 
 The factory couldn't sell on time, as the risks were too 
 great. Not that the farmer was not a man of sub- 
 stance; that went without saying. But suppose the 
 day after he bought his car on credit he ran it into a 
 ditch or ofFa bridge or down a gully. Smash, a thousand 
 
 [57] 
 
dollars had gone to scrap! — and instead of blam- 
 ing the wreck on himself he'd blame it on the car. 
 Furthermore, it was important for the farmer to con- 
 sider that a car was a secondhand car after it had run 
 five miles, and a secondhand car was worth only 
 about fifty per cent of its retail price. 
 
 Absolutely nothing doing except for cash! 
 
 But the retailer of automobiles didn't ride off at this 
 point and leave his prospect plunged in gloom. In- 
 stead, he sat down and delivered a little lecture on the 
 art and science of borrowing. Innumerable other 
 missionaries had attempted to inspire the man on the 
 land with the same theory that it is better to borrow 
 than merely to owe. 
 
 Some carper is apt to leap up here and snort: 
 ** There is no difference between borrowing and owing. 
 When you borrow you owe; when you owe you must 
 have borrowed." 
 
 Just a minute, please. There is really a huge dif- 
 ference between borrowing and just owing. When a 
 fellow buys a plow or a mower on open account from 
 the dealer he does not borrow; he simply owes. But 
 when he goes to a money lender or a bank and obtains 
 the money to purchase that plow or mower he bor- 
 rows. Furthermore, he pledges himself to return the 
 money he borrows. He gives his note, or assumes the 
 burden of a mortgage, or puts his signature to some 
 sort of promissory pledge to pay. And he must pay 
 interest in some fixed amount on what he borrows. 
 And if he is a man of substance the paper he signs has 
 a current value throughout the district. The banks 
 will buy that paper at slightly less than its face value, 
 
 [58] 
 
charging a discount rate to recompense for the risk 
 taken and apportion it toward the cost of running the 
 bank. And here and there you will find note-brokers 
 who discount this paper when the bank will not handle 
 it. 
 
 Now, the dealer himself may take the farmer's note 
 or signed promise to pay, and when he is selling costly 
 farm implements he is compelled to do so by the 
 branch house or factory that supplies him with imple- 
 ments. Having taken this note, though, he must pass 
 it along to the manufacturer to back up his own credit. 
 This puts the purchase on a borrowing, not merely an 
 owing, basis, but it also brings the manufacturer into 
 the banking business and makes heavy demands on 
 his capital. The manufacturer becomes virtually a 
 trust company, tying up large sums that might have 
 been applied to expanding the essential needs of the 
 industry. It is a superimposed burden, no matter how 
 you look at it, and only the very strong can stand the 
 strain. When the very strong stand the strain and the 
 weak go down, this process of elimination adds some 
 definite strength to the very strong by withdrawing 
 just so much competition. 
 
 In the implement industry the very strong were 
 building up bone and sinew for half a century. By 
 comparison the automobile industry was a tropical 
 growth. New blooms were coming to flower every 
 night on mighty slender stems. There was barely 
 enough capital available for the purposes of manu- 
 facture, distribution and advertising. There was no 
 surplus on hand to enable the manufacturer to engage 
 in banking on the side. He simply couldn't hold the 
 
 [59] 
 
bag for the distributor and retailer. If he couldn't get 
 cash on delivery he would have to shut down. He 
 couldn't pay the interest on borrowed capital, buy 
 raw material and pay wages. And, as I have empha- 
 sized before, his product was far more costly and 
 perishable than farm implements. 
 
 The dealer-salesman or salesman for the automobile 
 dealer may not have explained all this to his farmer 
 prospect, but he did make himself emphatically clear 
 on the point that if the farmer were to buy a car he 
 must plunk over the cash out of his own wallet or go 
 to some other fellow and borrow the cash. 
 
 And tens of thousands of farmers borrowed the cash 
 to purchase automobiles when dynamite wouldn't 
 have moved them to borrow the cash to pay for farm 
 implements. They borrowed from banks and they 
 borrowed from usurers; they sold cattle and horses; 
 they plastered their meadows and homesteads with 
 mortgages. 
 
 When this wave of auto buying for cash in the 
 country set in, the implement manufacturers were 
 more than amazed. They were stunned. Here was a 
 new competitor they hadn't figured on — a competitor 
 selling luxuries for cash, when they were compelled 
 to sell necessities on long time. The selling of talking 
 machines and pianos to the farmer was a trifling men- 
 ace by comparison. Furthermore, the piano and talk- 
 ing machine, as the sewing machine which preceded 
 it, were sold on installments — a few dollars down on 
 delivery and at the most a few dollars a month. The 
 poultry on the farm could take care of these items, 
 but the borrowing of ^700 to ^1500 in cash was a 
 
 [60] 
 
margin of expense that the American hen couldn't 
 take care of if she laid her blessed head off. 
 
 How was this automobile menace met? Well, it 
 wasn't exactly met — that is, so far as domestic trade 
 was concerned. There didn't seem any direct, tan- 
 gible way of meeting it. The gasoline pleasure car was 
 burning its way out to the farm like a prairie fire, and 
 the implement people simply stood aside and let the 
 fire roar and race. 
 
 Here is a little inventory of what one of the biggest 
 men in the implement industry offers as his idea of a 
 necessary equipment for the average i6o-acre farm: 
 
 I 14-inch gang plow $ 60.00 
 
 I 14-inch walking plow 14.00 
 
 I 3-section harrow 18.00 
 
 I 7-foot disk harrow 30.00 
 
 1 corn planter 42.00 
 
 2 riding cultivators, at $26 52.00 
 
 I grain drill 100.00 
 
 I 6-foot mower 50.00 
 
 I sulky rake 25.00 
 
 I grain binder 125.00 
 
 I farm truck 30.00 
 
 I farm wagon 100.00 
 
 I wind mill 25 .00 
 
 I manure spreader 1 15.00 
 
 Total $786.00 
 
 The total is approximately the average price the 
 farmer has been paying for his automobile — paying 
 cash. Also it is approximately the average price of the 
 new small tractor, which also, in the beginning stages 
 of its merchandising, must be sold for cash. 
 
 The question comes up: Can the average 160-acre 
 farm, or even the average 200-acre farm, support its nec- 
 essary equipment of farm machinery, an automobile 
 and a small tractor? If so, who's going to get the cash? 
 
 [61] 
 
The farmer, having paid cash for both automobile 
 and tractor, will pull in his purse strings tighter than 
 ever when it comes to the purchase of farm imple- 
 ments — no matter on what terms they are offered. 
 And if the implement business gets itself on a cash 
 basis he will buy still less than he might have bought 
 on credit. This would seem to be a logical assumption. 
 
 Not infrequently there are flaws in logical assump- 
 tions if you don't take them apart a bit. Say the 
 farmer has bought his automobile as a pleasure ve- 
 hicle, and also as a very serviceable aid in getting 
 about the country on necessary and important er- 
 rands. He can use this automobile regardless of what 
 farm implements he owns. His sons can drive it, so 
 can his hired men, and very likely his wife and daugh- 
 ters will learn to run it. It is not a personal luxury or a 
 personal necessity, but a family luxury. 
 
 But when it comes to taking on a tractor the case 
 will be very different. There must be equipment at 
 hand to make the tractor serviceable, to make it 
 worth while from any angle. Unless it can pull a 
 variety of tillage tools and harvesting machinery, 
 provide power for corn shredders, corn shellers, silage 
 cutters, cream separators, and divers other apparatus, 
 it is going to be a good deal of a white elephant. 
 
 62] 
 
IX 
 
 Auto-mania on the Farm 
 
 THE hope is entertained by optimistic leaders in 
 the farm-machinery industry that the farmer 
 will soon recover from his automobile-buying 
 mania, or at least will open his eyes to a preference 
 for farm machinery and tractors over automobiles. 
 Having found that his new runabout toy cost him 
 much more for maintenance than he counted on, and 
 that it failed to bring in a cent of income, he should be 
 in a susceptible frame of mind when it came to tack- 
 ling him on the proposition of buying a tractor or 
 keeping up his farm equipment. 
 
 This is a happy thought, but when I told it to an 
 automobile salesman he smiled on me pityingly and 
 replied: 
 
 "It works out that way only in the RoUo books. 
 Once a car owner, always a car owner. City man or 
 farmer, it makes no difference. Now that we've got 
 the buzz-wagon down to the farmer's price, he's sold 
 to the idea of horseless transportation for all eternity. 
 He's paid out his share of the $250,000,000 spent on 
 good roads during 191 5, and you may bet the last 
 little copper in the bottom of your jeans that he isn't 
 going to sit 'way back on the homestead piazza and 
 watch the other fellow wear out those good roads. 
 
 [63] 
 
^ 
 
 He needs those good roads to haul his stuff to market 
 and he and his family also need them to spin round on 
 to see the country and visit the friends and neighbors. 
 
 "And here's another little thing to speculate on/* 
 said the automobile prophet. "The gasoline vehicle 
 did more to bring the farmer good roads than any other 
 single agency. Also, the good roads that have been 
 built out into the country have added more value to 
 the farm than the farmer has so far spent on automo- 
 biles. The farmer buys a car and votes for good roads, 
 and when the good roads come they pay for the car 
 and lift a mortgage or two off the farm." 
 
 "But surely," I interposed, "the novelty of having 
 and running a car wears off in a good many cases." 
 
 "Oh, yes," he returned, "possibly ten per cent of the 
 farmers may lose their enthusiasm, but not so the good 
 wife and the kids. The novelty doesn't wear off for 
 one family in a hundred or for one family in a thou- 
 sand. Novelty on the farm is a pretty scarce article 
 and once you plant it in the shape of a little old last 
 year's car it takes root and flourishes and won't be 
 pulled up or torn down save by cataclysm, holocaust 
 or flood." 
 
 Pertinent to this observation was the remark of one 
 of the biggest men in the farm-implement business. 
 He said: 
 
 "To illustrate the sort of snag the automobile has 
 been in our path I'll tell you the case of Smithers, who 
 may be any one of a thousand salesmen that are push- 
 ing our line. 
 
 "Smithers has looked round the farm and sized up 
 the low state of the mechanical equipment. He has 
 
 [64] 
 
talked Farmer Rice up to the buying point and is just 
 about to clinch the sale when Mrs. Farmer Rice rustles 
 out of the kitchen and butts into the conversation. 
 
 "'John/ she says, 'remember your promise. You 
 don't need a new binder and you don't need a new 
 manure spreader. You said yourself you could patch 
 up what you've got and make it do for another season. 
 And we are going to get that automobile.' 
 
 *'*Well, I guess that's so,' says John. * Sorry, Mr. 
 Smithers, but I won't order any more machinery now. 
 Come round again next season.' 
 
 "And if Smithers goes round next season he'll 
 probably find that Farmer Rice and Mrs. Farmer Rice 
 and all the Rice kids are cruising round the country in 
 their car." 
 
 "But don't you think," I asked, "that the automo- 
 bile has educated the farmer in mechanics sufficiently 
 to awaken him to the advantages of better farm ma- 
 chinery? Also, isn't the care of a car teaching him 
 something of distinct value in regard to the care of his 
 farm machinery?" 
 
 "To some extent, but the influence for good will be 
 very gradual, also very vague, like all overthrows of 
 habit. You won't be able to point it out or to put your 
 finger on it. The man who has courage and conviction 
 to look far ahead may bank on it to advantage, but he 
 will be the hundredth man. Few if any of us can 
 gather any rainbows from the automobile industry 
 today. 
 
 "We should like to figure it out this way: The 
 farmer wants an automobile, but can't afford it. He 
 could afford it if he would raise more and better crops. 
 s [65] 
 
He could raise more and better crops if he had better 
 mechanical equipment. With the profits from more 
 and better crops he could buy his automobile. 
 
 ''Could anything in the realm of logic be clearer 
 and simpler.? Farm machinery, a necessity, actually 
 part of the farmer's factory equipment, should be 
 paid for as a fixed charge on the farm. The auto- 
 mobile, a luxury, should be paid for out of profits or 
 surplus. 
 
 *'But the way it has been working out is the dia- 
 metric reverse. The results are psychological rather 
 than logical, sentimental rather than sensible. Long 
 credits may be the root of this evil that has come upon 
 us, but it is going to be a master job to tear up those 
 roots and insert in their place something big enough 
 and strong enough to maintain the great expansion of 
 our industry." 
 
 '* But surely he is gaining knowledge all the time on 
 how to finance purchases to his advantage on a cash 
 basis?" 
 
 ''Another theory you cannot accept on its face 
 value. The American farmer is the best long-time- 
 credit getter in the known world. He would not have 
 acquired the habit of paying cash for automobiles 
 could he have obtained them on credit. And the time 
 may come when he will be able to purchase his car on 
 time from some manufacturers who feel inclined to 
 take the risk of long credits. The leaders have made 
 enormous profits and have piled up big surpluses. 
 The change will come when they have reached the 
 saturation point in feeding out automobiles on a cash- 
 purchase basis. 
 
 [66 1 
 
"The big makers have expanded tremendously on 
 production. Just as soon as their cash market slows 
 up they must devise some other means of pushing out 
 their product. Voluntarily or involuntarily, they must 
 kill off competition. In the farm-implement industry 
 the little fellow has gone down because he couldn't 
 stand the long-credit game. In the automobile in- 
 dustry practically the same thing will happen. In my 
 judgment there are not the possibilities of foreign 
 expansion in the automobile industry that there were 
 in the farm-implement industry. (The great export 
 automobile business during the European war was 
 abnormal.) Foreign expansion and the killing off of 
 small competitors have kept us alive." 
 
 "If the automobile industry comes down to a basis 
 of long credits, will not the competition with farm 
 implements be keener than ever.f"' 
 
 "If it were possible to bring the automobile in- 
 dustry down to the same basis of long credits on which 
 we are operating there would be occasion for great 
 and increasing gloom. But the automobile can never 
 be sold as we are selling tillage and harvesting ma- 
 chinery. The automobile is too risky and costly a 
 product, even at an average price of ^500. I don't 
 believe the manufacturer will be able to ship autos out 
 on consignment; certainly the dealers will never be 
 able to sell them on open account. 
 
 "Automobile manufacturers have begun to finance 
 intermediary money lenders — a sort of banking insti- 
 tution that will lend to the purchaser and spht com- 
 missions with the dealer, charging sufficient interest 
 to cover possible losses from bad accounts." 
 
 I 67] 
 
Since I had this Httle talk time-payment plans for 
 the financing of automobile sales have come into a 
 good deal of prominence. For several years, in all the 
 big cities, there have been private concerns lending 
 money to automobile purchasers on their notes, but 
 the business these concerns have been doing has been 
 comparatively insignificant — that is, speaking for the 
 country at large. An exception should be made in the 
 case of California, where the installment method of 
 sales has made big gains in the past few years, with 
 the result that at the beginning of 1916 it was said 
 almost fifty per cent of the automobile sales in the 
 Golden State were installment-credit sales. 
 
 We now learn that half a dozen leading automobile 
 manufacturers have taken hold and begun to back 
 these installment-selling schemes with millions of 
 capital. The manufacturers have really directed the 
 devising of a brand-new credit vehicle, which has been 
 planned with great care for the special purpose of 
 expanding the volume of sales. 
 
 As an example take the case of a Detroit credit 
 sales company launched in November, 1915. Its chief 
 function is to afford discount facilities for the auto- 
 mobile dealer. This is how the plan works out in the 
 purchase of a ^750 car: 
 
 The prospective purchaser stipulates with the dealer 
 to pay ^775 as a time price. The purchaser then fills 
 out a form in which he states the particulars of his 
 responsibilities. Then he signs a chattel mortgage, 
 stipulating that if he fails to keep up the payments on 
 the car the dealer is privileged to foreclose and re- 
 possess the car. Having signed this mortgage the 
 
 [68] 
 
purchaser further commits himself to payment by 
 signing eight notes: A one-month note for fifty dol- 
 lars; a two-month note, a three-month note and a 
 four-month note for sixty dollars each; a five-month 
 note and a six-month note for sixty-five dollars each; 
 a seven-month note and an eight-month note for 
 seventy-five dollars each. The total in notes is ^510, 
 the ten dollars being a supplemental interest charge. 
 
 Having acquired these notes the dealer turns them 
 over to the securities concern to be discounted. Re- 
 member, in the first instance the dealer has taken up 
 the bill of lading on the car shipped to him by the 
 factory or branch-house distributor of the factory and 
 has paid cash to the extent of ^630, which makes the 
 commission to the dealer, on paper at least, ^120. 
 
 The installment purchaser has paid him $275 in 
 cash, but twenty-five dollars of this goes to the securi- 
 ties company to cover insurance and what you might 
 call risk interest. There is too much complicated book- 
 keeping to explain all this. The dealer doesn't send 
 on any of his cash, however. What he sends is the 
 $510 in notes. The securities company discounts these 
 notes, charging a discount fee of $7.50. Then the 
 securities company deducts the twenty-five dollars 
 insurance and interest charge. Furthermore it deducts 
 $100 for what is called a "deferred certificate." Al- 
 together, then, the securities company takes out 
 $132.50 and sends the remainder in cash to the dealer. 
 With this remainder goes the ''deferred certificate." 
 
 This "deferred certificate" is virtually a promise 
 by the securities company to pay back $100 to the 
 dealer when all the installment notes have been paid. 
 
 [69] 
 
But it is not necessary for the dealer to stick this cer- 
 tificate away as idle paper, convertible into cash only 
 after all the notes have been paid. He may indorse 
 this certificate and return it to the securities company 
 to be discounted at five per cent. Following this proc- 
 ess out to the end, the dealer has obtained in cash the 
 installment price of the car less twenty-five dollars 
 for interest and insurance, $7.50 for discount charges 
 on the note and five dollars for discount charges on the 
 "deferred certificate." 
 
 It should be of interest to both the farmer and the 
 implement manufacturer to learn that in the case of 
 sales to farmers the dealer cannot discount the "de- 
 ferred certificate, " but must hold it until all the notes 
 are paid. 
 
 There is also a separate installment plan for farmers, 
 by which payments on the farmer's notes are deferred 
 till harvest time, an arrangement somewhat similar to 
 the long-credits sales by the implement manufacturer. 
 The important difference is that the manufacturer is 
 not holding the bag for the dealer. 
 
 70] 
 
I 
 
 X 
 
 A $200,000fi00 Burden 
 
 "^Y ZEBRAS laid eggs and hatched out giraffes it'd 
 be mighty surprisin'/' quoth Lon the Pessimist, 
 "but it wouldn't be nary a bit more surprisin' 
 than if Jed Peck, Wilbur Smith, Ted Willys and Old 
 Man Proudfit walked into my store and plunked down 
 cold ringin' cash for four ridin* plows, then backed up 
 their wagons to my door and carried them plows out 
 and loaded 'em on board. No, sir; that sort o' trans- 
 action would stump me total deaf, dumb and blind 
 and call for me to hobble round on crutches or else 
 take to my bed with ager and chills. 
 
 "An' what's more, ef I should take that cold ringin' 
 cash, pile it up neat on the counter and then deduct 
 my bit of profit an' sweep it into the till, and then and 
 thereafter pack the big remainder of that clankin' coin 
 into a package an' ship it post express to the imple- 
 ment manufacturer, it ain't to be reckoned on what 
 would happen to the mind, soul an' body o' that same 
 implement manufacturer. It'd just bust him cross- 
 wise an' blow him into powder. 
 
 "But it won't never happen that way," concluded 
 Lon the Pessimist. "Not on the basis o' present 
 prices o' farm implements an' present methods o' 
 forcin' them into my hands when I ain't none too 
 
 [71] 
 
anxious to stock up with 'em, knowin' there's no eager, | 
 immedjut demand for 'em Hke in the case of bakers' 
 doughnuts and soft crullers. 
 
 *'Cash for farm implements is not comin' voluntary 
 from Jed Peck and Old Man Proudfit to my counter — 
 leastwise not in this yere mortal period while I can 
 buy 'em on time and sell 'em on time. The cash-pay- 
 ment idea has got to be worked out up in the factory 
 and then put over under stiff pressure or else you'll 
 never see nothin' to resemble it in your day or mine." 
 
 This crude philosophy comes mighty near punctur- 
 ing the bull's-eye. The great threatened crusade for 
 shortening credits is not coming from the farm. If it 
 is coming from anywhere it must come from the manu- 
 facturer. He must provide the band and marshal the 
 forces to put it over. And it must be a concerted effort, 
 a get-together movement. Big as some of the great 
 implement concerns are, none is big enough to tackle 
 the job alone. 
 
 If they could all get together in a cozy little party 
 and fix prices and divide up territory and exchange 
 credit lists of dealers and cut out oodles of waste due 
 to frenzied competition their problem would be a 
 mighty soft one, seemingly. But there are many ob- 
 stacles in the way of this. 
 
 There are Federal laws and state laws that would 
 deny the privilege of holding such a love feast and 
 putting through such a serene plan. And it is mighty 
 well for the farmer, the dealer and the small competi- 
 tor that there are certain and specific legal lets and 
 hindrances to too much combination and monopoliza- 
 tion. If big men would only use big power in a big, 
 
 [72] 
 
broad way things might be diflPerent. But they don*t, 
 and are not likely to until the golden dawn of that 
 Golden Age when the Golden Rule shall be the most 
 natural of human impulses. 
 
 In discussing the problem of shortening credits for 
 farm implements down to a cash basis, you don't 
 quite get anywhere beyond the vague notion that it 
 should be done, but isn't. All agree that it is vitally 
 important, but, like so many vitally important things 
 in life and government, it must be come to gradually. 
 
 Discussing the subject with C. S. Brantingham, 
 president of the Emerson-Brantingham Company, I 
 found that he was hopeful of a remedy, but that he was 
 naturally cautious and diffident on the score of letting 
 his optimism run away with him. 
 
 He had prepared a paper for the manufacturers' 
 convention in which he suggested the great need of a 
 remedy, but offered no plan. He said: 
 
 ''There is employed in the farm-machinery business 
 today more than enough capital to finance the business 
 as other businesses are financed, and not borrow a 
 dollar except possibly during the spring season. Al- 
 most every farm-machinery manufacturing concern 
 that is sound financially has nearly two dollars of 
 receivables for every dollar it owes, also has one dollar 
 of inventory for every dollar it owes, which makes it a 
 good, strong financial risk. 
 
 "Yet more than $100,000,000 of borrowed money is 
 used by the farm-machinery manufacturers to carry 
 on their business, while they are extending credits 
 that aggregate nearly $200,000,000, half of which is 
 wholly unnecessary. 
 
 [73] 
 
"The elimination of one-half of these credits — 
 approximately ^100,000,000 — will easily and readily 
 finance the farm-machinery business and is in fact 
 the only true, sound, practical solution. If acted upon 
 in earnest by all the members of this [manufacturers'] 
 association it will place the credit of its members high 
 in the preferred class and make the industry the 
 strong, sound, basic industry it is, and relieve a tre- 
 mendous strain from the men engaged in the general 
 management of the business. 
 
 ^^ It will enable them to sell their products cheaper to 
 the farmer. 
 
 "The proper place for farmers to seek credit is with 
 their local bankers, who have increased in number and 
 strength in their various communities and are today 
 prosperous. 
 
 "If the farmers would seek this credit from the 
 local bankers, and the local bankers should give it, the 
 local bankers could then employ their funds profitably 
 at home instead of going to the cities to buy com- 
 mercial paper — often commercial paper made by the 
 farm-machinery companies to raise funds to carry 
 credits extended to farmers. 
 
 "The funds in the country banks are today largely 
 deposited by farmers who were former borrowers. 
 
 "A shortening of credits would encourage good men 
 to remain in the retail implement business and would 
 discourage and eliminate the poor ones who establish 
 themselves on this credit system. 
 
 "If manufacturers, dealers and farmers will give 
 this question serious consideration they must admit 
 that farm machinery should more properly be sold 
 
 [74] 
 
for cash than any other product, for it is actually the 
 foundation of almost all wealth. 
 
 ''The practice of carrying unsold goods from spring 
 to fall and from fall to spring is not practised by any 
 other standard industry and is unsound in principle. 
 
 ''It all goes to promote overloading the dealer and 
 forcing on the farmer what he does not need. 
 
 "It causes overexpansion of factories and straining 
 of credits. In the long run it does not increase net 
 profits. 
 
 "In former years farm-machinery manufacturers 
 listened to the argument that the farmer needed time 
 until the crops were harvested to obtain the funds 
 necessary to pay for his machinery. 
 
 "The automobile and farm-equipment manufac- 
 turers, in establishing their business, have taken a 
 different view and have proved conclusively that the 
 farmer does not need this long-time credit. Has he not 
 shown his ability to pay cash for his automobiles and 
 other purchases when required to do so.^ 
 
 "If we continue the long terms of the past it means 
 that we are using our capital and credit to help finance 
 those shorter-term lines. A shortening of terms more 
 nearly to a cash basis will bring the dealer's prices 
 more nearly to those of the catalogue houses, which 
 are doing farm-machinery business on a cash-in- 
 advance basis." 
 
 "An immediate shortening, making full correction, 
 may be unwise, but a gradual shortening of terms 
 along sensible lines so that a full correction could be 
 obtained in two or three years would be of the greatest 
 possible benefit to all concerned. 
 
 [7Sl 
 
"The farmer should not only welcome and join in 
 this readjustment, but should insist that the industry 
 upon which he depends for his equipment with which 
 to feed the world should be furnished him on the most 
 economical basis possible, which we all know is cash 
 or its equivalent. 
 
 "If our Government desires to assist the farmer let 
 it do so by permitting the manufacturers, dealers and 
 farmers to enter into agreement for the purpose of 
 correcting this system, and lead in a campaign of 
 education to bring about this result." 
 
 Mr. Brantingham added the further suggestion 
 that the manufacturers themselves appoint a strong 
 committee to devote their energy in the direction of 
 rounding out some remedy to relieve the curse of long 
 credits. 
 
 All the big implement men I talked with expressed 
 the belief that the country bankers could help a lot if 
 they only would. It was pointed out that the country 
 banker helped in the automobile game by lending the 
 farmer money with which to make cash purchases. 
 It was not pointed out that the country banker was 
 more or less of a passive instrument in financing the 
 purchase of motor cars for the farm. Nor was it men- 
 tioned that one automobile manufacturer sent millions 
 of dollars in cash to the country banks in one state to 
 finance the purchase of cars. 
 
 This manufacturer did not specify when he loaned 
 this money to the country banks to be reloaned to 
 farmers that the money should be provided only for 
 the purchase of his own cars. He was able to estimate 
 from statistics gathered by his sales forces that his 
 
 [76] 
 
make of car sold two to one over any other make in 
 that territory. If the lending of money to the country 
 banks would greatly increase the sales of his car in that 
 state, he would reap the major benefits. His profits 
 would be so great that he wouldn't have to worry 
 about the small benefits his rivals might obtain. 
 
 To be sure, this was an exceptional case. The manu- 
 facturer who poured those millions into the country 
 banks at a low rate of interest had made enormous 
 profits and had piled up an immense surplus. More- 
 over, he was selling a standardized product at a stan- 
 dardized price. 
 
 He made one price to all his dealers and pro- 
 tected them in their assigned territory. He had no 
 fear of imitative competition. His business organiza- 
 tion had been built up into a great, solid, simplified 
 structure. And the car he made was as well known 
 as the first stanza of the Star Spangled Banner. 
 
 Mr. Brantingham urges that there is an unnecessary 
 $100,000,000 tied up in long credits to the farmer. 
 How much of this $100,000,000 is carried in open 
 accounts by dealers of questionable solvency it is im- 
 possible to determine. Undoubtedly a considerable 
 slice of it will never be liquidated into hard cash. 
 These losses must be made up somehow. The farmer 
 must bear his burdensome share of them or the im- 
 plement industry could not go on. 
 
 If the farmer could only be made to see what his 
 solid-ivory habit of owing, whether he needs to owe 
 or not, is costing him it would not require an endless 
 process of experimental readjustment to convert him 
 to purchasing for cash. 
 
 [77] 
 
But there is too much confusion of standards in the 
 implement game to permit him to see clearly. To 
 begin with, quality standards are a pretty sad muddle, 
 and price standards are a sadder mess. 
 
 With no price standards hitched to quality stan- 
 dards, how can the farmer be expected to obtain more 
 than a blurred vision of the product he is purchasing? 
 
 78 
 
XI 
 
 The Sins of the Dealer 
 
 SOME manufacturers will tell you that the dealer 
 . is to blame for the price muddle. They say that 
 the dealer who is shrewd enough to take advan- 
 tage of cash discounts can fix a standard price low 
 enough to meet the competition of the catalogue houses, 
 cooperative buying clubs, or any other competitor that 
 may bob up. They say also that the dealer who or- 
 ganizes his business efficiently and makes intelligent 
 use of service facilities offered him can maintain 
 standard prices and at the same time earn splendid 
 profits. 
 
 Many dealers who are disinclined to take advantage 
 of cash discounts return that this sort of argument 
 is all rubbish. 
 
 They declare that cash discounts are arranged all 
 in favor of the manufacturer; that the discounts 
 are so small as to be insignificant, and that if the 
 dealers paid cash in advance of the sale of the imple- 
 ments they purchased, they would find themselves 
 with a lot of dead merchandise on their hands. They 
 argue further that no cash discounts that are worth 
 bothering about are offered unless a dealer overloads 
 himself with stock it is a natural impossibility to 
 sell. 
 
 [79] 
 
f 
 
 Theoretically, the dealer who stocks up with a car- 
 load order at a time can save considerable in freight 
 charges. The theory has worked out profitably in the 
 case of the dealer who knew just what to buy in the 
 way of additional lines, and who was able to ascertain 
 from his bookkeeping the cost of handling and selling. 
 
 The practice of foisting upon the dealer additional 
 implements and jobbed side lines that the territory 
 offered no call for has been insidious in the extreme. 
 The saving in freight rates has been swallowed to the 
 uttermost farthing, and left deep in the red by carry- 
 over charges and depreciation mildew. In thousands 
 of cases the result has been a further extension of 
 credits rather than a shortening of credits. 
 
 You would think, to hear a great many manu- 
 facturers discuss the situation, that consignment and 
 carry-over clauses were an invention of the dealer, in- 
 stead of an inherent fault due to overloading and over- 
 selling, failure to standardize quality and prices, and 
 the multiproduction of sizes and varieties for which 
 there is no sane excuse. 
 
 That wild-eyed little old whirling dervish, F. Com- 
 petition — the F. for Frenzied — is the excuse offered to 
 explain away all of these sad-eyed specters of long 
 credit. The manufacturer groans every time he learns 
 that one of his dealers is selling automobiles for cash 
 to farmer customers — the same customers who walk 
 into his store and help themselves to plows, harrows 
 and cultivators on time, in open account, with nary 
 a scrap of paper to record the transaction. 
 
 Many a dealer has been able to knock down hand- 
 some cash profits from cash sales of automobiles simply 
 
 [80] 
 
because he was able to take in farm implements on 
 consignment with two fall datings, less a cash discount 
 and six months' additional net. And the dealer will 
 keep right on doing this as long as he can get the 
 extension. 
 
 Take the dealers through the South at the time 
 Europe burst into flame and the price of cotton was 
 shorn 'way down below production costs overnight. 
 Thousands of dealers were stocked to the straining 
 point with cultivating implements and all manner of 
 tools, waiting for Mister Cotton Farmer to come in and 
 cash his cotton to pay for last year's purchases, and 
 thereupon, having paid for last year's purchases, to 
 stock up again to the limit of what he expected to 
 raise in the way of cotton the following season. 
 
 But six-cent cotton wouldn't wipe the slate clean, 
 wouldn't more than half cover all the divers and sun- 
 dry obligations of debt. There were items for food 
 and items for clothing; items for harness, items for 
 hardware, items for candy and for tobacco; items for 
 oil and occasionally items for grease, gasoline, spark 
 plugs and tires; lastly there were items for farm im- 
 plements. 
 
 When Mister Cotton Farmer made his fall settle- 
 ment of fifty cents on the dollar to the merchant, who 
 got the money? The merchant, in the primary in- 
 stance, but the merchant in his turn owed everybody. 
 He owed for his food products, for clothing, for hard- 
 ware, for every possible item he could owe for. He 
 did not owe for gasoline and oil. The Rockefeller 
 family collects every thirty days. Certain of the food 
 purveyors collected in sixty or ninety days, or else 
 
 6 [8i] 
 
^ 
 
 shut down on the account. The clothing wholesalers 
 also got what they could in sixty or ninety days. 
 
 So it went on down the line till it came to the im- 
 plement man. He was easy. There were no hungry 
 mouths or goose-fleshed limbs or panting motor wag- 
 ons crying for his product. Then he was of immemorial 
 custom and habit patient. Maybe he got a nickel out 
 of that shabby, war-bitten four-bit piece. Too often 
 he didn't even get a glimmer of its existence. 
 
 When all the cotton had been cashed in and Mister 
 Cotton Farmer still owed heavily on last year's ac- 
 count, the merchant he owed began to utter gloomy 
 forebodings and also began to readjust his next year's 
 credit scales. He allowed he would have to extend 
 further credit for the winter's food supply, for a re- 
 duced supply of clothing, and so on. 
 
 But when it came to farm implements, he advised 
 the farmer to get along the best way he could with the 
 carry-over tools that were kicking round the farm. 
 The farmer and his family thought so too. Hence 
 there was the slimmest sort of picking for the imple- 
 ment salesmen when they set out to push the usual 
 seasonal quota for the South. 
 
 The market wasn't there, notwithstanding the 
 benevolent processes of distribution. But the fac- 
 tories were all gaited up to the production of this 
 quota. If the Southern market would not take it, it 
 must be unloaded somewhere. Here was a big prob- 
 lem for the sales manager — an immediate need for 
 expanding into new territory. Some of the big con- 
 cerns sent flying squadrons into South America and 
 blazed new expansion trails in that direction. Other 
 
 [82] 
 
big concerns kept eagle eyes open to catch sight of 
 some tottering small competitor whose territory might 
 be invaded and gobbled. Some smaller concerns that 
 were able to slow up managed to curtail production. 
 
 During all these periods of depression you will hear 
 the honking wail of the dealer. Particularly you heard 
 his plaintive cry in the South during the fall of 1914. 
 Business had gone to the eternal or infernal bow- 
 wows. 
 
 Yet he didn't go down in any extraordinary num- 
 ber, notwithstanding his uneconomic method of doing 
 business. Why? For the simple reason that he had 
 charged for his goods all the traffic would bear — one 
 hundred per cent and often two hundred per cent 
 profit. He had to, he proclaims, to carry his end of the 
 gamble. He was selling merchandise against the 
 possibility of collecting money for it a year hence. 
 He was paying long-credit prices for his merchandise 
 and in addition to that was assuming risks that were 
 highly speculative. There was the cost of doing busi- 
 ness, his living expenses, his luxuries, some surplus 
 that might be lent out on bond or mortgage or in- 
 vested in cotton land. The merchant who could lend 
 money at twenty per cent was not going to pay cash 
 for the sake of any ten per cent discount, and very 
 frequently in the South it is possible to lend money 
 at forty, fifty, sixty, eighty or one hundred per cent. 
 
 The Comptroller of Currency recently revealed that 
 more than 600 Southern banks charged on some of 
 their loans twelve per cent and up, that sixty-seven 
 banks had a maximum loan rate of from twenty-five to 
 sixty per cent, that twenty-two banks charged between 
 
 [83I 
 
sixty and one hundred per cent, and twenty-six banks 
 had a maximum rate of one hundred per cent or more. 
 These were national banks, mind you, not state banks 
 or private banks, or local usurers of the Uriah Heep 
 stamp. 
 
 I have met merchants in the South who told me 
 frankly that they never paid up on an account until 
 the last possible minute. When they could make one 
 hundred dollars in cash earn fifty dollars cash in six 
 or eight months, why send up that hundred dollars 
 cash to some implement manufacturer or implement 
 jobber just for the sake of a miserly ten, fifteen or 
 even thirty dollars cash discount.? 
 
 The manufacturers feel that they have played 
 banker long enough for the dealer — that is, they tell 
 you that is the way they feel about it. So far they 
 haven't felt sufficiently strong about it to pull in their 
 credits to any great extent. There is that elusive, tied- 
 to-a-long-leash $100,000,000 which they could use in 
 their business to great advantage. The farmer is hold- 
 ing out his share of it and the dealer is holding out his 
 share of it, and both are paying heavy interest rates 
 on it if they would only take the trouble to figure it 
 out in simple arithmetic. 
 
 There is an immense amount of ignorance and folly 
 involved in this long-credit scheme of merchandising. 
 The manufacturers admit they have made mistakes — 
 and then shift the burden of responsibility by putting 
 it up to the dealer and his slipshod methods of doing 
 business. The dealer splits the buck in two and passes 
 half along to the manufacturer and half along to the 
 farmer. Over and above this the dealer has a special 
 
 I84I 
 
grievance against the catalogue house and the new 
 movement to organize cooperative buying clubs. 
 
 As for the farmer, he has had very httle to say. 
 He has done a lot of wood-sawing and quiet thinking, 
 however, and in some unknown, mysterious way gets 
 together sufficient cash every year to buy three or four 
 hundred million dollars' worth of automobiles, gaso- 
 line engines, stoves, hardware, steel roofing, furniture, 
 talking machines, silos and pianos. 
 
 More and more the farmer has been learning to buy 
 for cash what he cannot buy any other way than for 
 cash. He has followed his individual bent in this 
 direction. The bankers have helped him out a little, 
 but not any too beneficently — with, of course, nu- 
 merous exceptions in the case of progressive bankers 
 who have made it their business to study farms and 
 farming in its present-day aspects. 
 
 [8sl 
 
T] 
 : 
 
 XII 
 
 Lack of Quality or Price Standards 
 
 "^ \ ^HERE'S too many animiles," said an Arkan- 
 sas philosopher who never in his Hfe leaned 
 against anything harder than a hne of least 
 resistance. *' There's too many superflu's animiles for 
 any use. If a feller could only have a mule that'd bark 
 like a dog, give milk like a cow, cut up into beef on one 
 side o' him and into pork on t'other side, it'd jest save 
 tremendjus in the labor an' expense o' farmin'." 
 
 This is the sort of dictum you might expect to 
 emerge from a furze of knotty and tangled whiskers 
 that still luxuriate in timbered valleys or on bleak 
 hill-knobs. Yet the idea contained has been applied to 
 the retail-dealer situation by more than one manu- 
 facturer of farm implements. 
 
 There are too few of what you might call general- 
 efficiency dealers. There are too many nondescript, 
 hit-or-miss dealers who really never had any business 
 in trade and whose days in trade are numbered from 
 the moment of their entrance into business. 
 
 But the nondescript, happy-go-lucky, let-it-go-at- 
 that type of dealer is passing. Harvesters of statistics 
 in and out of the trade have the figures to prove it. 
 The modern efficiency pace is grinding him out, but 
 not by a swift, relentless process of annihilation. 
 
 [86] 
 
There is no vanishing point in sight. Elimination is 
 necessarily a slow weeding out — far too slow to please 
 the big implement manufacturers. They would like 
 to see a new race of live-wire dealers born overnight, 
 sprung up like Jason's warriors from an efficiency seed 
 bed, every one of them a keen, sharp business man 
 amply provided with capital. 
 
 But they will wait in vain for this sort of magic. 
 Given the power to perform the miracle themselves, 
 they would lack the nerve. They have used the so- 
 called *' incompetent" dealer in their business for 
 many decades and seemingly have thrived on him. 
 They have kept tabs on his inefficiency and reckoned 
 the averages of his failures. But he has served them 
 mightily in their methods of expansion. 
 
 That was during the age of long credits. 
 
 Now that the age of long credits is said to be re- 
 ceding down a dim vista, the farmer-agent or agent- 
 farmer, the drive-about, gad-about "merchant" with 
 no store or stock, must be relegated to the dis- 
 card. And with him must go the little desultory store- 
 keeper who has no more use for system and method in 
 his business than a banker has for wooden money. 
 
 If you are discussing the dealer problem scientific- 
 ally you must class these likely discards as the unfit. 
 If you are taking up the subject on a basis more human 
 than scientific you might class them as unfortunate 
 or unadaptable or misguided or something of the sort. 
 There are grades and degrees of unfitness, as there are 
 grades and degrees of misfortune and unadaptability. 
 From any and all standpoints there is room for con- 
 troversy. 
 
 [87l 
 
There are some facts, however, upon which we can 
 put our fingers and through which we can drive spikes 
 to keep them where we can see them and ponder on 
 them. According to a 1910 estimate, there were in the 
 United States at the beginning of this decade approxi- 
 mately 45,000 dealers selling farm implements and 
 hardware of infinite kinds, qualities, styles and pat- 
 terns. We will use the term "dealer" as a means of 
 general classification, including the big and the little, 
 the fit and the unfit retailer; also including all the 
 heterogeneous collection of dealer agents. 
 
 We learn that about 10,000 of these dealers fell by 
 the wayside in five years. At least, they vanished from 
 the lists. An up-to-date census of dealers, we are in- 
 formed by an authority on the subject, would include 
 only 35,000 or so names. And not more than 20,000 
 of the present-day list of 35,000 dealers are what 
 you might classify as "regular merchants,'' possessing 
 tangible capital to do business on, carrying stock and 
 repair parts and rendering service. 
 
 This gives us about 15,000 dealer agents. Five 
 years ago, out of 45,000 dealers of all sorts, approxi- 
 mately 25,000 were dealer agents. This would seem 
 to give us the simplest sort of sum in addition and 
 subtraction. No need to get out pad or pencil. You 
 have it in a flash that the vanished 10,000 were dealer 
 agents. It also seems to figure out neatly that the 
 20,000 dealer merchants who were doing business five 
 years ago are still in business today. 
 
 But it is not so simple as that. Of the twenty-five 
 per cent of dealers of all sorts who go out of busi- 
 ness everv year, a considerable percentage are in the 
 
 [88] 
 
so-called merchant class. Likewise there are many 
 dealer agents who graduate into the merchant class 
 and thrive. I could name a dozen of these whom I 
 know personally in a dozen different states, every one 
 of them a live-wire hustler. 
 
 If you ask an implement manufacturer why so 
 many hopeless or foredoomed-to-failure dealer agents 
 came into the field he will reply promptly: 
 
 "There were not enough good dealers to go round.'* 
 
 The manufacturer could not wait for the education, 
 training and trying-out of retailers. He was hitting up 
 production at too fast a clip to afford to dispense with 
 the little dealer. The excess product had to be sold. 
 When the established merchant was stocked to the 
 guards there was still a big surplus to dispose of. So 
 *' salesmen" were picked up helter-skelter and sent 
 out scouting for business among their friends and 
 relatives. 
 
 Several years ago it was estimated that 70 per cent 
 of the dealers were former farmers. This included all 
 types. As to the process of developing former farmers 
 into dealers, here is a pithy commentary on the sub- 
 ject by a man who made a careful investigation of the 
 implement industry: 
 
 "Farmer Jones sells his farm and comes to the city 
 to educate his children and enjoy the advantage of 
 urban life. He soon becomes restless and seeks em- 
 ployment. He knows nothing about general merchan- 
 dise, but he thinks he does know something about 
 agricultural implements. It is easy to get started. 
 In fact, some implement solicitor may have offered 
 the suggestion to him. 
 
 [89] 
 
"He soon has a stock of goods in hand, received on 
 varying terms that are confusing, but he says to him- 
 self:^ 
 
 "*I can't quite remember all these terms; but in 
 general, I can sell the goods first and pay for them 
 afterward.' He does not know how to figure overhead 
 expense. If he sells a forty-two dollar machine for 
 forty-five dollars he is apt to think that he has made 
 three dollars. 
 
 "Meanwhile he takes his living out of the business. 
 The credits are so long and settlements are so easily 
 evaded that he probably loses all he has before he 
 realizes what is happening, and then another farmer 
 moves in from the country to take his place.'' 
 
 The flat statement that there were not enough deal- 
 ers to go round cannot be accepted entirely at its 
 face value. 
 
 From the farmer's outlook there seemed ample 
 dealers to go round. Even in tiny hamlets there 
 seemed a surplusage of dealers, some carrying one line 
 and some carrying another. 
 
 But if the farmer had looked into it he would have 
 discovered that the dealers he knew and dealt with 
 represented only a scanty handful of the little army 
 of competing manufacturers. If a competing manu- 
 facturer saw rich possibilities in any district he im- 
 mediately planned an invasion of that district. If the 
 established merchant dealers were stocked up with 
 other lines in such a way that they could not afford 
 to take on a new line the invader resorted to the simple 
 method of appointing a farmer-agent. Often he per- 
 suaded some retired farmer to invest his capital in a 
 
 [90] 
 
store, extending him liberal credit to aid him in 
 launching the enterprise. 
 
 A large percentage of these ''new beginners" were 
 bound to fail, but they were also bound to make some 
 sales. Friends and relatives would buy from them for 
 a while. And when they failed the chances were even 
 that some other fellows could be brought in to carry 
 along the line and the business until they, too, got 
 up against it because of unbusinesslike methods and 
 general unfitness as merchants. 
 
 The manufacturer didn't always get his money back, 
 but he managed somehow to stiffen up his prices so as 
 to stand the general average of losses. The bigger the 
 organization behind him the smaller the average of 
 losses from this method of merchandising; also the 
 greater opportunity of crowding out other lines and 
 taking possession of the established merchant dealers. 
 
 When such great concerns as Deere & Company 
 had taken on a multiplicity of allied lines they were 
 able to present a new argument in merchandising 
 economies to the dealer, an argument which you 
 might call the carlot inducement. They could prove 
 by the simplest sort of mathematics to the dealer who 
 was buying a dozen different lines from a dozen dif- 
 ferent manufacturers in widely scattered localities 
 that there must be a distinct advantage in buying all 
 these lines from a single purveyor, who shipped from a 
 single branch-house point of distribution or from a 
 centrally located factory. 
 
 This sort of merchandising, naturally, excludes the 
 farmer-agent, and no doubt it assures definite econo- 
 mies for the dealer. There is, however, an always- 
 
 [91] 
 
present danger of overloading. The dealer who is 
 pretty sure to benefit by the available economies is 
 the dealer who can estimate his selling costs accu- 
 ately and who handles his credit arrangements with 
 customers along systematized lines. This is taking 
 for granted that he has skill in pushing his wares. 
 
 [92I 
 
XIII 
 
 Sir James, Jim and No- Count Jimmy 
 
 THE problem of retail prices has always been 
 more or less of a perplexing puzzle — too fre- 
 quently an unsolvable one for the general run 
 of dealers. An inexperienced dealer has little or 
 nothing to guide him as to what retail prices should be. 
 He is a babe in the woods when it comes to figuring 
 selling costs. Nor has he more than a vague notion of 
 quality standards. 
 
 Wholesale prices are maintained firmly if not in- 
 flexibly by the large companies and may be said to 
 be pretty well standardized. Quality for quaHty and 
 freights considered, there is very little variation in the 
 wholesale prices of old, staple lines. Though every 
 separate implement made may have some specific 
 selling point, when you get down to the raw basis of 
 comparisons there is little difference in the quality and 
 the prices of staple goods. 
 
 But when it comes to retailing farm implements the 
 situation has been and still is to a large extent vastly 
 otherwise. The dealer who figures anything above the 
 wholesale cost as a profit soon sells himself into bank- 
 ruptcy. The peddler who carries his wares in a pack 
 on his back and sleeps under a roadside hedge or in a 
 convenient haymow or barn can adopt this primitive 
 
 [93] 
 
method of merchandising and get away with it, and 
 now and then the farmer-agent may eke out a pre- 
 carious existence on roughly calculated profits. But 
 no merchant dealer can ever know where he stands 
 unless he adopts system and careful bookkeeping and 
 can distinguish between a real and an imaginary 
 profit. 
 
 It often happens that profits on the same machine 
 in the same county will vary from fifteen to twenty 
 per cent. 
 
 Say Farmer Riddle goes to Dealer Jones and gets a 
 price of twenty-five dollars for a fairly well-known 
 staple implement. If Farmer Riddle is at all given to 
 shrewdness he will look round a bit and see if he cannot 
 beat that price. He will drop in on Dealer Green and 
 tell him that Dealer Jones offered him a price of 
 twenty-three dollars. If Dealer Green is anxious to 
 sell he will meet the cut and go it one better, bringing 
 the price down to twenty-two dollars. If Farmer 
 Riddle is a persistent cheapener and doesn't care how 
 he squanders his time he'll hunt up Dealer Jones again 
 and tell him that Dealer Green has offered to sell the 
 identical implement at twenty dollars. 
 
 If Dealer Jones is a greenhorn and can't see through 
 these little subtleties he is very apt to let the imple- 
 ment go at twenty dollars, though it cost him nineteen 
 dollars. 
 
 He may make mental note that he is a dollar 
 ahead on the transaction, when as a matter of fact he 
 is about three dollars behind — that is, figuring that 
 his selling costs were somewhere in the neighborhood 
 of twenty per cent. 
 
 [94] 
 
Dealers and manufacturers say it would be im- 
 possible to attempt to standardize retail prices, just 
 as it is impossible to standardize character and sol- 
 vency in purchasers and business ability in dealers. If 
 a dealer is selling two identical articles at the same 
 time to two different customers he is very likely to 
 make two different prices because of the different 
 characters of the customers. 
 
 He knows Farmer X to be entirely solvent and able 
 to meet his obligations whether his crops are bumper 
 or otherwise. In the case of Farmer Y he believes that 
 anything he sells him on time entails a definite risk. 
 So, to square the equation, he makes the price ten 
 dollars to Farmer X and fourteen dollars to Farmer Y. 
 
 Down in Mississippi I met a small country merchant 
 who sold to a little community of cotton growers a 
 line of "watch-charm" plows and "manicuring" culti- 
 vators. The cotton growers were all more or less in 
 debt to the merchant. Some owed more than others. 
 Some were lazier than others. Some had large families 
 and some had small families. Some were newcomers 
 and had the moving habit. Some were drunkards and 
 some were sober and fairly industrious. 
 
 "I got 'em all listed as risks," said this merchant, 
 "and I charge 'em for these plows according to the 
 risk. Sometimes I get fifteen or twenty different 
 prices for the same article." 
 
 "And the fellow who is hardest up and able to pay 
 the least pays the most?" I asked. 
 
 "Sure thing," he replied. 
 
 "And yet you wonder why these same fellows turn 
 handsprings and utter war whoops when they get 
 
 l9Sl 
 
hold of a mail-order catalogue and read off the stan- 
 dardized prices for cash sales." 
 
 **rm not worrying about catalogue houses,'* he 
 returned. "If any of my customers catch up on the 
 books and get a little cash ahead you'll find me right 
 round when the coin begins to clink. I've got a full 
 line of these catalogues right in my store and I read 
 'em faithful. 
 
 "I know the prices and can figure out the freight 
 rates, and when it comes to making a cash sale to a 
 cash customer I can name a price that'll save postage 
 and freight." 
 
 **But don't your customers ever get together and 
 compare notes on the diversity of prices they are 
 paying for the same article .f"' 
 
 ''Not often; not often enough to worry over. A 
 fellow who's paying high simply because he's poor 
 pay isn't apt to gossip much about how he's stung. 
 The bargain getters are the noisy folk." 
 
 This quaint, keen Mississippian is not offered as a 
 dealer t3^pe. He appeared to be too much of a one- 
 piece individual mechanism to be called a type. But 
 his selling methods were somewhat typical of those in a 
 large area of the South, where retail prices of farm 
 implements are about as standard as the weight of 
 razorback pigs. 
 
 To visualize the average implement dealer is a large 
 order. We learn from careful investigators that the 
 retail-implement trade is at its worst in the New Eng- 
 land States and that it grows steadily better as one 
 goes westward, until it appears at its best beyond the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 [96I 
 
The implement business has not thrived particularly 
 in the New England area because there is little demand 
 for the larger implements, and because the factories 
 and transfer houses are so near at hand that goods can 
 be quickly obtained. Hence, instead of an exclusive 
 implement dealer with a good stock you are more 
 apt to find a hardware or general-store merchant, 
 or perhaps a blacksmith or farmer, carrying a few 
 samples. More than sixty per cent of the farm-imple- 
 ment business in New England is said to be in the 
 hands of men who have less than ^300 invested. 
 
 A 1916 tabulation of Eastern dealers showed 4500 in 
 the coast states, taking in New England and states as 
 far south as the Carolinas. Only about 2000 of these 
 were listed as "regular merchants," carrying stock in 
 trade and conducting real mercantile business. As far 
 back as 1908 Illinois alone listed more than 1600 sure- 
 to-goodness dealers. As you cross the Potomac or get 
 out into the agricultural backbone of America the 
 farmer-agents begin to disappear. At least they thin 
 out greatly in number. 
 
 The business is at its best beyond the line of 
 jobbing centers — Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, 
 Dallas — and these favored areas in turn diminish as 
 one leaves the great farming field and passes into 
 mountainous and primitive conditions. 
 
 Retail trade reaches its maximum in those cities of 
 the great West that are located on a trunk line far 
 from any cross or parallel railroads. The distance 
 from factory and transfer house necessitates the carry- 
 ing of a large stock, and as there is little ready money 
 among the farmers, extended credits must be granted. 
 7 [97] 
 
A big business may be done, but the large stocks and 
 long credits require much capital — sometimes as much 
 as $100,000. The risks are heavy because of the little 
 ready money obtainable, and a crop failure means the 
 carrying over of nearly all accounts for an extra year. 
 Repeated crop failures almost inevitably write bank- 
 rupt over the shop door. 
 
 An attempt to classify the implement dealer is more 
 than likely to lead you into interminable ramifications. 
 At a recent gathering of farm-implement manufac- 
 turers P. T. Rathbun presented three classifications 
 that make a distinct appeal to the imagination. He 
 visualized three grades of dealers, not by card-index 
 letters or numbers, but as Sir James, Jim and 
 Jimmy. 
 
 Sir James is the ideal of the trade, who has attained 
 the knighthood of success. He has ample capital to 
 conduct a thriving business. His business organiza- 
 tion is almost of copy-book perfection. He carries a 
 good stock, well housed and attractively displayed. 
 He has adequate help, picked and trained for efficiency. 
 His stock is intelligently priced and aggressively 
 pushed. He gives credit where credit is due, but in- 
 sistently and incessantly preaches the gospel of cash- 
 purchase benefits. He takes advantage of cash dis- 
 counts almost invariably and in giving credit does so 
 only in return for bankable paper. He can figure his 
 overhead and selling costs down to a margin of mills, 
 and just a glance at his books from day to day will 
 tell him where he stands. 
 
 He is so awfully good at the game, really, that he is 
 almost too good to be true. But there are a good many 
 
 foSl 
 
of him out in the Western territories, and one of the 
 best signs of the times is that he is notably on the in- 
 crease. Dealer associations and dealer organizations 
 are doing much to increase his kind. 
 
 Coming down from Sir James to Jim is quite a 
 descent, but it lands us among plain folks who make 
 up the vast majority of humankind and always will. 
 Jim is the average modern implement man. 
 
 Jim is typical of that great army of dealers who are 
 ambitious to do a clean, honorable, profitable retail 
 implement-and-vehicle business; who have homes they 
 love to support; families they hope and plan to be- 
 come honorable, educated and worthy citizens; com- 
 munities where their all in material interests is in- 
 vested, which they long to see aggressive communities, 
 a worthy and satisfactory place in which to raise a 
 family and call home. 
 
 '*Jim," to quote Mr. Rathbun, "is not devoid of 
 either capital or ability, though in common with most 
 of the world perhaps is not burdened with either. He 
 knows goods and knows men — at least, his customers. 
 He combines more than you have the right to expect — 
 the mechanic, the credit man, the banker, the buffer 
 between maker and user of your wares. 
 
 "He has had enough of complaint to sour a less 
 well-balanced nature, enough of disappointment and 
 discouragement to dishearten a man of less character 
 and strength; enough of imposition to make him dis- 
 trust all mankind were he himself less worthy of the 
 full confidence of both manufacturer and farmer; and, 
 withal, enough of hard work to make him the man of 
 strength he is. 
 
 [99I 
 
**He has a stock of goods — perhaps too large, at 
 least often too expensive; some display system — 
 usually not beyond improvement; a general idea of 
 what business costs are, and an ambition to find that 
 elusive end we call * profit.' He is aggressive, ambi- 
 tious, trustful and trustworthy, as honest as any 
 similar number of men on earth — is Jim the Imple- 
 ment Man.'' 
 
 This brings us down to poor Jimmy — Jimmy the 
 Goat. Anyhow, Jimmy will tell you he's the goat. 
 There's no easier way to explain away your short- 
 comings and misfortunes than by a shrug of the shoul- 
 ders and a plaintive wail: "Oh, I'm the goat!" Per- 
 tinently, then, the Rathbun definition of Jimmy is 
 interesting: 
 
 *'Much, too much, of the happy-go-lucky, for- 
 profit-trusting-to-Providence-and-accident sort. Too 
 intimate with his trade to deny an extension of credit 
 on past-due accounts; too busy to acquaint himself 
 with costs and business methods. A disposer of goods, 
 but never a profit gatherer." 
 
 This is short and pithy, but the trouble with most of 
 us is that we never get a good near-hand view of 
 Jimmy. We no sooner look him up and get his focus 
 than Bang! he goes broke. And once he is down all 
 the strong survivors take a wallop at him. 
 
 And if you looked round pretty close with an inspired 
 regard you'd see that gaunt, ghoulish specter, the 
 grim banshee of the trade, Long Credits, sitting on 
 Jimmy's chest, taking Jimmy's word for it that he is 
 the goat, and shearing him down to the subcutaneous 
 tissue of his hide. 
 
 I 100 ] 
 
 I 
 
XIV 
 
 A Hoosier Who Woke Up 
 
 IF TWEEDLEDUM and Tweedledee had been Imple- 
 ment dealers, they would undoubtedly have amused 
 the populace. When Alice in her journey Through 
 the Looking-Glass came upon Tweedledum and Twee- 
 dledee they staged a terrifying battle for her. The two 
 chubby youths adorned themselves in quantities of 
 hardware and then lambasted each other all over the 
 lot. They didn't know what they were scrapping about, 
 and the notion didn't reach into their gray matter to 
 reason it out. They had just got into the habit of it, 
 and while they made a great din the wounds inflicted 
 were trifling. 
 
 A good many hundreds if not thousands of imple- 
 ment dealers are just as futile in their contests and 
 rivalries as the mythical twins, Tweedledum and 
 Tweedledee. 
 
 They don't bounce out into Main Street draped 
 with washboilers and kettle covers and hammer one 
 another with long-handled agateware spoons, but 
 they do carry on idle and profitless price-cutting con- 
 tests and spring-sale shindigs, and they likewise 
 knock one another's lines and methods of doing busi- 
 ness without ever being able to ascertain any benefits 
 from the process. 
 
 [lOl] 
 
And the farmer looks on and grins and takes every 
 extra inch of long-time credit and price reduction he 
 can get out of it. 
 
 The farmer also extracts all the free service he can 
 derive from these bootless rivalries, which brings us 
 to a mighty important factor in the modern merchan- 
 dising of farm implements. 
 
 Let us turn to our business primers and find out 
 what S-E-R-V-I-C-E spells. Why, it spells service, of 
 course, and service is just service and nothing else. 
 It means going out to the farmer's farm and setring 
 up his plows and cultivators, his manure spreaders and | 
 corn shellers, his stationary engines and tractors, and 
 so on. Likewise it means going out to the farm to 
 screw up a loose nut, or to readjust a bad hitch. 
 Furthermore, it means first aid to the injured imple- 
 ment, the dupHcation of parts that break. 
 
 But better than everything, you hear, it means 
 something that the catalogue house cannot give, some- 
 thing that the cooperative buying clubs cannot and 
 do not provide, something that the automobile dealer 
 does not attempt to give — save in a very small way, 
 and then youVe got to come in town to get it. 
 
 The general understanding — or rather misunder- 
 standing — of service is that it should be reckoned as a 
 give-away product. The farmer pretty generally has 
 this notion, and, having this notion, if he is a fairly 
 shrewd sort of person, he is sure to reckon that if the 
 dealer can afford to give it away it can't be worth 
 very much in any event. 
 
 I met a dealer in Northern Indiana who screwed 
 his face up like a dried persimmon when I mentioned 
 
 [ I02 ] 
 
service to him. There was a smile embedded in the 
 wrinkles, but it was a sort of puckered smile at that. 
 
 "Service," he said, **is a joke in most cases. Why.? 
 Because it's made so by the chumps who give it 
 away. I was one of these chumps for a long time and 
 that's why I know. I gave away hundreds of hours of 
 my time and skill, just as Andy Carnegie gives away 
 libraries. The difference between Carnegie and me 
 was that he could afford it and I couldn't. Every 
 time a farmer'd telephone to my store that some of his 
 implements had gone askew I'd either lock up the 
 place or leave it in charge of some fool clerk and then 
 drive out to that farm and give away a whole after- 
 noon of my time to put something right that the 
 farmer himself could have put right with half an effort. 
 
 *'I called this service and talked a lot about it when 
 I made my sales. But I'll admit it wasn't a whole lot 
 expert service and that when I went to work on most 
 of the machines I tackled my hands were all messed 
 up with thumbs that didn't belong and my idea of 
 mechanics was pretty crude. 
 
 ''This came to me all of a sudden one day when a 
 manufacturer sent down one of his mechanical experts 
 to show me how to set up a new implement. I pulled 
 my watch on that fellow and saw^ that he did some- 
 thing in about sixteen minutes that would have taken 
 me two hours. Then I asked him what he got by the 
 hour. 
 
 *'I got out some paper and did a little figuring after 
 he left. First, I figured out what my time was worth to 
 me as a merchant, and then I figured what my time 
 was worth as an amateur mechanic. The conclusion I 
 
 [103I 
 
reached was that I was a two-way chump. Even the 
 inferior service I was giving to farmers was worth 
 something, but it wasn't worth so much as my time 
 ought to be worth as a merchant. 
 
 *'The question then was how to balance this mess 
 up. I puzzled awhile and then hit on it. I decided to 
 cram all I could on mechanics till I could give service 
 that was worth real money, and then charge for that 
 service. I started right in to take things apart and 
 put them together again. I visited some of the fac- 
 tories and saw how machines were made. I learned 
 which were the weak and which were the strong parts, 
 and pretty soon I got an education in parts that was 
 worth real money to me. 
 
 "I couldn't afford to carry a very heavy stock of 
 parts, but I worked out a schedule on the parcel-post 
 shipment of parts that has helped me a lot. Some parts 
 are too heavy to come through the post, but the great 
 majority of parts can. Now, if a customer telephones 
 me for a part I send a post card to the branch house or 
 district warehouse and down comes that part to the 
 farmer by parcel post. I have it sent direct to his 
 R. F. D. letter box and that saves the trouble and time 
 of shipping it out to him or having him come in for it. 
 
 "And nowadays I charge for my service every dollar 
 it is worth. I have a service helper on my staff and I 
 charge for his service every dollar it is worth. Was 
 there a row about these service charges at first? You 
 bet there was. When my customers began telephoning 
 to me for first aid to their implements and I replied 
 that I'd be glad to come out but it would cost them 
 two dollars an hour for my time, I thought some of 'em 
 
 [ 104] 
 
would bite off the phone connection. They called me a 
 pirate and said they'd never buy so much as a half- 
 inch bolt in my shop again. Some of them told me that 
 if I didn't come out and give them free service they'd 
 never pay me a dollar for the stuff I'd sold 'em on 
 credit, and that I could come out and get it and sell it 
 for junk. 
 
 "It wasn't long before I noticed that the men who 
 made the greatest noise about it were the fellows whose 
 credit was the most shaky, and this got me going over 
 my accounts and planted the firm idea in my head to 
 sell nothing from then on unless I got some paper to 
 bind the obligation. These fellows could sign chattel 
 mortgages for installment furniture, pianos, talking 
 machines and what not, and if a dealer only went at it 
 right they could give their notes for every purchase of 
 farm implements, big or little, they made. 
 
 "It took nerve to swing all these changes, but I 
 braced myself for the pull and went at it. I had to 
 clean out a lot of junk I was carrying and cut down my 
 stock pretty slim, and for a while I had a tight squeeze 
 to tide things over. Some manufacturers threatened 
 to take my lines away unless I kept up my orders, and 
 one or two of them did. I wrote the others that I was 
 going to get myself in line for the cash discounts they 
 were recommending so loudly in their public speeches 
 and that I had got my selling costs figured down to 
 dollars and cents and knew a good deal more about my 
 business than any of their salesmen could tell me. 
 
 "I also laid in a full line of mail-order catalogues and 
 was able to quote the cash prices I was up against for 
 almost the identical merchandise they were selling me. 
 
 [105I 
 
"For a while things looked pretty dubious and I 
 wasn't sure that I wouldn't have to hang out the red 
 flag. A good bit of my long-time business was slipping 
 away and going over to two other dealers. Both those 
 fellows called me all kinds of a numskull and my own 
 folks began to look at it that way too. 
 
 "And I don't know but I might have gone under if 
 it hadn't been that a new line of engines was offered 
 to me on a cash-sale basis at a price that was rock- 
 bottom and below the mail-order price for the same 
 product. 
 
 "I got a few of these engines going and then things 
 began to pick up. I chucked the slate out the window 
 and didn't make a sale that wasn't practically a cash 
 sale. I took short-term notes that were discountable 
 at the local bank. I didn't sell a thing that I didn't 
 know the ins and outs of from the mechanical stand- 
 point, and when I was asked for service I charged for 
 it and got the money. 
 
 "I found this important thing out on the service 
 end of it after I got the idea cemented down that any 
 service I rendered had an actual cash value — nobody 
 asked me to come out and fool away my time. My 
 customers sent for me only in real emergencies. They 
 tried their darnedest to render their own service or 
 else they telephoned me and stated their difficulties. 
 I narrowed my stock down to plows of one make 
 and as few varieties of those as possible, to buggies 
 of one make, one type and one price, to a well-known 
 standard corn planter, and to the stationary en- 
 gine that had proved its quality and worth from the 
 jump. ^ 
 
 [ io6 ] ^ 
 
"The first year I just about made living expenses, 
 but last year I did $50,000 worth of business at a ten 
 per cent net profit, and I'll come pretty near doubling 
 that in another year without expanding my lines to 
 any great extent. I plan to take on tractors, but not 
 until I can get one that is especially adapted to this 
 district, one that is made right and priced right and 
 can be sold for spot cash or the equivalent of spot 
 cash in short-term paper that can be discounted locally 
 in the same way the automobile dealers discount their 
 paper." 
 
 It may be contended that this canny Hoosier 
 quoted above is not a dealer in the broad sense of the 
 term; that he is merely a finicky sort of agent who 
 evolved some pig-headed notion and by accident got 
 away with it. Very likely it will be urged that he is 
 peculiarly favored in being able to do business with 
 the ideal sort of customers in an unusually prosperous 
 agricultural district. 
 
 I will not attempt to debate these points. The 
 interview is offered merely at its face value. Here was 
 a man who tackled the experiment of both shortening 
 his lines and shortening his credits and selling service. 
 He accomplished unobtrusively what he did accom- 
 plish. I visited his store and saw his four specialty 
 lines on display, each line carefully segregated by itself 
 as a separate display unit. 
 
 Two farmers had come in to look at buggies. One of 
 those farmers had made up his mind to buy a certain 
 mail-order buggy and was on his way to the post office 
 to purchase a money order. He had the mail-order 
 blank carefully filled out and rolled up with the money. 
 
 [ 107 ] 
 
On the way to the post office he had met the other 
 farmer and they had dropped into a discussion of the 
 merits of various buggies. 
 
 Farmer A, with the money order, had been buying 
 various equipment by mail and boasted of the savings 
 he had made. Farmer B agreed with him so far as 
 some of the purchases were concerned, but when it 
 came to the question of buggies, he suggested that they 
 stop at George Henry's store on the way to the post 
 office. He had bought a buggy for cash from George 
 Henry and would swear by it. 
 
 So they dropped in, and George Henry was there. 
 So were the buggies and so were various parts of the 
 buggies that it pays to keep in stock. The buggies 
 were in plain sight; so were the parts. George Henry 
 — which, by the way, is not this Hoosier's name at 
 all — greeted the two men and showed them the bug- 
 gies. He had very little to say. He did not volunteer 
 any buncombe on the subject of buggies. He was alert, 
 waiting for questions. When asked for the price he 
 didn't hem and haw and hew and cut and beat round 
 the bush concerning terms and conditions. He stated 
 the price in dollars and cents in a tone that was posi- 
 tive and final. 
 
 "But I can buy the same buggy for ^3.50 less," ob- 
 jected Farmer A. 
 
 "I know that as well as you do," said George 
 Henry; *'but how about the freight.? The freight on 
 the XYZ buggy is ^4.10. How about the time it will 
 take you to come to town and get that buggy? It'll 
 arrive knocked down. How about the time it'll take you 
 to set it up? Isn't your time worth anything to you.?" 
 
 [ 108] 
 
**0h, I can send Fred, the hired man, in if Fm 
 busy." 
 
 *'Sure you can," replied George Henry, "and use 
 up a day of Fred's time and a day of a team's time. 
 Maybe the labor of your hired man and team isn't 
 worth real money.?" 
 
 "Why ain't they worth money.?" snapped back 
 Farmer A. "I've got as good teams as any man in 
 these parts and Fred's a right smart feller if you only 
 keep after him." 
 
 "And this is your busy season too," said George 
 Henry. "In that case Fred's time and the team's 
 time are worth about twice as much as usual — say 
 five dollars. Well, if you want to give five dollars' 
 worth of their time and $4.10 in freight it looks to me 
 as if you were going to pay a bit high for your XYZ 
 buggy. Likewise if you break anything on the XYZ 
 it'll take you some time to replace the part." 
 
 George Henry shut up and gave Farmer A time to 
 ponder. He knew what was coming. 
 
 "If you'll knock off three dollars on that buggy I'll 
 buy it, and here's the cash," broke out Farmer A. He 
 produced and flashed the bills. 
 
 George Henry shook his head. 
 
 "Try that on the XYZ people and see if they'll cut 
 the price," he said. "I named the cash price for my 
 buggy." 
 
 "But if you knock off three dollars there'll still be 
 a profit in it for you," pursued Farmer A. 
 
 **Yes," said George Henry, "but you'd have to use 
 a magnifying glass to see it. The time I'm taking right 
 now in talking to you is worth money to me. I'm 
 
 [ 109] 
 
paying real money for the rent, light and heat of this 
 store. The wages of my help are slicing off dollars as the 
 hands of the clock go round. I've put in years invest- 
 ing time and labor learning to sell buggies, plows and 
 other things — and that's worth money." 
 
 Farmer A pulled off his hat and scratched his head. 
 Farmer B grinned and chuckled. *'I guess he's got you 
 there, Tom." 
 
 "Reckon he has," admitted Farmer A, who pro- 
 ceeded to tear up the mail-order blank and count the 
 cash into the hands of George Henry. Half an hour 
 later Farmer A was driving out to his place with his 
 new buggy. 
 
 Now, this may sound like an incident manufactured 
 to bolster up a theory. But it isn't. I was sitting back 
 of the little railing round George Henry's office and 
 heard every word of the colloquy. I didn't take it 
 down in shorthand. There was no need to. It was one 
 of those little human incidents that record themselves 
 clearly and indelibly if one is interested. And I was. 
 
 [no] 
 
XV 
 
 The Farmer s Elusive Cash 
 
 A GOOD many dealers I interviewed talk in this 
 strain: 
 ^ "Farmers running round loose with cash in 
 their jeans are about as scarce as canaries in Alaska." 
 To which we might reply that mail-order houses, auto- 
 mobile dealers and the multitude of concerns selling 
 merchandise on installments collect from farmers 
 every year between ^600,000,000 and ^700,000,000. 
 Then there are the insurance companies that collect 
 their millions regularly. And there is the banker who 
 gets interest on loans and mortgages. 
 
 There really are ways and means of extracting cash 
 from the farmer. Not from all farmers, to be sure. 
 Unquestionably there will everlastingly be, this side 
 of Utopia, a percentage of farmers to whom cash 
 money will always remain an unknown symbol, who 
 will remain submerged in a quagmire of debt all their 
 lives. 
 
 Some bankers and money lenders will always charge 
 these unfortunates usurious rates of interest on loans, 
 some installment men will fleece them unmercifully, 
 and some silver-tongued orators will perpetually hold 
 them up as examples of the oppressive and grind- 
 the-heel-in-the-face methods of the capitalist classes. 
 
 [Ill] 
 
But a comparatively small percentage of the past- 
 due paper that is still floating round in the implement 
 world bears the signatures of the miserably submerged 
 type of American farmer. Nor are the losses on this 
 past-due paper very great in the aggregate. In the 
 case of some big concerns it amounts to less than one 
 per cent. The interest on this paper, however, runs 
 into many millions more. The uncoUectable bills of 
 dealers who carry open accounts pile up more millions, 
 and the farmer pays the greater share of this surtax. 
 I have had it drummed at me that he willingly pays 
 this surtax for the privilege of taking his time at pay- 
 ing for things that were sold to him. 
 
 It doesn't always follow that what is sold to farmers 
 or any other class of purchasers is always bought by 
 them. This may sound like an idiotic quibble; but 
 pause a moment and listen to an automobile salesman 
 who has abandoned a quick-selling line of buzz-wagons 
 for small tractors and has made a killing at it: 
 
 "Tm not selling tractors to farmers. I'm letting 
 farmers buy tractors from me — that's why I get cash 
 for 'em. You've got to make a man want something 
 pretty hard to induce him to buy; you can sell him 
 anything if you are in the business of making terms 
 that practically amount to a bribe. That's the trouble 
 with the farm-implement people. The long-credit 
 terms they make are so close to bribery that you've 
 got to put on double-lens glasses to see the difference." 
 
 In the same connection there was an installment 
 dealer I ran across in the one-crop cotton area of the 
 Southwest. He sold house furnishings for a little 
 something down and a little something every week. 
 
 [112] 
 
As I talked to him in his shop I noticed an alleged 
 painting in a gilt frame that was prominently dis- 
 played on a gilt easel. It was one of those ten-minute 
 daubs that are turned out in gross lots by correspond- 
 ence-school artists. It pretended to depict a knight in 
 armor riding through the forest toward a setting sun. 
 You didn't get this impression all at once. My first 
 impression, at a little distance, was of a freight car of 
 tomato cans which had blown up and caught fire. 
 Both the knight and his horse were thoroughly tinned 
 and soldered and the forest they traveled through had 
 been burned over and tornado swept. 
 
 Harrowitz, the installment man, nodded to it and 
 remarked: "Some work of art, eh?" Then he added: 
 "It's a little gold mine." 
 
 I didn't quite connect. He asked me what I thought 
 it was worth. 
 
 "A dollar thirty-nine for the frame," I ventured. 
 
 "I paid $1.82 for the whole outfit, including easel," 
 said Harrowitz. "It wasn't quite new. I sell it for 
 two dollars — twenty-five cents down and twenty-five 
 cents a week." 
 
 "Where's the profit in that?" I asked. 
 
 Harrowitz rubbed his nose and winked first one eye 
 and then the other. 
 
 "Listen," he said. "I've sold that art object two 
 hundred times and it's good for fifty more before the 
 gilt scales off. It never stayed out beyond five pay- 
 ments. Generally the collections don't run higher than 
 a dollar. By the time the collector goes round for the 
 fourth quarter the purchaser has sort of got cold feet 
 on that picture. Most of my customers are simple 
 
 8 [113] 
 
folk, not exactly fastidious in their tastes, though they 
 do do a lot o' plowin' in patent leathers. By the time 
 they've paid a dollar on that picture they figure 
 they've got all the everlasting good out of it that can 
 be got. The neighbors have all seen it and been stupe- 
 fied by it. It seems foolish to pay any more money on 
 it, so they let the collector collect it. Yes, sir, it's a 
 little gold mine." 
 
 Now, notwithstanding all that work of art had gone 
 through, and despite its low intrinsic value, when Mr. 
 Harrowitz came to sell it for the two hundred and first 
 time he took a chattel mortgage on it. No owner could 
 possess it for his or her very own until he or she had 
 made the eighth payment of twenty-five cents. Nor 
 did any ''purchaser" abuse it or neglect it, because of 
 the fixed idea that it was not his to abuse. 
 
 How different it is with the long-time-payment 
 purchases of farm implements that are left kicking 
 round any old place it is convenient to leave them, 
 until they are little better than disintegrated scrap 
 by the time they are paid for. 
 
 [114] 
 
XVI 
 
 The New Get-To gether Epoch 
 
 CAN an optimist drive a camel through the eye 
 of a needle? He can, with trifling ease. A 
 sure-to-Henry optimist can drive a whole 
 string of camels through a needle's eye and never turn 
 a hair. 
 
 In the course of my roundabout tours of the Middle 
 West seeking fresh data on the implement industry 
 and its thriving little brother, the tractor industry, I 
 met a considerable variety of sure-to-Henry optimists 
 who proclaimed that they could do even better than 
 drive flocks of camels through the narrow orifice in 
 the stub end of a needle — to wit, they could drive 
 tractors through in untold numbers and never so much 
 as scratch the paint or dent the radiators. 
 
 The needle's eye in this little parable is none other 
 than the gateway to cash sales and shorter credits. 
 From time immemorial it has been both a close and a 
 closed way. The big, many-humped camels in the im- 
 plement industry have lumbered up to it, and have 
 stopped. They have cocked their eyes at it and have 
 looked through it. What they could glimpse on the 
 other side was like unto the Eden of their dreams. 
 
 There were to be seen golden streets and shining 
 buildings. There were hustling folk with radiant, 
 
 [115 I 
 
happy countenances going their several ways with 
 speed and precision. Everywhere there was order, 
 system and calm routine. There were no red banners 
 of bankruptcy to stain the halcyon aspect, nor could 
 the hoarse braying of the auctioneer be heard above 
 the hum of the many harmonized industries. 
 
 Multitudes of prosperous-looking farmers thronged 
 the paved ways and the unpaved byways, each one 
 bearing a wallet stuffed with cash. There was no jost- 
 ling or stampeding in this glad throng. Every man 
 knew whither he was bound and the easiest route 
 thereto. There were no bands or crossroads sideshows 
 to distract attention, no hungry price-cutters reaching 
 out for the farmers* coat tails to pull them into their 
 spring sales and bargain exhibitions. And lo! there 
 were no automobiles! 
 
 Is it any wonder that the camels wept and moaned 
 with bitter anguish when they saw all this and yet felt 
 the utter futility of attempting to negotiate the eye of 
 the needle? As they sat and wept they saw little 
 sawed-ofF camels, knock-kneed dromedaries and sorry 
 critters resembling goats and gnus rush up to the 
 needle's eye and launch themselves blindly at the aper- 
 ture, only to fall back bruised and battered and shorn 
 of their mangy hair. Finally, when they had wept 
 their tear ducts dry, they lumbered to their feet, 
 wheeled about and went back to the sour-grass pas- 
 tures where the long-credit thistles and the past-due 
 papyrus robbed what succulent fodder there was of 
 both flavor and nourishment. 
 
 During the latter months of 191 5 and carrying over 
 into 1916, far more has been done toward realizing the 
 
 [116] 
 
dream revealed through the needle's eye than at an}^ 
 other period in the history of the implement industry. 
 Last fall the leading implement manufacturers ap- 
 pointed a committee to discuss the great drive they 
 would make toward shorter terms if they could only 
 get together on some common understanding. Price 
 fixing and monopoly agreements were forbidden to 
 them, but if they could obtain from one another de- 
 pendable assurances that they would revise their sales 
 methods to conform to a general scheme of shorter 
 credit terms, a great forward step would be made. 
 
 I talked with the members of this committee after 
 they had held several meetings. A few of them, who 
 are eminent in the industry, were optimistic. They 
 were ready to predict this much — that there would be 
 no carry-over of credits from 1916 to 1917 by the 
 manufacturers represented on the committee. Assur- 
 ances had been given by the Big Five, and the Big 
 Five dominated the industry so far as volume of pro- 
 duction and sales was concerned. 
 
 Looked at from an economic standpoint, such an 
 agreement would be a huge gain to the industry. It 
 would be a great gain not only for the big fellows but 
 for the little fellows as well. Certain dealers would 
 kick and balk and plunge about, but no real opposition 
 need be looked for from the efficient dealers. The in- 
 efficient dealers would be the chief kickers, and the 
 new arrangement would tend to eliminate them from 
 the general scheme of things. The efficient dealers 
 would gain by the elimination of the inefficient dealers. 
 The squeezing-out process would continue under a 
 steadily increasing pressure. And with the small gas 
 
 [117I 
 
tractor coming in as a great big factor in the industry 
 the inefficient dealer should be discarded as rapidly as 
 possible. 
 
 In the past the inefficient dealer has possessed a 
 definite utility for the marketing of small implements. 
 Without him, seemingly, it would have been impossible 
 to expand into new territory, but when it comes to 
 selling tractors and the improved appliances that will 
 be sold as tractor accessories, only the efficient dealer 
 may serve. At least that's the way it sized up as the 
 selling plans were devised. 
 
 The best of selling plans do not always bear the in- 
 tended fruit, however. The marketing of any com- 
 modity must have its processes of evolution. The same 
 may be said in regard to the projected drive in the 
 direction of shortening credits. 
 
 Simply because a little group of gentlemen repre- 
 senting investments of half a billion dollars got 
 together and decided that there were millions of 
 profits to be gained by walloping the long-term- 
 credits specter out of existence does not mean that 
 said specter is ready for his shroud and deep inter- 
 ment. There may be a slip-up — indeed, there may be a 
 series of slip-ups. 
 
 Not all the members of this very important com- 
 mittee may feel the same way about it after they retire 
 to the seclusion of their own manufacturing plants. 
 When they call in their sales managers, those able and 
 canny gentlemen may point out that there are certain 
 almost insurmountable obstacles in the way. For in- 
 stance some sales manager may rise up on his hind legs 
 and remark: 
 
 f 118I 
 
"It's all mighty fine for the U-9 Plow Company 
 to dictate iron-clad terms to its dealers and cut 
 out all 1917 carry-overs. The U-9 company has had 
 horseshoes hung all over it for the last year and its 
 stock is pretty well cleaned down to the bone. None of 
 its lines needs very hard pushing. Its inventory is as 
 clean as a whistle. 
 
 ** WeVe had no such luck. Some of our warehouses 
 are chockablock with both our own lines and some of 
 our jobbed lines. A lot of that stuff is getting out of 
 date, and if we're going to unload it at all we've got to 
 let it down on the dealer as easily as possible, both as 
 to price and as to terms. It's a cinch the farmers are 
 not going to stampede for the stuff. It's got to be sold 
 to them, and you and I know how the farmer is accus- 
 tomed to buy implements for which he has no pas- 
 sionate desire." 
 
 By the time the sales manager has presented the 
 case in all its manifold details, the big boss may at 
 least partly have emerged from his rosy dream. He 
 may soon be in a frame of mind that suggests tempor- 
 izing. He may be ingenious enough to devise a way to 
 clean out his unsold overstock without resorting to the 
 old-time carry-over contracts with the dealer. He may 
 have nerve enough to take an apparent considerable 
 loss, though only a temporary one, for the sake of in- 
 finitely greater gains in the future. He will have to 
 thresh all this out with his board of directors and his 
 staff of superintendents and managers. 
 
 The head of one big company told me that he hoped 
 and prayed that the manufacturers would hang to- 
 gether and put their plan through in a big, broad way. 
 
 [119] 
 
"But," he said, "I am afraid of the Blank & Dash 
 Company. They are bigger than we are and they are 
 our deadliest rivals. It has long been their policy to 
 annihilate competition where it was weak enough to be 
 cut down. If they set out to shorten up terms it is 
 going to mean a longer lease of life to the little fellows. 
 Volume of production is their greatest bulwark and 
 they cannot maintain volume if they stiffen up their 
 selling terms. They will be compelled to surrender 
 certain avenues of distribution to the little fellows. Of 
 course, the little fellows who keep tied up to the long- 
 credit fallacies are going to strangle themselves in the 
 end, but this year there are several agencies that might 
 be utilized to hasten the slaughter. 
 
 "The price of raw materials has increased anywhere 
 from twenty to sixty per cent. All metal products used 
 in the manufacture of farm implements have gone up 
 and are still going up, and the manufacturers of these 
 products do not extend long credits. The little fellow 
 who buys in small quantities will pay proportionately 
 more than the big fellow who buys in large quantities. 
 A similar condition will apply in the labor market. 
 
 "This will mean an increased demand for cash upon 
 the small manufacturer. If he can shorten his terms to 
 the dealer appreciably, he will be able to obtain the 
 cash to tide him over. If he is forced to do business in 
 competition with the big fellow along the old long- 
 credit line, he will not get the cash in time to satisfy his 
 creditors. 
 
 "Looked at from this angle it would seem to be the 
 psychological time for the leaders in the industry to 
 turn the elimination screws down to the limit. 
 
 [ 120] 
 
"But there is still another complexity to face. The 
 increased cost of raw materials will compel the manu- 
 facturers to raise the price of farm implements. If we 
 continue to do business under the old arrangement we 
 shall have to boost prices fifteen per cent. If we can 
 shorten terms so as to avoid 19 17 carry-overs the in- 
 crease need not be beyond ten per cent. Last year was 
 a mighty prosperous one for agriculture, and in my 
 opinion a raise of ten per cent would not have a disas- 
 trous effect in cutting down volume of sales. A raise 
 of fifteen per cent would decrease the volume of sales 
 to a serious extent. 
 
 "So you see there is a really big urge behind the 
 logical policy of shortening credits from the manu- 
 facturer's standpoint, and the golden plan would be 
 adopted unanimously if we could only trust one an- 
 other more than we do. 
 
 "There is still another phase that cannot be left out 
 of the reckoning. There are certain of the Big Five or 
 Big Six — and some of the smaller twenty-three, for 
 that matter — ^who have been expanding their foreign 
 business enormously in the past five years. There was 
 a big slough-ofF in this business immediately after the 
 start of the European war, but by the middle of 1915 
 the pendulum swung back. 
 
 "Splendid gains were made in the South American 
 trade. Foreign orders for tractors poured in. Here was 
 and still is an outlet for volume, and the concerns that 
 have skimmed off the cream of this export business 
 would be in a position to raise their domestic prices 
 fifteen per cent and get away with it on the old long- 
 credit basis. 
 
 [121] 
 
"Naturally it occurs to some of us that those of our 
 rivals who are cutting up export melons may fall from 
 grace when it comes to the actual fulfillment of prom- 
 ises made in get-together meetings. There are doubt- 
 ers in our midst, an important group, whose original 
 habitat was Missouri. 
 
 *'We recall many winter meetings of the plow as- 
 sociation in Chicago when we gave grips all round and 
 exchanged golden-rule promises to clean up our selling 
 methods and get down to better economic principles in 
 expanding our trade. We recall quite vividly how some 
 of us who relied upon these promises and agreements 
 and hewed to the line of closer selling and shorter 
 credits were stung, and how the industry suffered still 
 another setback. 
 
 "Those we had relied upon as the shining lights to 
 lead the new movement were the first to stab us from 
 behind. We had hardly begun to stiffen up our con- 
 tract terms with our dealers when down they swooped 
 into our choicest territory and attempted to gobble our 
 trade on almost any terms the dealer would ask. It 
 was traditional cutthroat competition and the only 
 way we could meet it was to backslide into our old 
 methods." 
 
 [ 122] 
 
XVII 
 
 How the Bankers May Help 
 
 IT IS palpable that optimism is not likely to be- 
 come epidemic in the farm-implement field. The 
 pessimist insists upon being heard from, and it is 
 never wise to overlook what he has to say. Some pessi- 
 mists are simply croakers, but now and then you 
 bump into one who is a keen analyst. Yet I doubt if 
 there are any of the latter sort who will gainsay today 
 that great progress has been made toward bettering 
 conditions in the implement industry. I have pretty 
 thoroughly scoured the farm-implement field in the 
 Middle Western centers that include approximately 
 eighty per cent of the industry, and everywhere I 
 found the credit situation under discussion. And this 
 discussion was not confined to merely academic chan- 
 nels of theory. 
 
 The credit problem demanded immediate attention 
 and concerted action. The long-credit spectre was 
 seen face to face as a devouring incubus. The develop- 
 ment of the automobile industry had thrown the spot- 
 light upon it. The beginning of the new tractor in- 
 dustry was an impelling factor that roused the most 
 hidebound reactionaries from their lethargy. The new 
 tractor industry will be discussed by itself; it is only 
 necessary to point out here that the problems involved 
 
 [ 123 ] 
 
in the early growth of the tractor industry are closely 
 interwoven with the problems of the farm-implement 
 industry. 
 
 The implement men were suddenly brought face to 
 face with the possibility of losing the tractor, and the 
 immense possibilities of profit contained in its de- 
 velopment as a necessary factor in farm equipment. 
 The antiquated sales methods of the implement in- 
 dustry had been tried out in the late lamented big- 
 tractor boom and had failed dismally. If the same 
 antiquated sales methods were hooked up with the 
 new tractor boom they would likewise fail, no matter 
 how much better the tractor is today than it was ten 
 years ago. 
 
 Mere mechanics without capital or backing had 
 jumped into the automobile industry and had taken it 
 unto themselves while the captains of the implement 
 industry were marking time and thinking about it, and 
 some of these mere mechanics gobbled up tens of 
 millions of cash from the same farmers whose past-due 
 paper was held by the captains of the implement in- 
 dustry. 
 
 The implement men might have played a big part 
 in the automobile industry if they had had the vision 
 and nerve to tackle it on the only sane economic basis 
 to conform with twentieth-century conditions. They 
 failed to get even the slimmest sort of pickings, for the 
 very good reason that they failed to go after them. 
 They couldn't see the farmer as a likely purchaser 
 of motor cars for at least a generation, and when he 
 did begin to buy in vast quantities within a decade 
 they were knocked galley-west. Indeed, they were 
 
 I 124] 
 
astounded two ways: First, to see the farmer come into 
 the market at all; second, to observe him unfurl a roll 
 of certified currency and hand it over to the automo- 
 bile manufacturer. 
 
 The type of country banker has improved amazingly 
 in the past two decades and will continue to improve 
 much more rapidly, thanks to the new banking laws and 
 the organization of the Federal Reserve banks. And for 
 still further future expansion we will have the new 
 Federal land banks that Congress has at last seen fit 
 to grant to the long-suffering farmer. 
 
 Formerly implement purveyors assumed the func- 
 tions of bankers for the farmer when the only way a 
 farmer could obtain money from a bank was to mort- 
 gage all his earthly possessions and his everlasting soul. 
 In that earlier epoch our agriculture was passing through 
 many throes of pioneering and bonanza enterprising. 
 Financing the farmer in many instances was something 
 like stacking chips on a roulette table — at least, that's 
 about the way it looked to the bankers. The idea that 
 every farm was a factory occurred to few if any of the 
 banking fraternity. Farm machinery sold to the farmer 
 was like any other commodity he purchased, whether on 
 time or for cash. They would just as soon lend a farmer 
 money to buy a three-story cuckoo clock as they would 
 lend him actual cash to buy a reaper or a binder. 
 
 What a vast change has occurred! The country 
 banker was persuaded to loan money to the farmer to 
 buy automobiles. He is now lending money to the 
 farmer for the purchase of tractors — lending this 
 money on notes of hand and without the added se- 
 curity of chattel or land mortgages. 
 
 [125] 
 
Early in January, 1916, the Federal Reserve Board 
 ruled that a farmer's paper given as security for money 
 borrowed to purchase farm machinery could be re- 
 discounted at Federal Reserve banks at low interest. 
 
 Shortly after its organization the Federal Reserve 
 Board made a ruling in favor of agricultural paper for 
 rediscounting, extending the time from ninety days to 
 six months. The banker could take a farmer's note 
 given to secure an advance for the purchase of live- 
 stock, seed, fertilizer, and so on, and rediscount it for 
 six months at the Federal Reserve bank, of which it — 
 the country bank — was a member. Farm machinery 
 was not included in the list of farm equipment covered 
 by this rediscount privilege, or you might say farm- 
 implement paper was denied the privilege of agri- 
 cultural paper. A Cleveland bank asked that the privi- 
 lege be extended to cover farm implements and the 
 Federal Reserve Board made a ruling complying with 
 the request. 
 
 Now the country banker may take the farmer's note 
 given to the dealer for the purchase of farm machinery 
 and pass it along to the Federal Reserve bank for re- 
 discount. And when the note falls due at the expira- 
 tion of six months the country banker may accept a 
 renewal note and rediscount that. 
 
 The president of one of the great implement con- 
 cerns told me that this rediscounting privilege was 
 going to give a big lift to the implement manufacturers 
 who were determined to shorten up their credits with 
 the dealer. It is a real step forward in the direction 
 of rural credits, and while it may not solve the 
 problems of hundreds of thousands of farmers who 
 
 [126] 
 
deserve infinitely more financial aid than they are 
 able to obtain save at ruinous rates of interest, it will 
 certainly pave the way for further progress. 
 
 Altogether, the outlook for shorter credits is far 
 from gloomy. The farmer has been getting a liberal 
 education in the advantages of buying for cash or on 
 his note which may be liquidated as the equivalent 
 of cash; dealer efficiency is greatly on the increase, 
 thanks to the progressive educational efforts of dealer 
 associations and dealer organizations throughout the 
 country. 
 
 The dealer standard today is many points higher 
 than was the standard ten years ago. Both manufac- 
 turers and dealers can continue to raise this standard. 
 There is a definite obligation upon the manufacturer 
 to abandon his old methods of appointing haphazard 
 agents whose entrance into the retail field can mean 
 nothing more than the multiplication of inefficiency, 
 and there is just as definite an obligation upon the 
 dealer to abandon the tinhorn practices of price cut- 
 ting, slipshod bookkeeping, and taking on more lines 
 than he can ever hope to sell. 
 
 The manufacturer is infinitely more to blame today 
 for what the dealer is not than the dealer himself is. 
 The reform must begin at the top and work downward. 
 The dealer will meet it as nearly halfway as he can 
 crawl under the economic burdens he is carrying. 
 
 As for the farmer, he has been too much on the out- 
 side. I was about to write "on the outside, looking in," 
 but as a matter of fact he has not been looking in; 
 rather, he has been on the outside with his back turned. 
 He hasn't bothered his head much about it at all. He 
 
 I 127 1 
 
hasn't asked to have it figured out for him, because of 
 his inherent suspicion of figures. He has either re- 
 garded himself as the victim of a commercial conspir- 
 acy or has refused to think about it at all. He has seen 
 dealers come and go in hosts and has come to regard 
 the majority of them as crooks or fools. He has seen 
 inefficient dealers go down in little armies. 
 
 But what he hasn't seen or heard of has been the 
 failure of thousands of manufacturers who were just 
 as inefficient, short-sighted or just plain unfortunate 
 as the dealers who hung out the red flags. 
 
 The farmer, however, is coming out of his trance and 
 is beginning to learn something of the intricacies and 
 complexities of great industries. He is becoming more 
 and more of a business man himself, both in his pro- 
 ducing and in his selling methods. Wherefore he in his 
 turn will be able to meet the dealer halfway, after the 
 dealer has met the manufacturer halfway, on the basis 
 that should ultimately lay the bogy of long credits so 
 far underground that nothing short of a cataclysm can 
 ever shake him loose again. 
 
 [128] 
 
Part Two 
 The Tractor 
 
A Mighty Industry in the Making 
 
 THE farm tractor has its second wind. It has 
 found itself after years of groping. Back of 
 it there is a mighty industry in the making. 
 American farms — the farms of the world, for that 
 matter — are ready to receive the tractor. The Ameri- 
 can farmer is almost too eager to add gas power to the 
 mechanical equipment of the farm. Improvement and 
 cheapening of the product have put it within his 
 economic reach. In many cases he is going to strain 
 his reach to get it, just as he has been straining his 
 reach for other mechanical equipment that his farm- 
 management plans had not made room for. 
 
 The small, low-priced tractor possesses the attrac- 
 tiveness of a bauble to multitudes of farmers, and a 
 great many farmers are going to buy gaudy play- 
 things, and not power machines, unless they skin their 
 eyes and approach the counters of the tractor pur- 
 veyors with exceeding wariness. 
 
 We might as well start off this series with a warning 
 and hang up a few Safety First and Watch Your 
 Step signboards. If the farmer will follow me he may 
 save himself much hard-earned increment. Not that 
 there is any immediate need for muck-raking or de- 
 structive criticism, but the small tractor, and the little 
 
 [131] 
 
bit larger than small tractor, and the still larger than 
 the little bit larger than small tractor, are coming out 
 of the shops so fast and in so many shapes and pat- 
 terns that the ordinary looker-on is more than likely 
 to become giddy watching them. 
 
 The manufacturer of the tried and proved product 
 deserves the benefit of all that can be said in his favor. 
 He has a variety of brand-new special problems on his 
 hands that the buying public on the farms should con- 
 sider with him to their own advantage. 
 
 Many of these problems splice in with the problems 
 of the farm-implement industry. Some phases of the 
 gas-tractor industry may revolutionize the implement 
 industry; other phases may strip a gear or two in the 
 machinery of the farm-implement business. 
 
 But before we come to these problems in their 
 separate aspects, let us rivet our attention upon the 
 fact that the gasoline tractor is coming with such speed 
 that there are bubbles in its wake. Not harmless soap- 
 suds bubbles, but bubbles that are likely to cause grief 
 and anguish to those who mistake them for what they 
 pretend to be but are not — bubbles that will burst and 
 rend the bankroll and destroy the fabric thereof. 
 
 Was it not so in the rampant beginnings of the auto- 
 mobile industry? In the initial development of the 
 horseless vehicle it was commonly called the automo- 
 bubble. 
 
 No wonder, when soap-makers and tinsmiths went 
 into the game on the theory that anything that 
 bore the flimsiest resemblance to an automobile 
 could be sold to the unsuspecting public. But no 
 more do you hear of the automobubble — the in- 
 
 [ 132] 
 
dustry has stabilized itself, and has left its long wake 
 of bursting bubbles far behind. 
 
 In the tractor game there will be a repetition of what 
 happened in the automobile industry. Possibly not to 
 the same magnificent extent, but to a very consider- 
 able extent, the stable manufacturers and the easy- 
 going-take-the-other-fellow's-word-for-it buying pub- 
 lic are going to suffer from the contrivance and disin- 
 tegration of gas-tractor bubbles. 
 
 The stable manufacturers will merely compete with 
 the bubble products. The farmer will buy the bubbles 
 and will be everlastingly stung. Having been stung, he 
 will of course vent his wrath upon tractors in general. 
 He will denounce any and all tractors as delusions and 
 snares. The makers of good tractors will suffer in- 
 directly from this. If the victims of bubble products 
 could make a loud enough noise to be heard far and 
 wide in the great tractor market, the makers of honest 
 products would be compelled to shoulder a crushing 
 burden. 
 
 But the bubble victims can only twitter. Their 
 plaints and lamentations will be confined to narrow 
 localities. And the little groups of neighbors who hear 
 the tales of woe will forget them overnight. When 
 Bill Opdyke tells Lew Budd how he, Bill, bought a 
 tractor that couldn't pull a one-bottom plow through 
 a custard pie. Lew Budd will publicly sympathize with 
 Bill and agree with him that the man who sold him 
 that tractor ought to be grilled over a slow fire till he 
 perished in excruciating agony. But when Lew Budd 
 sits down to think it over he'll gradually figure out 
 that Bill Opdyke is a natural-born chump anyhow and 
 
 [ 133 1 
 
deserved to be stung. Says Lew to himself: "If poor 
 Bill only had my gumption and common sense he'd 
 never been stung. Then maybe half the trouble with 
 that tractor is the way Bill runs it. Now, in my case 
 Vd buy a good tractor to start with and Vd run it with 
 better than average intelligence." 
 
 And the upshot is that Bill Stung Opdyke's holler 
 doesn't make a dent anywhere. The bubble rogues 
 keep right on selling flimsy up to the point where the 
 makers of honest products are able to advertise them 
 out of existence. 
 
 So, Mister Farmer-on-the-Trail-of-a-Tractor, beware 
 the bubbles! Lots of them are shiny and iridescent and 
 comely to look at, but there is no substance back of 
 them at the manufacturing end. Their parents are 
 very likely to deny them; there are no service aids 
 attached to them, for primarily they are made merely 
 to sell — not with the special object of standing up and 
 doing the work. 
 
 To sail into this tractor game with a discussion of 
 bubbles may seem like beginning at the wrong end 
 with destructive commentaries. Let me explain: I 
 have two objects in view. First, I desire to draw the 
 attention of the farmer at the very beginning to the 
 fact that he should choose the tractor to meet his needs 
 with the utmost discretion; second, I wish to begin 
 with the earliest beginnings of the tractor industry and 
 follow it step by step through a period of gigantic 
 bubbles and rainbow booms until the industry emerged 
 and found itself and got going on a sane basis of engi- 
 neering efficiency and cash sales. 
 
 In my introductory chapter discussing the trend of 
 
 [134] 
 
the farm -implement industry I made bare mention 
 of the fact that the big-tractor boom had collapsed. 
 Now I am going to set down in some detail why it 
 collapsed. I have gone over the situation carefully 
 with a dozen or more men who were concerned in the 
 boom. They agreed to a man that they started wrong. 
 They built the wrong thing and they sold it in the 
 wrong way. Their vision of the market for their hurry- 
 up product was warped and twisted. As they look 
 back upon what they did, they admit that they were a 
 giddy lot of theorists; also, a good many of them were 
 plungers of the sort who leap into deep waters before 
 they learn to swim. 
 
 The Northwest had been opened up and the big 
 wheat gamble was in full swing. Prairie breaking in 
 the Middle West had begun with man power plus 
 horse power. There had been a big wheat gamble in 
 the central prairies and a multitude grew rich at it. 
 But when the Northwest was pioneered there were 
 climatic differences, also geographical and physio- 
 graphical differences. Pioneering had been the stiffest 
 sort of game in the Middle West, but in the Northwest 
 Nature raised the ante still higher. It was a bleaker 
 wilderness, with greater transportation difficulties, 
 and it was infinitely less attractive to labor. 
 
 The primary problem in the Northwest, then, was to 
 obtain man labor, the secondary problem was to get 
 horse labor. The farmers could get the horses to pull 
 the plows, but they couldn't get the men to drive the 
 horses. It was altogether a big-plowing problem. 
 
 First, they tried out the steam tractor, which had 
 been developed with the development of the threshing 
 
 [135I 
 
machine. The steam tractor was never intended for 
 plowing. It devoured fuel like a blast furnace and 
 possessed an unquenchable thirst. It was all to the 
 merry if you anchored it alongside of a well and a 
 trainload of fuel, but when you tooled it out into the 
 unwatered wastes you had to organize a reserve army 
 to keep it fed up. 
 
 The gas engine was a growing infant in those days, 
 and the idea occurred to a small host of inventors to 
 force its growth to fit the urgent needs of the North- 
 west. To do this it was necessary to jump it from in- 
 fancy into robust manhood — you might say gianthood. 
 The inventors began to design ten and twelve plow gas 
 tractors. It was almost as if Robert Fulton had 
 started out with a Mauretania. 
 
 [136I 
 
II 
 
 The Big Tractor Boom Collapse, and Why 
 
 A MANUFACTURER who built many of the levi- 
 athan type of tractors to order gave me this 
 ^ interesting account of the early days of the 
 big gas tractor: 
 
 "Designers and promoters and all sorts of people 
 flooded us with orders to build tractors for them. 
 They wanted big ones— the biggest possible. The 
 bigger they were the more money they could get for 
 them, and it was just as hard and just as costly to sell 
 a fairly big one as to sell a monster. We followed their 
 designs as best we could and turned them over. 
 
 "The engines had power, provided you got them to 
 go — that is, started them. Starting devices for gas 
 engines in those days were mighty crude, and the 
 bigger the engine the tougher the job to start them. 
 For most of these big tractors it was a job for the shop 
 mechanic to start them. In many cases it took an 
 entire staff of shop mechanics to start them. Occa- 
 sionally big tractors were sold and shipped out to 
 farmers when the manufacturer's machinists couldn't 
 start them. 
 
 "The weight of those early big tractors ranged from 
 26,000 to 50,000 pounds. Think of that load for a 
 crude, raw, undeveloped, half-baked engine to pull, 
 
 [ 137] 
 
plus a gang of ten to fourteen plows! Yet sales ran into 
 the thousands, until the Dakotas and the Western 
 Canadian provinces were stocked up with fleets and 
 squadrons of them. 
 
 **They were sold to effect great economies of man 
 labor, but it soon developed that it required the ser- 
 vices of an entire community to start one. Hundreds 
 of farmers kept them going all night so as to be sure 
 they would start in the morning. Boys were assigned 
 to keep them supplied with fuel and to see that they 
 didn't stop during the night. When they stopped they 
 often stopped for days or weeks. Occasionally they 
 stopped like grandfather's clock — never to go again. 
 
 "Parts broke, parts wore out and parts crystallized. 
 The manufacturers had not provided against this wear 
 and tear by making enough duplicate parts. New 
 castings had to be made to order and this ran repair 
 bills for the farmers up to the sky. Repair bills on a 
 single tractor would range from $500 to ^1500 in a 
 season. 
 
 "Farmers went broke, manufacturers went broke 
 and distributors went broke. The farmers were paying 
 two, three and four times the cost to manufacture 
 these tractors. A farmer agent would collect a $1200 
 commission on a $4000 tractor, provided the tractor 
 was ever paid for. Then there were the manufac- 
 turer's and the distributor's profits to deduct. 
 
 "The big tractors were usually sold for twenty-five 
 per cent cash down and the remainder in two or three 
 fall payments. The purchase price had to be set as 
 high as the traffic would bear to carry the great risks. 
 The whole scheme of things was bad. The tractor was 
 
 [138I 
 
sold on a bad economic basis before it had arrived 
 within hailing distance of mechanical efficiency. 
 
 "Yet the drive was kept up at high pressure during 
 several good crop years. Prosperity kept the bubble 
 puffed up and dripping rainbows. When the bad crop 
 years came along the bubble burst. It became common 
 talk in the Northwest that every farmer who had 
 plunged on a tractor had gone broke. 
 
 ** Bankers refused to give credit to farmers who 
 owned tractors; merchants followed suit. The scare 
 carried even further. Jobbers and wholesalers were 
 instructed to give no credit to merchants who gave 
 credit to farmers who owned tractors. 
 
 "It looked for some few years as if the big gas 
 tractor had received a wallop it could never recover 
 from. Northwest distributing centers began to ac- 
 quire tractor graveyards. I have seen as many as 500 
 of these leviathan tractors parked in one of these 
 graveyards." 
 
 During this dismal period, however, the traction 
 engine was beginning to find itself. The stationary 
 gas engine had found itself and the automobile had 
 run away from all competitors in the field of mechani- 
 cal invention and manufacturing and selling efficiency. 
 
 Also agriculture had undergone great changes. The 
 big wheat gamble had slowed up and land values were 
 skyrocketing. Great ranches were being divided and 
 subdivided. The market for the mammoth tractor 
 grew narrower while you watched, but at the same time 
 the market for the small tractor opened up clear across 
 the continent — split wide open, you might say, and 
 invited the tractor makers to come in with a rush. 
 
 [ 139] 
 
In lining up for the purposes of comparison the big- 
 tractor boom and its bubble days with the small- 
 tractor boom and its bubble days I do not wish the 
 impression to gain that the big tractor is a failure 
 simply because it started wrong. 
 
 The big tractor has evolved through many refining 
 processes and has become an increasingly important 
 factor in the development of both agriculture and 
 commerce. It performs definite functions that the 
 small tractor is not likely ever to assume. In big farm- 
 ing operations, where there are large tracts of land to 
 break, in road work and big traction enterprises it has 
 made as secure a place for itself as has the motor truck 
 in the range of usefulness of the motor vehicle. It has 
 become an engine of war of essential and primary use- 
 fulness. 
 
 Nevertheless, the prospect is that the big gas tractor 
 will soon be regarded as merely a valuable by-product 
 of the tractor industry. Tractor manufacturers who 
 have been making a few score big tractors a year to 
 meet a steady, dependable demand are planning to 
 manufacture small tractors by the thousand. 
 
 A considerable group of tractor makers have rushed 
 into this small-tractor market blindly, just as the 
 majority of tractor makers rushed into the big-tractor 
 market blindly. The Bubble Brotherhood rushed up 
 to the starting barrier at the first sound of the bell, 
 panting with enthusiasm and ready to take all the 
 hurdles and ditches with their eyes closed. A good 
 many of them are up to their neck in the ditches now, 
 but some of them are still running in long, loose leaps 
 and with their eyes still closed. 
 
 [ 140] 
 
As a matter of canny fact, however, the Bubble 
 Brotherhood cannot get very far in the tractor game — 
 not nearly so far as they got in the automobile game. 
 The automobile had an easy time of it making good 
 on an efficiency basis compared with the task that con- 
 fronts the small tractor. 
 
 The automobile could make good by putting on its 
 Sunday clothes and strolling up the avenue. So long 
 as it looked good, kept going and got there, not a great 
 deal more was required of it. But the tractor has to 
 get itself into overalls, roll up its sleeves, go to work 
 and earn its way. It must perform hard labor. 
 
 A few farmers may buy the Lovely Lily tractor be- 
 cause of its gorgeous paint and the sweet symphonies 
 of its carburetor, but the vast majority of farmers are 
 going to buy the Gitupangit tractor because it de- 
 velops the required horse power to pull a definite 
 number of plows through a soil type of many varia- 
 tions of texture without panting or getting the heaves. 
 And the great farming brotherhood will not be slow to 
 learn that the Gitupangit tractor that should strike 
 their fancy most is the critter with five or six horse 
 power to spare over and above the definite amount 
 of horse power required to go through with a pretty 
 demonstration. 
 
 The automobile and gas engine have taught several 
 million farmers at least an elementary lesson in power 
 mechanics. This may prove an important factor in 
 impeding the sale of the Lovely Lily or the Rainbow 
 Gem. But there are still greater barriers in the way to 
 prevent the Bubble Brotherhood from getting very far 
 — selling costs and selling organization. Yet another 
 
 [141] 
 
mighty impediment in their way might be la- 
 beled Production Economies. Only volume of pro- 
 duction will permit the sale of efficient tractors at a 
 low or popular price. 
 
 Scouting round through the Middle West and in the 
 Minnesota and Wisconsin territory, where the tractor 
 industry centers, I gathered much illuminating ma- 
 terial concerning the bubble tractor. I did this scout- 
 ing in the beginning weeks of the current year, 1916, 
 which promises to be a golden year for the tractor in- 
 dustry. I visited a dozen plants where bubble tractors 
 are being made or have been made, or where tractor 
 parts are being made and sold to members of the 
 Bubble Brotherhood. 
 
 In many cases only a few demonstration machines 
 are being turned out. These are built solely for dem- 
 onstration purposes, not for sale. The gentlemen who 
 designed them and had them made are merely wildcat 
 promoters. Their purpose is to sell stock, not tractors. 
 They will endeavor to sell stock to farmers — not that 
 they will turn down the widows and orphans of the 
 cities, school-teachers, lone spinsters, or other humble 
 folk who are likely to be gulled by get-rich-quick lures. 
 
 More than a hundred concerns have come into the 
 small-tractor arena within the past two years and have 
 taken out patents on tractors. One big manufacturer 
 showed me a list of 152 concerns that announce their 
 willingness to sell tractors. The Department of Agri- 
 culture at Washington has compiled a list of 178 dif- 
 ferent designs of farm power tractors that were either 
 on the market or hoped to get on the market before 
 the spring of 1916. These lists had been brought up 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
to date so far as it was possible to obtain the informa- 
 tion up to May I, 1916. 
 
 Some big automobile manufacturers are coming into 
 the game, but not with a rush nor with untried prod- 
 ucts. The engineers they assigned to the job of 
 scouting have recommended caution — extreme cau- 
 tion. They have also recommended that all the benefit 
 possible be obtained from the mistakes of others. 
 They advise delay until all tractor designs become 
 more nearly standardized, and when a great volume of 
 production may be marketed by means of modern ad- 
 vertising and selling methods. 
 
 Few automobile manufacturers have any expecta- 
 tion of invading the tractor field and shouldering the 
 specialists to one side at one jump. They see that the 
 big farm-implement manufacturers have great advan- 
 tages over any other special class of competitors, pro- 
 vided they wake up and adopt modern business 
 methods in both manufacturing and merchandising. 
 They see also that the implement men have ready- 
 made sales organizations that should have every pos- 
 sible advantage in selling tractors to farmers. 
 
 But will the implement men modernize their meth- 
 ods as they come to sell tractors in a big way.? There 
 are a few encouraging signs, but almost as many dis- 
 couraging symptoms. 
 
 During the past six months they have proclaimed 
 their intention to shorten credits and approach more 
 and more nearly to a cash basis of doing business. 
 Eminently a favorable sign. 
 
 Since the beginning of the year I have talked to 
 the heads of concerns that have hundreds of millions 
 
 I 143] 
 
invested in the implement industry. Some of them have 
 been making tractors for years. Others have taken on 
 tractors within the past few months. Still others are 
 planning to take on tractors. They declared unani- 
 mously that they would sell these tractors for cash — 
 sell them for cash through the same dealers who have 
 been disposing of their tillage and harvesting machin- 
 ery on long time. The majority of them declared they 
 would shorten up terms on all lines at the same time 
 they sold their tractors for cash. 
 
 It should be manifest that there are cumulative 
 forces to urge the implement men to abolish so far as 
 possible long credits. The great and almost over- 
 whelming demand for small tractors — a cash demand, 
 mind you — is blazing the way as nothing else could. 
 
 144 
 
Ill 
 
 A Modern Miracle in Selling for Cash 
 
 HAS the farmer been asked whether it is his 
 anxious wish to pay cash for tractors? He has 
 not. 
 
 Will he be asked this pertinent question? He will 
 not. 
 
 Will he be asked if he can afford a tractor? This is 
 an impertinent question. Better not rile him. 
 
 Will the farmer be asked if he has the cash ? Again, 
 no. 
 
 Will he be asked if he can dig up the cash? Better 
 not ask him that either. The farmer is sensitive. Take 
 it for granted that somewhere in his strong box he has 
 a credit wand that will summon the cash out of the 
 atmosphere. Then stand pat. 
 
 The ideal situation for marketing tractors is con- 
 tained in the following little colloquy: 
 
 Farmer: I want a tractor. 
 
 Dealer: Good, the Slippery Comet 6-14 is just 
 your meat. Fork over the cash. 
 
 Farmer: Roll the Comet up to the bank. Fll meet 
 you there with the shining coin. 
 
 Sounds almost like the way things happen in fairy 
 stories or in the Rollo books. It may shock some im- 
 plement manufacturers and dealers to learn that it has 
 ^° [ 14s ] 
 
actually happened within the past year in the new- 
 bloom development of the tractor industry. It is to be 
 hoped that this will be a pleasant shock, an agreeable 
 surprise. Not that the same thing is bound to happen 
 to them. It is too early to predict universal cash sales 
 for the tractor. Certain implement manufacturers 
 have a dizzy lot of readjusting to do before they can 
 even trail in the get-the-cash-for-the-tractor scramble 
 that has begun. 
 
 The story I am going to tell does not involve an im- 
 plement manufacturer, nor yet an old-line tractor 
 manufacturer. It is a concern that sprang up suddenly 
 while nobody was looking. It grew into being for the 
 one and only purpose of selling tractors. It had good, 
 strong backing, but not reservoirs of funds. 
 
 Its organizers had been in and out of various tractor 
 concerns that had gone over the bumps during the 
 unhealthy big-tractor boom. No, there were no lambs 
 in this little flock. They were men who had made mis- 
 takes wholesale in making and selling other tractors. 
 They had sold too great a tonnage of metal for too 
 great a tonnage of purchase price and they had failed 
 to get the cash. So when they got together in the 
 tractor metropolis of Minneapolis they decided greatly 
 to reduce the tonnage of metal, also to shave down the 
 tonnage of cash, but above all things to get the cash. 
 
 Let us call this little enterprise the Cold Dough 
 Tractor Company. Of all the tractor concerns I have 
 looked into, the Cold Dough people have had the most 
 thrilling career; furthermore, they have sold their 
 product only for cash and are still selling it for cash 
 only. Not that they have had straight sailing and 
 
 [146] 
 
smooth rolling from the start. They will tell you very 
 frankly today that they began operations with the 
 right selling idea but the wrong tractor. 
 
 Their first model, the Little Dough, was not a suc- 
 cess. The price was attractive enough — less than ^400 
 — but the tractor itself lacked pep. It was sold as a 
 two-plow tractor, and under favorable soil conditions 
 and in the hands of a skilled operator it could pull two 
 plows, and after the plowing it could pull harrows and 
 drills and seeders and rollers. 
 
 But what it greatly lacked was reserve power. When 
 the plows cut into stiff sod or gummy gumbo, or 
 struck obstructing stones and impeding trash, and so 
 on, the motor would utter a plaintive sob and lay 
 down on the job. 
 
 No, it must be admitted for the sake of truth 
 that the Little Dough had not had the thorough 
 and careful testing out that any tractor intended 
 for all-round farm service should have. It was too 
 much of a rush product, and many hundreds of pur- 
 chasers were entirely justified in yowling that they'd 
 been stung. 
 
 Although the Little Dough was shy a good many 
 things that even a pony-sized tractor should be long 
 on, the company managed to market 3800 of them for 
 cash and survive the stigma of having started wrong. 
 The Little Dough was launched into the 1914 tractor 
 market. It began its career of distribution for cash in 
 April of that year, and continued to sell for cash even 
 after the war had started to muss up the financial cen- 
 ters of the globe and bring on a period of panicky re- 
 trenchment in America. 
 
 [147I 
 
Looking back over the situation it seems almost a 
 miracle that the Cold Dough tractor makers did not 
 founder. What saved them was their selling policy 
 and their alertness in recognizing that the Little Dough 
 did not fill the bill. They will not admit that it was a 
 total failure, and persist in arguing that it was a good 
 buy for the money. To my way of thinking this is a 
 specious argument. Nothing is a good buy for the 
 money that fails to render the service for which it was 
 purchased. 
 
 The makers of the Little Dough contend that there 
 was nothing faulty in the design, but that there was 
 not enough weight, stability and power in it for all- 
 round rough-and-ready service. So what they really 
 did was to enlarge the Little Dough into the Big 
 Dough. This meant an increased cost of manufacture 
 of about thirty-five per cent and, naturally, necessi- 
 tated a raise in the retail price. The price was jumped 
 from less than ^400 for the Little Dough to almost $600 
 for the 191 5 Big Dough. The 1916 price for the Big 
 Dough was jacked up about ten per cent above the 
 1915 price. 
 
 There were enough Little Doughs scattered round 
 in twenty or thirty states to give the company a black 
 eye. Here was a difficult situation to face. Competi- 
 tors stood on the side lines and grinned. It had been 
 widely predicted that the Cold Dough Tractor Com- 
 pany would shrivel up and blow away. How could it 
 survive the ignominy of having produced and mar- 
 keted a lemon .^ 
 
 Well, the makers went about it in this way: They 
 announced in a loud, resounding voice the creation of 
 
 [148] 
 
the Big Dough. They advertised the Big Dough as It. 
 They didn't refer back to the Little Dough as a failure, 
 save by the gentle implication that it was about the 
 best that could have been expected for the money. 
 But their agents and distributors went among pur- 
 chasers of the Little Dough and offered them a bargain 
 exchange by allowing one hundred per cent on the 
 purchase price of the Little Dough. 
 
 Not all of the Little Doughs were traded back in 
 this way. I was informed in Minneapolis last January 
 that a good many of the Little Doughs are still on the 
 job in favored sections, performing with high effi- 
 ciency. Then, of course, there were a good many farm- 
 ers who bought them, got sore at them and remained 
 everlastingly sore. Nothing would persuade those 
 chaps to trade, no matter how favorable the terms. 
 
 But the important fact is that the Little Dough and 
 its shortcomings were lived down in a surprisingly 
 short space of time and the Big Dough came on the 
 market and made a killing. It did really more than 
 make a killing — it set a pace for cash sales that made 
 the heads of certain old-line implement manufacturers 
 buzz like pinwheels. 
 
 I 149 1 
 
IV 
 
 How the Miracle Was Brought About ^m 
 
 WHEN I got out to Kansas City in the autumn 
 of 1915 I began asking questions about 
 how the small tractor was going in the 
 Southwest. The Big Dough, bear in mind, is a small 
 tractor, sold to pull two fourteen-inch plows through 
 almost anything. It weighs round 5000 pounds. I was 
 informed presently that the light-weight tractor was 
 in the way of being a screaming success in the South- 
 west. The representative of a concern that doesn't 
 make anything in the nature of the pony-sized tractor 
 said to me: 
 
 "And these little fellows are selling for cash too. 
 There's a firm here in Kansas City of three young men 
 who have switched over from the automobile business 
 and have taken on the Big Dough tractor. They are 
 selling scads of them and getting the farmers' cash 
 every time. They are the distributors for this territory 
 and they are selling through sub-dealers. It could not 
 be done, but they are doing it. You'd better drop in 
 on them and hear what they have to say." 
 
 I dropped in on them and got their story. There are 
 three young men in the firm, two of them brothers, 
 and one of the brothers red-headed and locally famous 
 as an automobile salesman. Yes, they had swung over 
 
 [150] 
 
into the tractor game the year before, seUing the Little 
 Dough. They had sold 500 Little Doughs — all for 
 cash — in their territory in 1914. But, shucks, that 
 was just a nibble. They had sold approximately 1000 
 Big Doughs in the same territory since the spring of 
 191 5. It was early in October when I got these inter- 
 esting details. 
 
 He seemed a mighty brisk and alert young man, he 
 who did the talking. He looked after the financial 
 arrangements. The firm's books were at his elbow. 
 He opened one and thumbed the page. 
 
 "Total business up to October first," he said, "^490,- 
 000 for the season — and we got cash. Every time. 
 We do not think a whole lot of the record at that, for 
 we could almost have doubled the business if the fac- 
 tory could have speeded up the output. 
 
 We followed the same sales method we had been 
 accustomed to follow in the sale of automobiles. 
 We shipped our tractors with bill of lading and 
 draft attached. No credit to anyone, farmer or 
 dealer. We paid no attention to orders that were 
 not accompanied by at least ten per cent of the pur- 
 chase price. 
 
 "Just a minute while I answer the phone." 
 
 His end of the telephone conversation was this: 
 "Who's that.? . . . The X & Y Plow Company? 
 
 . . . Yes, yes, we have done business with that 
 dealer. . . . What's his credit rating.? Blest if I 
 know or give a rap. We don't use any rating book in 
 this establishment. We sell only for cash. Sorry we 
 can't help you out, old pal. Good-by." 
 
 As he turned away from the phone he beamed. 
 
 [151I 
 
"That poor implement cuss," he chuckled, "is 
 worrying his head off about the credit rating of some 
 little dealer down in Pawnee County, Kansas. They 
 are probably trying to load him up with more stuff 
 than he knows how to sell, but want to look up his 
 past history and previous condition of servitude before 
 they take the leap. 
 
 "Now, we sell that chap only what he is so anxious 
 to get and make a commission on that he'll hustle his 
 pins off to get the cash to take up the bill of lading. 
 We've sold tractors through at least a hundred of 
 these little dealers without acquiring a gray hair. We 
 have made a rather surprising discovery too — that a 
 lot of the shaky ones, or so-called drone dealers, will 
 exert themselves about three times as strenuously to 
 make a cash sale as they have been accustomed to do 
 in their long-term-credit business. 
 
 "There was the case of a dealer down in Amarillo, 
 Texas, who sold twenty-three tractors on time last 
 year. Of course he had to get 'em on time to sell 'em 
 on time. Well, there was only one of his twenty-three 
 customers who met his payments. The dealer wrote 
 to us and told us what a brilliant performer he was in 
 selling tractors. Wouldn't we send him a sample on 
 time? 
 
 "We replied that we didn't deal in samples and that 
 we had an automatic system of opening and closing 
 our accounts simultaneously. If he felt quite confident 
 he could sell one of our tractors we should be glad to 
 let him have it at the trade price. All we should re- 
 quire from him was an advance payment with his 
 order to cover all freight risks; then the tractor would 
 
 [152] 
 
come down to him with the bill of lading and draft 
 attached. 
 
 ''Yes, he bought a tractor our way, and he sold it 
 too — for cash. Then he bought some more the same 
 w2Ly and sold them ditto — all for cash. The first thing 
 you know that fellow will offer cash to a plow man and 
 thereby cause a demise in the plow industry.'* 
 
 While his father, an old-time implement man, sat 
 by and looked on with an expression of ecstatic ap- 
 preciation, as of a fond parent listening to the miracu- 
 lous achievements of a beloved offspring, Mr. H., Jr., 
 recounted his selling efforts and their results without 
 any attempt to brag. I wouldn't say that he was 
 shrinkingly modest, but the impression I got was that 
 he was more gleeful than boastful over the result he, 
 his brother and their partner had obtained. 
 
 As if to soft-pedal any notion I might obtain that he 
 was bragging he explained: "We simply followed the 
 selling policies that were built into the automobile 
 industry and proved they would apply to the new small 
 tractor. 
 
 "One of the little stunts we did that made a hit was 
 to bring in a trainload of Big Dough tractors and an- 
 nounce the fact with sufficient volume of voice to at- 
 tract attention. It was the first big trainload of trac- 
 tors that had ever been assembled at a tractor plant 
 and shipped out in one screaming unit. 
 
 "There were forty-three cars in the train, and there 
 were five or six tractors to a car. It was a $150,000 
 trainload, and the cars were plastered with posters so 
 that none of the rural inhabitants in Minnesota, Wis- 
 consin, Iowa and Missouri, who saw it going by, would 
 
 [153] 
 
have any doubt as to contents. And when it came 
 tooting into Kansas City quite a few folks turned out 
 and rubbered. 
 
 "I only wish now that it had been two trainloads, 
 for we sold that one so fast that it cleaned us out in no 
 time and left a big gap before we could hope for an- , 
 other shipment. Our allotment of looo tractors in ■ 
 three months was a big one, but the demand was such 
 that we could have doubled the record if the manu- 
 facturers could have kept up the output. 
 
 ** Every condition for sale was favorable in the 
 Southwest. The price of gasoline was 'way down; 
 wheat was selling at war prices; French and British 
 purchasing agents were scouting the plains for horse- 
 flesh. All a farmer had to do was to sell two or three 
 farm chunks and buy one of our tractors. He could 
 wait to cash in his crops later. 
 
 ''There was a rip-roaring demand for light tractors, 
 but don't imagine for a minute that we simply put the 
 stuff on the counters, labeled it and priced it, and 
 waited for the farmers to come up and buy. Nor did 
 we leave it to the dealer — automobile, implement or 
 otherwise. Our salesmen went out and everlastingly 
 hustled for business, among them my brother Nick. 
 
 ''Nick is six feet tall, wide in the shoulder, deep in 
 the chest, freckled and red-headed." 
 
 "And the best natural-born salesman in the South- 
 west," interjected Mr. H., Sr., and then lapsed again 
 into beaming silence. 
 
 "Yes, Nick is a crackajack salesman," pursued 
 Nick's brother. "He was the best automobile sales- 
 man in Kansas City, which puts him up pretty high. 
 
 I154] 
 
"Now, a lot of the people who try to sell things to 
 farmers suffer from the delusion that the way to go out 
 in the country and make a hit is to stop shaving and 
 dress like a recruit in Coxey's army. As I heard one 
 solemn ass propound it: ' Don't go near a farmer look- 
 ing like a city dude, or he will immediately suspicion 
 you of selling gold bricks.' 
 
 "Rot, net. A real front makes as big a hit with the 
 farmer as with any other human. We proved that when 
 we began selling automobiles to farmers. If you are 
 going to peddle tinware from a cart it may not pay you 
 to put on much of a front, but if you are going to sell 
 anything that runs into real money, why, look the part. 
 
 " Before Nick went out to sell tractors he had several 
 seventy-five-dollar suits of clothes built. They weren't 
 somber blacks and blues or old-fogy pepper-and-salts. 
 They were clothes that announced themselves quite a 
 piece up the alley. You could see 'em comin' and, as 
 the old saying goes, you could hear 'em a long way off. 
 They were plaids and stripes, but of the finest material 
 and workmanship, silk-lined and with a monogram on 
 the inside pocket of each coat. 
 
 "There was real garnish to Nick's clothes, but he 
 didn't make the mistake of adding to the outfit a boiled 
 shirt and top hat. No, he wore a hickory shirt, a crim- 
 son tie and a big, white Texas hat. He wore big, sub- 
 stantial shoes. Also, he carried a thumping big cane. 
 He looked husky, hardy, unusual and prosperous. 
 
 "When Nick went into the field to interrupt a 
 farmer in his plowing and shook that farmer's hand and 
 slapped him on the back, that farmer was interested. 
 Nick's red hair, his smile and his gift of conversation 
 
 [155] 
 
did the rest. Wherever he got out in the open he 
 drew a crowd, and I never heard tell of any farmer 
 referring to him as a dude. 
 
 There was one old fellow in the Texas Panhandle 
 who bought two tractors from Nick, then got the 
 name and address of his tailor and ordered a suit twin 
 to Nick's. 
 
 " During the selling season we had five experts on the 
 road all the time, and we saw to it that they wore 
 good clothes, stopped at the best hotels and made a 
 front. These were just tractor experts, and they went 
 from agent to agent and from dealer to dealer, giving 
 demonstrations and instructions in their districts." 
 
 "Whenever we got a kick from a purchaser any- 
 where we telegraphed to the expert nearest him and 
 had him hustle out to that farmer to render first aid. 
 In addition to these tractor experts we employed a 
 little staff of plow-hitch experts. They did nothing but 
 go round and show farmers how to get the best results 
 with their plowing outfits." 
 
 "Did you recommend any special line of plows.?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "Yes, and went even farther than that. We sold 
 engine plows for cash to tractor buyers, and sold a raft 
 of them. That makes a mighty interesting little side- 
 issue by itself. 
 
 "We went to a big plow concern and told them that 
 we would like to take on a two-bottom gang especially 
 adapted to our tractor. We would buy them on a cash 
 basis arid would sell them for cash. In this way we 
 could sell them to the farmer for about ten dollars less 
 than he could buy them on time. 
 
 [156] 
 
"*But the farmers won't pay cash for them,' said the 
 manager of this plow concern. We thought they would. 
 We offered to make a try at it with fifty gangs. No, 
 they wouldn't put out any special gang for us in such 
 a little order. If we wanted to plunge into cash sales 
 of gang plows we'd have to make a real plunge. They'd 
 make us a minimum of 200. They would build us any 
 number above 200 we could dispose of during the sea- 
 son. The plow man smiled when he said this, then 
 added: 
 
 *'*You fellows will be bucking about a dozen big 
 plow concerns in the same territory — concerns that are 
 selling on easy terms. Better consider what you're up 
 against before you wade into the mire.' 
 
 "Well, we talked it over and decided to wade. We 
 took a chance on 200 two-bottom gangs. The plow 
 people sort of smiled up their sleeves when they took 
 the order. They were confident we'd have at least 125 
 gangs left on our hands. 
 
 "What happened .? The impossible. We sold the 200 
 gangs as fast as the manufacturer could fill the order. 
 Every one of them for cash, of course. Then we re- 
 ordered. Up to date we have sold a few more than 700 
 of those engine gangs. We sold a goodly number of 
 them in the territory where the maker of the plow was 
 pushing his own sales on time. We sold for cash right 
 under the noses of dealers who were putting them out 
 on time. Farmers who had ordered these engine plows 
 from dealers on time canceled their orders and bought 
 from us for cash. 
 
 "Oh, no, cash discounts don't appeal to farmers! 
 We'd had that dinned into our ears all the time we 
 
 [157] 
 
^ 
 
 were selling automobiles. But we sold automobiles for 
 cash to farmers, then we sold tractors to them for cash, 
 and when we made the price right and gave them what 
 they wanted to buy — not merely what we wanted to 
 sell — they bought their plows for cash." 
 
 *'Not once did we take in any paper equivalent for 
 money; cash only. We haven't carried a cent of paper 
 since we started selling tractors. We have been selling 
 cylinder oil by the barrel to tractor buyers on the same 
 C. O. D. basis, a deposit with the order and bill of 
 lading and draft attached to the shipment. We made 
 the man we bought oil from put up a $20,000 bond to 
 guarantee its quality. 
 
 "You will hear it theorized that the long-term-credit 
 arrangement is a great aid to increasing volume of 
 sales. That may be true in some territories and with 
 certain lines of merchandise. But here is how it worked 
 out with engine plows: The makers built 150 for their 
 own long-term-credit trade; they made more than 700 
 for us. 
 
 ''When our 700 were sold their dealers still had 
 twenty to thirty per cent of their owed-for gangs on 
 their hands." 
 
 This young reaper in the vineyard of cash sales told 
 me he was planning to take on other tractor specialty 
 attachments, among them a small separator capable of 
 threshing from 600 to 800 bushels of grain a day. Cus- 
 tomers will be given the privilege of buying these at- 
 tachments for cash. The firm had also visualized a 
 promising young market for silage cutters, feed grind- 
 ers, and divers other appliances that the belt power of 
 a small tractor could take care of. 
 
 [158] 
 
"We have found," he explained, "that there is no 
 better way to cHnch our selling arguments than to 
 demonstrate how much the farmer can do with the 
 belt power of his tractor. In our future selling policy 
 we shall emphasize this attractive utility to the limit. 
 But we shall take every possible precaution not to 
 overstate the belt power, and strive to the utmost to 
 locate for the purchaser the ideal apparatus to hitch 
 up to his tractor." 
 
 It struck me that the experience of this very wide- 
 awake and down-to-date firm of distributors was worth 
 dwelling on at length. They may be an exceptional 
 trio of young men, and in their territory there may be 
 an unusually high percentage of more prosperous 
 farmers. 
 
 Yet, allowing for all this, the record of their 
 achievement stands out by itself. They set a pace for 
 competitors that ran them off their feet. They bucked 
 the competition of a so-called great monopoly and beat 
 its selling force to a frazzle. 
 
 There were twenty-nine other distributors for the 
 Cold Dough Tractor Company working along similar 
 lines. None of these twenty-nine could match the 
 record of the Kansas City Hustlers, but there were 
 some who produced amazing results on territory that a 
 few years ago was regarded as absolutely hopeless for 
 the marketing of any sort of tractor. 
 
 Up to January i, 1916, the thirty distributors had 
 marketed a total of 8000 tractors for cash within a 
 period of two years. 
 
 Undoubtedly this will sound to some farm-imple- 
 ment purveyors like fiction. But it's cold fact. 
 
 [159] 
 
Tractors are Not for the Physically Unfit 
 
 A FARMER well along in the seventies wanted to 
 buy a tractor. He was still robust and rela- 
 L tively as hard as nails. He had been running 
 an automobile for a year. He had been tending a 
 thirty-horse-power gasoline engine for five years. He 
 had installed an electric lighting-plant. He had devel- 
 oped a rare skill for mechanics. Some of his neighbors 
 had tractors and he had watched them operate. He 
 had attended two tractor demonstrations. He had 
 perused and reperused a small library of tractor cata- 
 logues. 
 
 His 200-acre farm, i6o acres in cultivation, was a 
 profit-producer. He could afford to buy a tractor and 
 pay spot cash for it. He had bought his car for cash. 
 He had got the cash habit. As the itch to buy a tractor 
 developed into higher stages, he determined to buy a 
 tractor that couldn't be bought otherwise than on a 
 cash basis. He reasoned simply: If I buy from those 
 cash-sales chaps Fll not be holding the bag for any 
 other fellow's bad debts. 
 
 This old fellow didn't sit back home and wait for a 
 tractor salesman to come out to the farm. He talked 
 to a few dealers, but they were so shy of certain specific 
 information he wanted to get that he made up his 
 
 [ 160I 
 
i 
 
 mind to go to headquarters. He would drop in at the 
 nearest big branch house and put his hard questions 
 to those higher up. So he packed his bag and went 
 to town. 
 
 The keen young manager of the branch house was 
 on the job and received the venerable prospect with 
 his accustomed graciousness. 
 
 "Fve about made up my mind to buy one of your 
 tractors," said the farmer, "but before I do I want to 
 ask a few questions that are not answered in your cata- 
 logue or covered in your advertisements." 
 
 "Do you expect to run the tractor yourself?" asked 
 the young manager. 
 
 "Why, yes, of course," said the old fellow. "That's 
 why Fm buying it." 
 
 "Nothing doing — it can't be done," said the young 
 man. 
 
 The old farmer was flabbergasted. He stammered a 
 plaintive: "W-w-what.? I — you don't mean I'm too 
 old?" 
 
 "That's the answer — pat," said the young man. 
 
 "But," protested the farmer, "I run a car. I take 
 care of it. There's nothing much I don't know about 
 internal-combustion engines. There's my shop — I take 
 care of all my machinery, binders, planters. Why, I 
 can take a separator apart and put it together again. 
 And I'm strong and well. I drive a three-bottom sulky. 
 I guess you don't realize. Then all you fellows say that 
 the tractor makes farming so much easier — not so 
 much stock to handle and the heaviest work cleaned 
 up and put behind in a jiffy. Five acres plowed while 
 you'd be plowing one with a team, and so on." 
 II [ i6i 1 
 
The young man continued to shake his head. 
 
 *'Bad business," he said finally to the perplexed old 
 man. *'Get out of your head that running a tractor is 
 a soft job. There's all the difference in the world be- 
 tween driving a tractor and steering a rubber-tired 
 motor car over silk roads. It would be suicide for a 
 man of your years, no matter how hard you think you 
 are, to tackle it. You'd overstrain. The jar and jolt 
 of it would shatter your system. A husky young boy 
 could stand it. Any man in his prime will fit into it. 
 If you could begin at it with an expert's skill and ex- 
 perience you might suffer no damage. But it's my 
 frank opinion, sir, that your experience lessons would 
 about finish you. Tell me now — have you seen any- 
 where, at demonstrations or in practical service, a man 
 of your years driving a tractor.'*" 
 
 The old man shook his head. 
 
 "There you are. Of course you haven't. YouVe 
 seen the young huskies at it. You've seen the big fel- 
 lows in middle life with the hickory muscles and oak- 
 board chests sitting back of it, smoking their pipes, 
 handling the gears and plow levers and steering wheel 
 as if it were pie. If you'd stepped up close you'd have 
 noticed that they were sweating some. If you'd been 
 sitting up beside them you'd have felt the jar and jolt 
 and quiver of it. 
 
 "My dear sir, I don't care how small the tractor is, 
 it's not a rocking horse for an infant nor a rocking chair 
 for grandfather. Possibly it isn't good business for me 
 to tell you all this. I'm a sales manager and I'm hired 
 to push sales. Your money's as good as any other fel- 
 low's and on that business theory I suppose I could 
 
 [162] 
 
 i 
 
sell tractors to the lame, halt and blind and ease my 
 conscience. If our sales were lagging back and I turned 
 down a prospect like you Yd probably be counted in 
 among the dubs who ought to be dispensing charity 
 instead of making sales. 
 
 "It just happens in your favor that we're about 
 smothered with orders, wherefore I am displaying 
 another sort of business wisdom by placing our product 
 with the sort of men who can give us the best adver- 
 tisement. I am turning down all prospects who don't 
 look up to the mark as likely demonstrators of the 
 Great Dane Tractor. 
 
 "I am selecting out the leadership type of farmers 
 wherever that is possible. Bunglers and boneheads can 
 do us no end of harm. So can the physically unfit. 
 When we hire experts to demonstrate our tractors we 
 employ the best that money can buy. We want them 
 to be wizards at it. 
 
 "Suppose we were selling pianos. We wouldn't hire 
 plumbers or gas-fitters to play them. Suppose you 
 heard a piano going in a neighbor's house. If some 
 talented artist were playing it you'd want to own one 
 right away. If some dairy hand were pounding it with 
 his eyes shut, just to make a noise, you'd never want 
 to see a piano within fifty miles of your home. 
 
 "Now, it's my guess that you'd feel a good deal the 
 same about a tractor if you saw some square-head 
 speeding it through a rock pile and turning zigzag and 
 whirligig furrows. You'd regard it as a hellish contriv- 
 ance. 
 
 To sum it all up then, it would be rotten exploita- 
 tion on my part to sell you a tractor." 
 
 I163I 
 
The slick business man will chuckle over this little 
 incident and probably feel inclined to compliment me 
 on the resources of my imagination. I can only say 
 in reply that I sat in at the colloquy. After having 
 attended several tractor demonstrations I naturally 
 could hardly believe the evidence of my senses. 
 
 I vividly recalled a frantic-eyed, wire-haired sales- 
 man who went about buttonholing octogenarians and 
 shouting in their ear trumpets that running the Sugar 
 Baby or the Little Buttercup Tractor was away yonder 
 easier than wheeling an invalid's chair. The small 
 tractor had been invented as a solace and comfort for 
 old age. It would abolish for all time the inclination of 
 farmers to retire from farming. It would bring count- 
 less thousands of farmers out of retirement. Not only 
 could old men run tractors, but elderly women who 
 required more vigorous exercise than knitting as a 
 nerve tonic would find tractor driving a refreshing and 
 rejuvenating pastime. And so on. 
 
 I admit that this is not the exact language I over- 
 heard, but the exaggerated statements were as absurd. 
 Automobile salesmen have not been guiltless on this 
 score. If you ever set about the purchase of an auto- 
 mobile you were probably sung to in many variations 
 of enticing melody. And if later on you bought a car 
 you must have had a quiet smile if not a gentle cuss 
 to yourself over the amazing gap between promises 
 and performance. You yourself were more than half 
 to blame for the discrepancy. You desired the impos- 
 sible. You yearned for the miracle of perfection. You 
 chloroformed your common sense and lived in fairy- 
 land. 
 
 [164] 
 
I......,_. 
 
 ' gone a vast change in the past decade. As the motor 
 car itself gradually evolved to standardization, so did 
 the buying public. You might almost say that there 
 are millions of auto-wise infants who have scarcely fin- 
 ished teething. The schoolboy who cannot tell a car- 
 buretor from a differential is regarded by his juvenile 
 fellows as a stony boob. And the automobile sales- 
 man no longer promises you Phaethon's chariot and 
 the endurance performances of that supernal steed, 
 Pegasus. 
 
 [i6sl 
 
VI 
 
 Visualizing the Tractor Market 
 
 THE tractor salesman of this current year 1916 
 is almost a new species. The fact that he has 
 been a successful dispenser of automobiles or 
 threshing machines may be a lift on his way, but it does 
 not give him a running start. If he attempts anything 
 in the nature of reckless exploitation he is going to 
 make a false step, trip over a stubborn obstacle and 
 have the solid earth come up and bruise him. 
 
 The tractor sales manager has a good deal stifFer job 
 in visualizing his market than the automobile sales 
 manager. Anyone who has the cash or who can beg or 
 borrow — yes, or purloin — the cash is an automobile 
 prospect. A guardian may purchase one for an infant 
 in arms and charge it up to the estate. The centena- 
 rian, if financially fit, is just as good a prospect as any 
 aristocratic young Ajax or humble piano mover. Ex- 
 treme infancy or extreme old age is no bar; sex is no 
 bar. Every and all callings and occupations are in- 
 cluded. 
 
 Relatively the visualization of the automobile pros- 
 pect should be pie. Just consider what the tractor sales 
 manager is up against: 
 
 Ninety-something per cent of his market is confined 
 to farming areas, w^herefore ninety-something per cent 
 
 I 166] 
 
of his prospects must be farmers. The remaining frac- 
 tion of market is confined to specific traction enter- 
 prises, such as road making, the heavy hauHng of artil- 
 lery and commissary in wartime, contract sod breaking 
 and certain forms of ditching for drainage. For the 
 time being we would better lay aside the special utility 
 field for tractors. The farmer is the star of vaster mag- 
 nitude and an analysis of what he is and what he 
 farms must be the guiding beacon to the tractor sales 
 manager. 
 
 To begin with the top census total of 19 lo, there 
 were 6,361,502 farmers in the United States. Now, to 
 shave this total down by various processes of elimina- 
 tion: 
 
 First, let us subtract the negro farmers, as they are 
 almost an irreducible minimum as tractor prospects. 
 Of white farmers in 19 10 there were 4,771,000. This 
 total may be divided between 3,162,584 owners and 
 i>558,392 tenants. 
 
 Admitting that there may be many thousand tenant 
 prospects, the owner prospects are of major impor- 
 tance. We must add to the ownership total 58,000 farm 
 managers, who, generally speaking, operate large areas 
 for nonresident owners. 
 
 But it is not with mere numbers, color, nativity or 
 tenure that the tractor sales manager must reckon. The 
 farm — its size, kind and character — is his chief concern 
 after he has come down to a working basis of totals. 
 Unless he is a good deal of a visionary he will paste up 
 somewhere within sight the total number of all Ameri- 
 can farms of a hundred acres and larger. This should 
 apply no matter how light a small tractor he is selling. 
 
 [167] 
 
The kitchen garden tractor is arriving, to be sure, 
 but it does not enter into the real farm-tractor reck- 
 oning. Nor can we yet see where the one-plow tractor 
 will fit into our agricultural economies. 
 
 The hundred-acre and larger farm will offer an ex- 
 cellent working margin, far too wide a one perhaps. 
 I found several tractor sales managers who said offhand I 
 that the eighty-acre fellow was just as ripe a small- 
 tractor prospect as the hundred-acre man, but if you 
 attempt to figure that way you are sure to race the 
 engine of your optimism. Iowa is an ideal tractor state, 
 because of the even contour of her farming areas, and 
 if the eighty-acre man could use a tractor anywhere the 
 exceptional opportunity should be in Iowa. 
 
 When I saw the late Henry Wallace at Des Moines 
 in January, 1916, he told me that he had been making 
 a careful study of his state as a tractor prospect. He 
 summed up the situation in this way: 
 
 "The man with eighty acres has no business with a 
 tractor at all. He has got to have a team of horses 
 whether or not he has a tractor. If he took on a tractor 
 he would be adding just so much overload mechanical 
 power. As it is, he is struggling desperately to compete 
 with the 160-acre and the 180-acre farmers. He has to 
 equip his farm with practically the same machinery as 
 the men with larger farms. His investment load is just 
 as heavy and he has not nearly the margin of produc- 
 tion possibilities of the big fellows. Unless the little 
 fellow goes in for dairying he simply cannot stand the 
 competition. 
 
 "As the tractor comes into use on a sure profit basis 
 the eighty-acre man will find himself tugging away to 
 
 [168] 
 
the limit of economic endurance under the strain. He 
 will simply be compelled to take on more land to farm 
 or else go into dairying. At present there are only 6000 
 eighty-acre farmers left in Iowa and that number will 
 continue to shrink. 
 
 *'The tractor will in the next few years make a big 
 impression on the farming of the Middle West by in- 
 creasing the size of farms and driving more farm folk 
 to the towns and cities. As compensation, though, it 
 will surely increase the prosperity of those who remain 
 in farming. My behef is that the 150-acre man is the 
 minimum light-tractor prospect, and that as soon as he 
 learns how to adjust his farm management to the best 
 economic service of the tractor he will soon expand 
 into the 300-acre man." 
 
 With these carefully considered words of wisdom in 
 mind the tractor sales manager should carry the fol- 
 lowing table in his head: 
 
 Farms in the U. S. A. of 100 acres and over, 2,669,891 
 
 Farms in the U. S. A. of 174 acres and over, 1,153,605 
 
 Farms in the U. S. A. of 300 acres and over, 501,500 
 
 Farms in the U. S. A. of 500 acres and over, 174,430 
 
 The man who is selling a two-plow tractor would do 
 well to add to this table that there are in the United 
 States 1,516,286 farms of 100 to 174 acres. The man 
 with the three-plow tractor will be more interested in 
 the total number of farms from 174 to 260 acres in 
 area — 534,191. The man with the four-plow tractor 
 will probably confine his market to a large extent to 
 the 443,984 farms of 260 to 500 acres. 
 
 There is nothing like the magnificent range of pros- 
 pects you will find in the automobile field, but there 
 
 [169] 
 
is an inspiringly large market nevertheless. There is 
 this great difference between the automobile and the 
 tractor market: 
 
 On January i, 1916, the United States had regis- 
 tered in the various states 2,423,788 automobiles and 
 motor trucks. The 19 15 sales totaled 686,998 cars. 
 Production possibilities for 1916 were estimated at 
 above one million cars and trucks. Installment selling 
 was being launched on a wholesale plan. 
 
 There are available no authoritative figures for trac- 
 tors. Development has not yet reached a point where 
 tractors are taxed and registered. Unless they are 
 taxed they are not likely to be registered. And as I 
 have remarked before, Kansas is the only state that 
 so far has attempted to make a tractor census. 
 
 It was roughly estimated last summer that there 
 were about 20,000 tractors in use throughout the 
 United States. This included steam and gas tractors, 
 road engines and farm engines. 
 
 So far as I have been able to gather estimates from 
 various tractor manufacturers, more than 20,000 farm 
 tractors were manufactured in 1915. The volume of 
 production lagged way behind demand — emphatically 
 so in the case of the light tractor. One light-tractor 
 maker alleged that he could have doubled his sales if 
 he could have turned out the product to sell. He sold 
 5000 small tractors in 191 5. Another manufacturer 
 made and sold 3500. Both these makers planned, so 
 far as plant equipment could fulfill their hopes, to 
 double their output in 1916. 
 
 There is every possibility of at least 100 per cent in- 
 crease in production for the current year. Some tractor 
 
 [ 170] 
 
enthusiasts put this likely increase at 200 per cent. 
 You also hear of one automobile manufacturer who is 
 planning to build 100,000 pony-sized tractors a year. 
 This would mean a deluge of tractors that would cause 
 the hair of the old-line implement manufacturers to 
 stand on end. But it is not at all likely to happen for a 
 year or so, and when it comes, the tractor industry 
 may have straightened itself out somewhat on a basis 
 of standardization and fairly conservative exploitation. 
 
 The big drive of the large tractor in the early boom 
 days was made in the Northwest. The present drive 
 of the small tractor — the two-plow, three-plow or four- 
 plow machine — is being made in the East North Cen- 
 tral, West North Central, and West South Central 
 States. These divisions include: East North Central — 
 Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin; West 
 North Central — Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North 
 Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas; West 
 South Central — Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and 
 Texas. 
 
 Beyond this area tractor sales are at present re- 
 garded a good deal in the light of seepage. The Middle 
 Western prairies and the Great Plains afford ideal con- 
 tours for the tractor. And the mechanism of the trac- 
 tor has been developed to meet the requirements of 
 level and gently rolling land. Ridge-running and gully- 
 jumping tractors may evolve in the course of time. 
 Meantime the mule and the horse are in no danger of 
 becoming extinct in the hilly farming regions of the 
 United States and Canada. 
 
 The tractor sales manager will undoubtedly make a 
 careful study of the plateau and plains regions. He will 
 
 I 171 ] 
 
also discover that there are a good many millions of 
 acres of level lands beyond the areas within which the 
 tractor drive has begun and gathered amazing impetus. 
 
 But of the total of 978,175 farms ranging in size from 
 715 to 499 acres, 620,876 are in the East North Cen- 
 tral, West North Central and West South Central 
 States. Of the 125,295 farms of 500 to 1000 acres, 78,- 
 558 are confined to the same locality. When you get up 
 above 1000 acres you find the same preponderance. 
 The total above 1000 acres is reckoned at 50,135. Of 
 this number 12,875 ^^^ i^ ^^^ West North Central and 
 13,396 in the West South Central. Then we must drag 
 in the Pacific States of Washington, Oregon and Cali- 
 fornia, with a total of 8135 big farms. 
 
 The Southeastern Cotton States have about 7000 
 plantations of 1000 acres and over, and in the Moun- 
 tain States of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, 
 New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada there are 
 more than 6000 big ranches. The majority of these 
 are stock ranches, though gradually they are coming 
 more and more into the category of farms. Where the 
 big rancher of the Pacific and Mountain States has 
 swung away from ranching into farming he has been 
 a pioneer tractor user. He has been the superprogres- 
 sive fellow to try out tractor possibilities, and he had 
 done this gamely and without the quiver of an eyelash 
 while the tractor has been in the rawest stages of 
 inefficiency. 
 
 I 172] 
 
VII 
 
 Knowledge of Farm Management Essential 
 
 C)KING over the scramble for tractor plums 
 during the present wave of great demand for 
 small tractors one would think that census fig- 
 ures were unavailable and that the general run of our 
 farmers were crop gamblers rather than steady-going 
 husbandmen following the calling of their ancestors or 
 pursuing the fundamental instincts of progressive man- 
 kind. 
 
 I have talked to some promoters of tractor manufac- 
 turing enterprises whose knowledge of farming seem- 
 ingly had been gleaned from perusing the rhapsodies of 
 back-to-the~land poets. If a farm was a lOO-acre farm, 
 why there were undoubtedly lOO acres to till and 
 plant to crop. They read of 900,000,000 acres in farms, 
 but they did not follow along and learn that only fifty- 
 four per cent was improved or in cultivation. They did 
 not consider the immense area of pasture land that lies 
 out from year to year as a matter of necessity in good 
 farm management. Or if they did reckon with this area 
 of pasture land, they simply jotted it down among 
 the plowing possibilities overlooked by tractorless 
 farmers. 
 
 Both the tractor buyer and the tractor seller must in 
 the future make a far more intensive study of farm 
 
 I 173 1 
 
management than has hitherto been the custom, and 
 this farm-management study must go away beyond 
 just tillage, planting and harvesting. A small tractor 
 does not eat its head off, but it is surely not going to 
 earn its way simply because it can do all the heavy 
 work on the small farm in seventeen days out of the 
 
 365- 
 
 Diversified utility for the tractor will be found to be 
 
 the big selling argument of the future. The farmer 
 should demand and the tractor should supply both a 
 surplus of draw-bar pull and belt power. The small 
 farm must be gaited and adjusted to utilize the limits 
 of belt power the tractor affords. The accessory power 
 of the tractor on its off days should be its big dividend 
 payer. If there are only forty or fifty acres to crop, the 
 necessity for diversifying the uses of the tractor are 
 all the greater. 
 
 I visited the headquarters of a great concern that has 
 been marketing small tractors for a year and a half. 
 They call it an Eight Horse Tractor. One of the op- 
 timists of the management forces said that this little 
 fellow was a distinct economy for the hundred-acre 
 farm. I asked if they had checked up on results. Yes, 
 they had been collecting and compiling a lot of corre- 
 spondence. A great pile of letters was pointed out. I 
 looked through them, but found no reports from the 
 hundred-acre farmer — that is, none that were of any 
 constructive value. Here are a few samples of what I 
 did find. The first is a Kansas letter: 
 
 I beg to inform you that I have one of your small tractors and 
 am much pleased with it. I have but a small farm close to town, 
 but bought the tractor principally to haul sand and cut silage. Have 
 
 [174] 
 
had it since about May first and have k«pt it busy nearly every day. 
 Plowed lOO acres of ground, pulling four disk plows, and it seemed 
 to do it with ease. Plowed about ten acres a day at a cost of $1.25 
 a day for coal oil and fifty cents a day for lubrication, making the 
 cost $1.75 a day for each ten acres. It is very simple and does not 
 give me any trouble. Am pulling one of your twelve-inch silage 
 cutters now, cutting fifty tons a day, and it seems to do it with ease. 
 The running expense seems to be just the same as with plowing. 
 
 If there were a hundred acres to plow in this **Httle 
 Kansas farm'* certainly it was not a hundred-acre 
 farm. Here is another letter from another ** little'* 
 Kansas farm: 
 
 I think it a good investment, but cannot say for sure, as I have 
 not kept an accurate account of the number of days or hours put 
 in. But I made a rough estimate and it has cost me about ten or 
 fifteen cents an acre for plowing. The disking, rolling and harrowing, 
 which I did at one and the same time, cost me from five to seven 
 cents an acre besides my own labor. 
 
 I plowed fifty-five acres with a mold-board two-bottom fourteen- 
 inch gang, and fifty-five acres with a four-disk twelve-inch gang, 
 and I have harrowed, disked and rolled 130 acres for a total cost in 
 coal oil, gas, distillate, lubricating oil and cup grease of twenty-four 
 dollars delivered on my farm six and a half miles northwest of Salina. 
 My farm is old black rubber gumbo of the worst type. I plowed but 
 twenty acres with the teams. 
 
 Here is a letter from Hastings, Nebraska: 
 
 By having your small tractor I only keep one team the year 
 round, making the tractor do all the work that it would take six 
 head of horses to do. I have kept track of what it has cost me since 
 I bought it. It cost forty-seven cents an acre to take care of no 
 acres, plowing, harrowing, disking, drilling, pulling a 12-8 drill and 
 a ten-foot drag in front of drill. I have used the tractor day in and 
 day out since I bought it and have had no trouble at all. I believe 
 if proper care is given the tractor it will last the life of a horse, as 
 I am all through with my farm work and do not have to worry about 
 feeding a bunch of horses through the winter. 
 
 Of course there were other letters containing laments 
 and wails of grief. Some farmers had had trouble in 
 starting; others complained of the gears. Some had 
 
 [175] 
 
had fine success in baling hay, shredding corn, thresh- 
 ing grain, and in road work. It was palpable in many 
 of the letters that the writers had been appointed 
 agents to sell the tractor. But practically all the letters 
 were based upon one season's experience. So far as I 
 could see there were no letters of optimistic viewpoint 
 worth considering from the hundred-acre farmer. The 
 size of the farm was rarely stated, but on the average 
 they must have run from i6o to 300 acres. 
 
 While still on the topic of the tractor market and 
 exploitation methods I will set down a little list of ad- 
 vantages that are almost universally alleged in favor 
 of the tractor: 
 
 More economical because it utilizes mechanical power, 
 which can be produced more cheaply than horse power. 
 
 Concentrates power, thus reducing the amount of man- 
 labor for farm operations, as one man can easily operate 
 a gas tractor with a pulling capacity equal to forty horses, 
 and at the same time have more dependable control over 
 the power than would be possible with horses. 
 
 Unlimited endurance, being capable of working day 
 and night during its entire life if necessary. 
 
 Requires comparatively small space for housing, and 
 such shelter as is required need not be built for warmth 
 but only for protection from the elements. 
 
 Consumes fuel of relatively small bulk, requiring little 
 space for storage. 
 
 Requires no care when not in use. 
 
 Does better work because the quality is not lowered out 
 of sympathy for tired animals. 
 
 Can be used not only for field work, but also for belt 
 work. 
 
 [176] 
 
Is not subject to sudden loss by disease. 
 
 Breaks can be repaired by substituting a new part. 
 
 Not all these so-called advantages are axiomatic. 
 There was the case of the North Dakota farmer who 
 had driven into town and was boasting in the general 
 store of the great acreage of grain he was putting in 
 with his tractor. He had just got along to computing 
 the cost of plowing when he was called to the telephone. 
 The Swede at the other end of the wire announced: 
 
 "Boss, Big Ben ban bust! I tank you better bring 
 new Big Ben out, for I tank rain tomorrow." 
 
 "Anybody hurt.?" asked the farmer. 
 
 " I tank Olaf hurt some," replied the farm hand. " I 
 tank his leg broke an' maybe arm too, but he don't 
 wake up so I can ask him. But I tank rain tomorrow, 
 boss, so we ban need new Big Ben." 
 
 Of course, this was back in the days when the big 
 steam tractors had a habit of popping off Hke a super- 
 heated Mississippi steamboat. The modern internal 
 combustion engine is infinitely nearer perfection today 
 than were those early devices. Nevertheless we are 
 not yet able to be cocksure of tractor advantages. 
 
 Tractor benefits must be studied on their relative 
 merits. There is an immense amount of research work 
 ahead of us, both in the manufacturing plant and on 
 the farm. The returns from the small tractor are just 
 beginning to come in. Presently we shall be able to 
 average up contending claims for specific types. 
 
 The makers of the three-wheel tractor are gathering 
 their data, and the makers of the four-wheel trac- 
 tor are gathering theirs. Disputes as to the most 
 
 12 [ 177 1 
 
advantageous size of tractor remain unsettled. The all 
 purpose three-plow tractor men scofF at the two-plow 
 tractor. Makers of a variety of sizes are still uncertain 
 concerning what the future popular size will be. You 
 get glowing reports of the operation of the bull-wheel 
 in the furrow, and from another source you hear the 
 bull-wheel in the furrow condemned as a hideous mis- 
 take. 
 
 Is it any wonder that some tractor exploiters feel 
 inclined to tear their hair.f* They realize that a great 
 industry is in the bud, but they are completely baffled 
 concerning what the fruit will look like in its final 
 stages of cultural development. 
 
 I178I 
 
VIII 
 
 The Great Selection Problem for the Farmer 
 
 GOING it blindfolded! That is the situation 
 ' with the majority of farmers who are picking 
 ' tractors today. 
 
 It is not the fault of the tractor makers any more 
 than it is the fault of the farmers. You may standard- 
 ize the quality of your tractor to a superfine degree, 
 but how about the standardization of the purchaser's 
 ingenuity, skill, versatility, good or bad fortune in 
 crop production? 
 
 You hear many sound arguments against the eco- 
 nomic success of the small tractor, but you hear none 
 to controvert the fact that the small tractor has come 
 as an incalculable boon to the industry. The popular- 
 priced tractor has in the short span of two years pro- 
 vided resources for the tractor industry that could not 
 have been obtained in a score of years had it not been 
 developed. The pony tractor has created cash-sale 
 possibilities that could not have been contrived by any 
 other means, and without cash-sale possibilities the 
 tractor industry would have labored along under the 
 same dead weight that has hampered the moderniza- 
 tion of the implement industry. 
 
 From the manufacturer's standpoint volume of pro- 
 duction was the great stumbling-block. A concern that 
 
 [ 179] 
 
could not hope to make more than a few hundred 
 tractors a year had Httle hope of cutting down manu- 
 facturers' costs. A manufacturer compelled to make 
 all his own parts and castings could develop only a 
 special narrow market for a quality product at a qual- 
 ity price. 
 
 If a group of manufacturers had got together and 
 standardized certain parts and agreed to take the out- 
 put of some specialty manufacturer of parts, a definite 
 economy could have been accomplished. But the 
 spirit of competition was not headed that way. Each 
 separate maker seemed to desire as many selling argu- 
 ments in favor of his tractor as there were parts. He 
 wanted to be able to say that he had a better make of 
 motor than the other fellow, a better carburetor, better 
 ignition, better transmission, better cooling and lubri- 
 cating systems, a better contrivance of bull-wheels or 
 caterpillar sleeves for pulling and balancing the load, 
 better belt-drive connections. 
 
 I heard it said that one manufacturer had boasted: 
 "There are 22,000 pieces in my tractor and practically 
 all of them are different and better than the pieces in 
 any other tractor." Heaven help the owner who needed 
 a few nuts and bolts of this tractor in a hurry! 
 
 When you get down to fundamentals, this sort of 
 thing has occurred in the history of every mechanical 
 development. The design is crudely direct and simple 
 at the start — crudely inefficient too. Then the refining 
 process begins and is attended by a mania for com- 
 plexities. The next step is to eliminate the complexi- 
 ties and gradually approach a refined simplicity. 
 Throughout every step the ratio of efficiency is being 
 
 [ 180 1 
 
increased and the road to standardization is being 
 smoothed down. 
 
 Thanks to the small tractor the industry has already 
 approached such standardization that it is possible for 
 thirty-two makers to use one type of motor — that is, 
 a type of motor made by one manufacturer. Sizes and 
 adjustments are adapted to fit the special needs of 
 different tractors. The same tendency will be followed 
 in the cases of carburetors, magnetos, radiators, gears, 
 transmissions, differentials, and so on. The develop- 
 ment of the automobile has not only made this possible, 
 but has really forced it upon the tractor industry as 
 the only economic method of cutting the cost of pro- 
 duction. 
 
 Automobile engineers have really done a great deal 
 for tractor manufacturers by refining the essential 
 parts of tractor mechanism. Both industries are striv- 
 ing now toward the perfection of a system of coal-oil 
 carburetion. While some oil-burning tractors are ad- 
 vertised as equal in efficiency to any rival gasoline 
 burners, they have yet a long way to go to prove that 
 the combustion efficiency of kerosene equals the com- 
 bustion efficiency of gasoline. Nor, as a matter of fact, 
 will they ever succeed in raising the B. T. U. ratio of 
 kerosene to the B. T. U. ratio of gasoline. What they 
 may do and what they are striving toward is to develop 
 a combustion mechanism that will give kerosene the 
 same fuel dependability as gasoline. If they accom- 
 plish this, they will achieve great economy. 
 
 As a general thing, farmers in this country have been 
 learning a good deal more about the four-cylinder high- 
 speed type of motor in the past few years than they 
 
 [i8i] 
 
have about one and two cylinder oil-burning tractor 
 motors. Manufacturers who jumped into the tractor 
 game overnight felt that they could supply the popular 
 demand by simply grabbing a four-cylinder automo- 
 bile motor, common types of automobile carburetors 
 and magnetos, and slapping them into any old sort of 
 tractor frame. They suffered from the obsession that if 
 a tractor ran and developed a definite amount of 
 power, that was all that was necessary. They didn't 
 even bother to hitch on a plow and see if the thing 
 would buck or not. 
 
 In the days of the 50,000-pound leviathan tractors 
 no one bothered about bucking propensities. The chief 
 thing was to get it started and keep it going. When 
 they got down to the 4000 and 5000 pound tractor it 
 was not so much a case of spinning the flywheel and 
 keeping the motor warmed up to its job as of keeping 
 the "featherweight" from imitating an aeroplane after 
 the plows had bitten into the sod. Nice adjustments 
 and balances of weight were required. The plow hitch 
 became essentially important, to avoid side-draft and 
 to get the highest efficiency of pull. 
 
 A great many of these little fellows were underpow- 
 ered, even for their weight, at the start. Some of them 
 still are. The great need for surplus power was not 
 fully understood. How could it have been otherwise 
 when the rush products that were flung on the market 
 had had practically no testing out.? Early last winter 
 I was talking to a manufacturer who has been making 
 a medium-sized tractor advertised to develop twelve 
 horse power on the drawbar. I asked if he were going 
 into the popular-price field. 
 
 [ 182 1 
 
"Oh, yes," he said, "we're going to get out a little 
 one. I have an engineer coming down in a day or so 
 to draw some plans." 
 
 "Then," I said, "I suppose it'll be a year or two at 
 least before you commence to market it." 
 
 "Year, your hat!" he returned breezily. "We'll be 
 turning 'em out in ninety days after we approve of the 
 plans. The time is ripe to sell the baby size right now 
 and we are going to get into the running while the run- 
 ning is good. We're making five a day of this medium 
 size now and we can't begin to fill the orders." 
 
 It is the barest of all chances that this man will turn 
 out a product that will render any sort of dependable 
 service. But then, his chief desire is to make something 
 that will sell, and sell in sufficient volume to make a 
 killing while the going is good. 
 
 Just for the sake of drawing a parallel, take the case 
 of an Ohio tractor manufacturer who parts his name 
 in the middle with the word Thorough. He has been 
 manufacturing a four-plow tractor for five years — one 
 of the very best of its size and type; sold to develop 
 fifteen horse power on the drawbar, and honestly made 
 to develop a surplus above that. It is a real-quality 
 product selling for $1750. The first year he made 
 twenty-five tractors, the second year fifty, the third 
 year 250, and this year he will make 500. Before he 
 sold a single tractor, however, he experimented for 
 two years with twenty different models. 
 
 This man's early selling experience convinced him 
 that the greater number of small farmers would not 
 buy four-plow tractors. The man with 200 acres of 
 grain could operate it economically, but there seemed 
 
 I 183] 
 
to be few good prospects operating less than 300 to 
 400 acres. He might double his sales from year to year 
 for a few years and yet make no advances in the vol- 
 ume of production. So he got his experts to work 
 designing a ten-horse-power tractor that could be sold 
 for about $750. The first model was built three years 
 ago and twenty-five of these models were distributed 
 in different parts of the country for experiment — dis- 
 tributed, not sold. 
 
 These models were tested through an entire season 
 for tillage and for belt power. They must have diver- 
 sified utility and a reserve of power above selling speci- 
 fications. Model No. I fell down. Here and there it 
 made good. But the average of excellence fell below 
 fifty per cent. The following year Model No. 2 was 
 built, and the tests were repeated. It was a big im- 
 provement over Model No. i, yet there were some 
 serious kinks to be ironed out. The average of effi- 
 ciency was higher, but not high enough. This man 
 was not looking for a killing. His aim was to found a 
 big business on bedrock that had no fissures in it. He 
 was in no passionate haste to make money. He had 
 spent many years of his life building up a reputation 
 for business integrity and he was jealous of that repu- 
 tation. He had amassed a large fortune slowly and 
 conservatively and that was the way he intended to 
 develop a tractor. Hence he built Model No. 3. 
 
 He introduced No. 3 as his 1916 model, having 
 demonstrated to his satisfaction that it was a depend- 
 able mechanism. He had built forty experimental 
 machines, but none to sell. He had selected forty 
 farmers in widely scattered farming areas to try out 
 
 [ 184] 
 
Model No. 3 for the entire season. His experts had 
 picked the farms and the farmers. They had covered 
 the East and the South, the Middle West, the South- 
 west, the Northwest and the Pacific States. Model 
 No. 3 was distributed to tackle almost every type of 
 soil and a wide range of climatic and soil conditions. 
 It pulled plows over platterflat prairies, over rolling 
 meadows and aslant the terraced hills of Georgia and 
 the Carolinas. It tackled shale deposits and tule 
 gumbo, the staked plains of the Texas Panhandle and 
 the cut-over lands of Northern Wisconsin and Minne- 
 sota. It was driven by farmers who are expert me- 
 chanicians and by farmers who are raw beginners. 
 It was tested for the highest possible efficiency in the 
 hands of the wizard and for the lowest standard of 
 efficiency in the hands of the bungler. 
 
 The little fellow that comes through a test of this 
 character and stands up on a basis of all-round per- 
 formance is an honest product that both the dealer and 
 the farmer should scout for. Nor is this thorough 
 method of testing out uncommon in the tractor field. 
 At least a score of the manufacturers of recognized 
 standing and stability are practically as thorough. 
 This applies to both old-line tractor makers and imple- 
 ment manufacturers and to some few of the new in- 
 vaders. It applies also to several automobile manufac- 
 turers who have been experimenting with tractors that 
 have not yet come on the market. 
 
 But there are some big manufacturers of long-estab- 
 lished reputation in other lines who have picked their 
 tractor products out of the air and are tossing them on 
 the market without putting their performances to 
 
 I 185] 
 
anything resembling thorough and honest tests. They 
 are relying upon their names to sell these bubble 
 flimsies and trusting to the hurry-up eflForts of their 
 engineers to eradicate the imperfections. In such cases 
 the purchasers will be the goats, and their failure will 
 determine the radical changes that must eventually be 
 made to give service and honest value. 
 
 A few of the heads of these concerns have simply 
 been deluded by so-called experts. They are too busy 
 themselves to look into minor details, and must take 
 the word of their subordinates. Possibly they conceive 
 that the tractor has been sufficiently standardized to 
 make it possible simply to assemble standard parts 
 into a working unit, as is being done successfully in the 
 automobile industry. If they look into this closely, 
 however, they will soon learn that the tractor has at 
 least half a dozen years of evolution ahead of it before 
 its construction is a comparatively simple task of 
 experimental design and assembly. 
 
 [i86] 
 
IX 
 
 Shall the Tractor Fit the Farm or the Farm 
 Fit the Tractor 
 
 NOW that small tractors — five, six, seven, eight, 
 nine and ten drawbar horse power — are being 
 produced in great numbers, there is no end of 
 discussion over the ideal size of farm to utilize them 
 to advantage. Some academic theorists tell you flatly 
 that any tractor developing less than eight horse power 
 on the drawbar is a joke on a farm of any size. It is 
 of utterly no use to the two-horse farm, you hear, be- 
 cause it cannot replace the team for cultivating and 
 light hauling, and unless the owner can do considerable 
 contract work for neighbors, he will never begin to get 
 his money's worth out of his tractor. He will soon find, 
 after he has tried out his tractor for a season, that he 
 will have to add to the size of his farm as his only 
 means of economic salvation. 
 
 It is further urged against the pony-sized tractor 
 that it is not large enough to reduce man labor to any 
 appreciable extent, nor powerful enough in many in- 
 stances to perform all the belt work required on the 
 home farm. 
 
 The salient argument for the big tractor has long 
 been its ability to cut the cost of man labor. Take a 
 forty-eight tractor for example. With one operator and 
 
 [187] 
 
one plowman it could plow from twenty-five to thirty 
 acres a day under favorable conditions. Where the 
 land was free from trash a self-lifting plow could dis- 
 pense with the services of the plowman. It would re- 
 quire seven or eight men and from twenty-eight to 
 forty horses to produce the same results. 
 
 But the scope of such operations was extremely nar- 
 row, nor were the economies to be accomplished always 
 definite. Hundreds of big grain farms tried the big 
 tractor and went back to horses. The by-product 
 utility of a tractor's belt power was overlooked to a 
 great extent. 
 
 As the small tractor came into being its belt power 
 was overcapitalized rather than overlooked. The ma- 
 chines it should operate on the farm — in theory — were 
 not built down to the belt power of the small tractor. 
 This was true of separators, corn shellers, silage cutters 
 and various harvesting machines. The overrated small 
 tractor fell down hopelessly when it came to the actual 
 appliance of the much-vaunted belt power. There fol- 
 lowed a two-way scramble to straighten out this defect 
 — the rebuilding of the motor to develop more power 
 and an appeal to the manufacturers of belt-power 
 appliances to make smaller types adaptable to smaller 
 tractors. 
 
 Nor was tillage apparatus quite ready for the arrival 
 of the small tractor. Special hitches and adjustments 
 had to be devised. It was found that the principles 
 that had worked out well with the large-tractor gangs 
 could not be followed with assured success with the 
 small-tractor gangs. There was the ever-present ten- 
 dency of the small-tractor operator to overload the 
 
 [i88] 
 
machine. Purchasers had been promised more power 
 than the tractor could deUver, and there was no margin 
 of safety. Told that the tractor could plow an acre an 
 hour or thereabout, they would begin at the maximum 
 and then speed it up. 
 
 The careful shifting of gears to produce the most 
 engine efficiency cannot be learned in a day, even with 
 the automobile. With the tractor this skill comes much 
 more gradually. Drivers completely forgot how they 
 had driven their plow teams through uneven soil. They 
 expected the tractor to wade through anything with- 
 out changing gears, without paying close attention to 
 the nice adjustments of the plow lift. The three great 
 trouble-breeders with the small tractor have been: 
 Overloading, reckless driving and neglect of lubrica- 
 tion. 
 
 In behalf of the farmer it must be said that he was 
 only partially to blame for overloading. So many of 
 the small tractors had been overrated as to both draw- 
 bar pull and belt power that he was naturally misled. 
 Manufacturers — the reliable ones — have hastened to 
 correct this error. Tractors that were at first offered 
 as three-plow tractors are now being sold as two-plow 
 tractors. Some of them will pull three plows nine or 
 ten inches deep through light loams, but when it comes 
 to heavy soil they are two-plow tractors. It is wise to 
 list them and advertise them as such, allowing the pur- 
 chaser to exhaust surplus power at his own risk. 
 
 The returns from worth-while economy and endur- 
 ance tests of the small tractor have just begun to come 
 in. They are not as yet comprehensive enough to base 
 any final judgment on. I have met some men who 
 
 [189] 
 
predict that the two-plow tractor will be pretty gener- 
 ally discarded in a few years as too small — too small at 
 any price. They predict that the tractor that will be 
 most generally used in the future must deliver at least 
 an honest ten-horse power on the drawbar and pull 
 at least three plows from seven to ten inches deep. 
 
 The three-plow tractor, they argue, will not only 
 render the small farmer efficient service, but will ac- 
 complish for him immediate economies that will enable 
 him to increase his farming operations and expand his 
 farm area. This will be a case of enlarging the farm 
 to fit the tractor. The other way round will never work 
 out. A cropping area can never be pared down eco- 
 nomically to fit the size of a tractor. 
 
 Data collected from Illinois and Indiana prove 
 pretty conclusively that farmers who began with small 
 tractors bought larger ones; that they graduated from 
 the two- and three-plow class into the four-plow class. 
 In few if any recorded instances, say those who have 
 been gathering statistics, have farmers who began with 
 four-plow tractors bought down into the two- and 
 three-plow class. But it should be explained that the 
 majority of those who bought large tractors have 
 added to their cropping area by buying or renting 
 additional land. 
 
 One close observer of tractor tests — actual farming 
 tests — had this to say: "The data I have collected 
 show that the fifteen-thirty tractor has had a larger per- 
 centage of successes than any other size except the 
 very smallest ones. These very smallest ones, however, 
 have not been in use for a sufficient length of time to 
 enable the users to give an opinion of definite value. 
 
 [ 190] 
 
"As I size up the situation, the manufacturers of the 
 pony-sized tractor have built for demand, not because 
 they believe it to be the best machine for the average 
 farmer. In fact, many of them are convinced that the 
 pony-sized tractor is altogether undesirable and will do 
 more harm than good. But" — a vastly important but 
 if you follow closely — *' there is no reason to doubt that 
 the small tractor, selling at a low price, is destined to 
 put the industry on a more substantial basis than it has 
 ever known. Frequently a farmer will take a chance 
 with a small tractor when nothing could persuade him 
 to buy a larger one. This will tend to expand the field 
 of experimentation, and is sure to increase the general 
 demand for all sizes of tractors." 
 
 Too many of the theories you hear argue round in 
 circles. They begin with a flimsy premise and wind up 
 with a contradiction. The pony tractor is a fallacy, 
 
 hut . The big tractor is a fallacy, hut . The 
 
 medium-sized tractor is ideal, hut . The great puz- 
 zle for the future must be to determine the happy 
 medium. And that happy medium must either be a 
 medium-sized little or a medium-sized big tractor. As 
 I see it, nothing can be a greater help toward the solu- 
 tion than volume of production that will gradually 
 bring down the cost of all sizes of tractors — ^just what 
 has happened in the automobile industry. And the 
 greater the volume of production, the nearer the ap- 
 proach to standardization. 
 
 If this reasoning is sound, it must follow that the 
 small tractor, instead of being an economic fallacy, is 
 the greatest of all economic boons both to the farmer 
 and to the manufacturer. There is an infinitely better 
 
 [191I 
 
chance for the small tractor to grow up to husky effi- 
 ciency than there is for the big tractor to shrink. 
 
 As for the influence of the tractor on the size of 
 farms, that problem is likely to lead to endless specula- 
 tion until we have gathered sufficient statistics to guide 
 us. It is both a tractor problem and a man problem. 
 It is a problem involving land tenure and types of 
 farming. It is a mechanical problem and a livestock 
 problem. It is likely to become one of our greatest 
 farm-management problems. Furthermore it will be- 
 come a social problem, as it will mean a still greater 
 decrease in our rural population. 
 
 The efficiently mechanized farm of the future is 
 something to look forward to hopefully, and I believe 
 that the small tractor will be the greatest influence 
 ever brought to bear toward this end, not only in the 
 United States but in the whole world. 
 
 [ 192 
 
X 
 
 Design, Parts, Service — The Big Little Things 
 
 IF YOU happen to buy a simple little tractor, with 
 only ii,ooo pieces in it, you are in a fair way to 
 acquire some fundamental experience in mechan- 
 ics. The ii,ooo pieces are not all parts, to be sure, 
 or what are commonly called parts. Nuts, bolts, 
 washers, lugs or spuds, pinions, cotter pins, radiator 
 pieces, carburetor pieces, engine pieces, magneto pieces, 
 pipes, tubings and joinings in the lubricating system, 
 grease cups, oil cups, frame braces and rivets, wheel 
 spokes, steering-gear pieces and innumerable odds and 
 ends in the metal fabric make up the dismaying total. 
 
 A very small fraction of this total is working parts. 
 Every piece will bear some specific burden of wear and 
 tear, but a good many thousand pieces are indestruct- 
 ible so far as the life of a tractor is concerned. 
 
 Some time look over a tractor, an automobile or any 
 other mechanical contrivance of necessarily complex 
 fabric that has played out and been scrapped and you 
 cannot help but be amazed at the number of pieces 
 that survived intact. It is a good deal the same with 
 the human anatomy. Even in the case of the centena- 
 rian whose vital spark has suddenly gone out there 
 are innumerable tissues and bones and tubes that 
 could, seemingly, have borne their burden for many 
 13 [ 193 ] 
 
^ 
 
 years were not the heart engine and its carburetor 
 valves, the lubricating and the respirating system, 
 played out. 
 
 A good many tractor prospects are asking: Where 
 will we find the greatest simplicity in tractor design, 
 the fewest pieces, the fewest parts? Unfortunately, 
 there is no brief or comprehensive answer to this ques- 
 tion. At this writing there are approximately 170 
 tractors, no two of them alike. In another year prob- 
 ably 200 or more, each a separate design, will be 
 offered for sale. 
 
 There is such wide variance of design that classifica- 
 tion is almost impossible. We have one-wheel, two- 
 wheel, three-wheel, four-wheel tractors, caterpillars of 
 several types, steel mules, iron horses, auto-plows and 
 plow-autos, oil-gas and gas-oil, crude-oil burners, kero- 
 sene burners and gasoline burners. There are distinc- 
 tive plow-pull types and distinctive all-purpose types, 
 likewise special types for hauling; there are one- 
 cylinder, two-cylinder, four-cylinder and six-cylinder 
 tractors. 
 
 This great diversity of design is due primarily to the 
 fact that there has not been sufficient experimentation 
 to permit of careful analysis of the fundamentals of 
 tractor design by tractor engineers. The early develop- 
 ment of the tractor was confined to the plowing engine. 
 Now, with the intrusion and immense popularity of 
 the small tractor, there is a scramble in the direction 
 of the all-purpose tractor. It is a mad, mad scramble. 
 
 To produce a satisfactory plowing tractor required a 
 combination of certain elements. An approach was 
 being made to simplification and standardization. 
 
 [ 194 ] 
 
I 
 
 To provide a tractor combining in itself high excel- 
 lence for plowing, cultivation, harvesting, road hauling 
 and belt work required the addition of a great many 
 elements not at all necessary in a plow-purpose tractor. 
 
 To get anywhere the all-plow tractor had to work 
 up to deliver large units of power. The all-purpose 
 tractor worked down to diversify and in that way to 
 multiply small units of power. The all-plow tractor 
 soon oversold its market; the all-purpose tractor, in 
 the infancy of development, cannot seem to meet 
 demand. 
 
 You must follow a precipitate decline from the 
 50,000-pound tractor to the 3000-pound tractor. Placed 
 side by side they are about as alike as the zebra and the 
 hairy mammoth. They are creatures of utterly differ- 
 ent species. The big one- and two-cylinder tractors 
 that have come down to date are fairly true to species. 
 The "featherweight" is a hybrid cross with a predomi- 
 nating strain of automobile in him. 
 
 The big type was based upon stationary-engine 
 practice. Its sponsers declare that any machine, to be 
 a success at farm work, must be made heavy, to stand 
 rough usage and continuous service. It must be heavy, 
 to carry the single or double cylindered motors with 
 large cylinder dimensions. The bearing surfaces must 
 be large. 
 
 The transmission system is usually of rough-cast 
 gears, of coarse pitch and large diameter. These gears, 
 too large to inclose, must be run in the open. Frames 
 and wheels must be proportionately heavy. 
 
 Carburetion, cooling and ignition systems are of 
 the utmost simplicity, designed for practically constant 
 
 [195] 
 
load and speed. Fine adjustment or flexible control 
 is not considered. 
 
 It is argued for these big, crude fellows that they are 
 more nearly fool-proof than any other type; that a 
 one-cylinder engine gives half as much trouble as a 
 two-cylinder, one-fourth as much trouble as a four, and 
 one-sixth as much trouble as a six. In bygone days you 
 heard this same argument from automobile manu- 
 facturers. 
 
 The fool-proof argument has very little force in this 
 mechanized epoch as a selling argument. It is human 
 nature to like to monkey with the buzz-saw. 
 
 The contention of designers of tractors built along 
 automobile lines, that the use of single or double cyl- 
 inders of large dimensions is incorrect for tractor duty 
 because it is necessary to make the tractor '* hope- 
 lessly " heavy to obtain proper wearing surface or bear- 
 ing area has met pretty general popular approval. It 
 makes its strongest appeal to the automobile-owning 
 farmer. More than ninety per cent of the automobiles 
 owned by farmers are four-cylinder light cars. 
 
 Unquestionably, however, the light-tractor advo- 
 cates have been carried away by their own enthusiasm. 
 They have too much of the automobile and too little 
 of the tractor in their machines. That has already been 
 pretty thoroughly demonstrated. The evidence is ap- 
 parent this year, when you find most of the experi- 
 enced tractor designers either bringing out or prepar- 
 ing to bring out tractors combining both the heavy 
 type and the light type of construction. 
 
 The arguments for this interweaving of design are 
 compromise arguments — an acknowledgment of the 
 
 [196] 
 
good points of both designs. But even these com- 
 promise types have not followed any standard. Some 
 producers of the heavy type merely cut down size 
 and weight by using better materials where greater 
 strength was necessary and applying anti-friction bear- 
 ings where the loads were heaviest. Builders of "too- 
 light" designs followed the opposite course, building 
 up and strengthening, adding more power units to the 
 motor. 
 
 The logical future development of the tractor will 
 undoubtedly be along the line of combining the knowl- 
 edge and experience of the agricultural engineer, the 
 automobile engineer and the tractor engineer. Each 
 class has much to learn. Some of the leading automo- 
 bile engineers of the country are now employed in 
 making a minute study of tractor mechanics and agri- 
 cultural economics. Mere mechanical skill will not 
 serve to produce any special ideal type of tractor. The 
 agricultural engineer can furnish invaluable informa- 
 tion concerning farm management, cropping condi- 
 tions, soil textures, soil contours, the possibilities for 
 replacing horses, the possibilities for the diversifica- 
 tion of belt-power, and so on. One of the very best 
 light tractors on the market was designed by a farmer 
 turned mechanic. 
 
 The automobile engineers, seeking mechanical re- 
 finements, have already made a big impression by 
 compelling the use of better building materials. Their 
 influence is largely responsible for the growing use of 
 cut and hardened gears, inclosed gearing run in oil and 
 moderately light high-speed motors. There is both 
 a positive need and an increasing demand for the 
 
 [ 197 ] 
 
intensive use of high-grade materials, as well as for 
 the development of design to take the utmost advan- 
 tage of quantity production. 
 
 The great automobile manufacturers who are un- 
 doubtedly coming into the game will seek the broadest 
 market. They have the mistakes of scores of tractor 
 manufacturers to build upon; they have their own 
 selling and exploitation organizations to wield as a 
 powerful weapon of distribution — a much more flexible 
 and effective weapon than has ever been used in the 
 tractor and implement industries. How effective? 
 Answer: Approximately one million automobiles sold 
 to farmers who did not absolutely need them in their 
 business. Sold for cash too — don't forget that! 
 
 [198 
 
XI 
 
 Building for Service 
 
 YOU will find in the tractor industry today two 
 very distinct classes of manufacturers: One 
 that is building for service and established repu- 
 tation, and another that is building to catch the popu- 
 lar fancy. It should be worth while for the farmer to 
 inquire carefully into the standing of the manufac- 
 turer. Do not simply ask the dealer or salesman a few 
 casual questions. Write to your agricultural college. 
 You may receive a noncommittal reply, but you will 
 get a lead on the situation. 
 
 Simply because a tractor is a new design does not 
 necessarily condemn it, but if it is simply a design 
 fathered by a haphazard idea and you buy it the 
 chances are all in favor of your paying a very heavy 
 tax to prove or disprove the worth of that tractor. 
 
 The cautious tractor purchaser will make careful 
 inquiry concerning the available supply of parts and 
 their cost. The life of tractor parts is bound to be 
 problematical. The wearing parts of a tractor bear a 
 terrific strain. The least little negligence in taking care 
 of lubrication may burn out a bearing or destroy a 
 bushing. You want to know how soon you can replace 
 these and at what cost. Fuel and water systems are far 
 from infallible. 
 
 [ 199 1 
 
The bull gear carries a tremendous strain. There is 
 a definite economic advantage when the bull gear is 
 made up of several segments. You are not likely to 
 have more than one segment go at a time and then the 
 repair costs are but a fraction what they are if the bull 
 gear is a single casting. Of course, the material of which 
 the gears are made makes all the difference in the world. 
 
 But, by all means, look into every possible detail of 
 parts service. A good many tractor manufacturers 
 will supply you with parts catalogues. If the prices of 
 these parts are not given, write for information. Check 
 up with the dealer on the information you receive. 
 Learn what parts he carries in stock and what he 
 charges for them. 
 
 The catalogue put out by the manufacturer of one 
 small tractor lists each separate part, its weight, price 
 and the code name for it. Also there are special lists 
 of magneto and carburetor parts. This manufacturer 
 fixes the price at which the dealer handling his tractor 
 shall sell parts, allowing a fair margin of profit to the 
 man who keeps the parts in stock. 
 
 The dealer is not asked to keep all the parts listed 
 in stock, by a handsome margin. How many and what 
 parts he keeps in stock will depend to a large extent on 
 the number of tractors he has sold. Generally he need 
 carry only the working parts that bear the heaviest 
 load and are the most liable to give way because of 
 overloading, careless driving or accident. Defective 
 parts are replaced free of charge by responsible manu- 
 facturers, provided the broken parts are sent on so the 
 manufacturer may have proof that there was a posi- 
 tive defect in the material. 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
The dealer is not compelled to carry a heavy stock 
 of parts at his own risk of never disposing of them. 
 The manufacturer I have mentioned makes the pro- 
 vision that if any of the parts the dealer has carried 
 are undisposed of at the end of the year he will take 
 them back. 
 
 This sort of parts service is a big advance over the 
 old-time methods in the tractor industry. Many a 
 tractor owner, having broken an essential part, has 
 written to the factory, only to find that a special cast- 
 ing would have to be made, and at almost prohibitive 
 cost. Tractor owners have told me of paying twenty 
 dollars and more for castings that with any adequate 
 supply of parts on hand should not have cost more 
 than a dollar or two at the most. 
 
 The dealer who is going to sell tractors to farmers 
 cannot look too carefully into the details of parts 
 service and repair service. The closer attention he pays 
 to this the better will be his prospects as a tractor dis- 
 tributor. Many manufacturers are providing tractor 
 schools for dealers and farmers. All the agricultural 
 colleges are building up special tractor courses. Short 
 courses in tractor mechanics will undoubtedly become 
 immensely popular in the future. 
 
 There are alluring profits to be made in tractor sales 
 by the dealer in the future, but this race is going to be 
 to the swift, the energetic, the competent — to the man 
 who makes a careful, detailed study of the tractor as a 
 machine and who knows the value of this machine in 
 the district he serves. 
 
 To those unable to attend tractor schools and 
 short courses in tractor mechanics there are available 
 
 [ 20I ] 
 
correspondence courses which, if they only whet the 
 appetite for more knowledge, will have served a very 
 useful purpose. The dealer should not only interest 
 himself in all these special aids to his business as a 
 tractor distributor, but he should urge the farmer 
 who has declared himself a tractor prospect to equip 
 himself with all the knowledge and skill he may obtain. 
 The farmer, on his part, will do well to observe closely 
 what the dealer knows about his product. 
 
 The newcomers to the tractor industry, who drove 
 their selling forces into the market on the double-quick 
 under the cash-sales banner, first chose the automo- 
 bile dealer as a distributor. 
 
 The automobile dealer understood cash sales and he 
 also knew the value of intelligent, dependable service, 
 particularly parts service. The automobile dealer knew 
 engine troubles, carburetor troubles, ignition troubles. 
 The automobile dealer knew what service to give away 
 and what service to charge hard cash for. He had not 
 acquired the habit of giving away service to keep credit 
 customers in good humor. 
 
 In the experimental drive for cash-sales distribution 
 it was simply the natural thing to tie up so far as pos- 
 sible with the automobile dealer. But it wasn't long 
 before there arose clamorous protest from the imple- 
 ment dealer. He came to the front in large numbers to 
 present his just claims. He urged his manifest advan- 
 tages over the automobile dealer in that he was in 
 close contact with the farmer. He not only had per- 
 sonal acquaintance with the farmer, but he knew with 
 some degree of accuracy just how much mechanical 
 equipment the farmer carried, the size and kind of 
 
 [ 202 ] 
 
farm he operated and the adaptabiHty of his farm to 
 absorb tractor power. 
 
 The old-Hne implement manufacturers who were 
 seUing tractors did not desert the implement dealer, 
 but they were able to observe before very long that 
 their implement dealers were in a great many — far too 
 many — instances making a mess of their tractor sales. 
 Likewise they were not meeting the competition in 
 their district. New tractors made by "new beginners" 
 were being sold under their noses in large numbers by 
 automobile and other dealers, being sold for cash as 
 against their abortive efforts to sell by the antiquated 
 methods that still clung to the implement industry. 
 
 There was a division of responsibility for this. The 
 implement dealer did not know the tractor, and the 
 selling organizations he was distributing for were not 
 coaching him properly. He was not getting live assist- 
 ance from sales managers and branch-house managers. 
 Implement manufacturers were making a vain en- 
 deavor not to disturb the sales of their other lines, but 
 at the same time to push the sales of tractors. They 
 did not have enough tractor specialists on the job. 
 They neglected the parts service demands and needs. 
 They neglected to boost the features that made the 
 deepest impressions. Was it any wonder that certain 
 competitors were rushing them off their feet.? 
 
 In the course of a year radical changes were notice- 
 able. Specialists and experts were hustled out on the 
 job. The implement dealer was called into conference 
 and instructed. He was taught more and more about 
 the tractor as a machine and was coached to the limit in 
 the process of selling for cash or the equivalent of cash. 
 
 [ 203 ] 
 
At every dealers* convention held last winter there 
 were lectures on tractors and indoor demonstrations 
 of tractors, so far as that was possible. Kansas City 
 had a big tractor show as an adjunct to the annual 
 automobile show. This attracted both implement and 
 automobile dealers. Minneapolis had a tractor show. 
 The implement trade press broke out with a sort of 
 tractor measles. Special tractor numbers were pre- 
 pared for the sole purpose of coaching the implement 
 dealer. Some implement trade papers changed their 
 names to include ** tractor." 
 
 A year ago one big tractor concern boasted that 
 ninety per cent of its distributors were automobile 
 dealers. Since then it has been signing up large num- 
 bers of implement dealers, until now it is a case of 
 fifty-fifty, with the rising tide in favor of the implement 
 dealer. But the implement dealer did not come in to 
 skim this tractor cream on his own terms. He came 
 in on the manufacturer's terms, and he is growing to 
 like the business methods built up by the automobile 
 industry more and more as the months go by. 
 
 An overwhelming demand for small tractors made 
 this possible in the tractor industry, just as an over- 
 whelming demand made it possible in the automobile 
 industry. So far as I can see this demand is not likely 
 to slacken for several years to come. It is more than 
 likely to be the salvation of several thousand imple- 
 ment dealers who would have been ground out of exist- 
 ence in the course of competition as it existed in the 
 old days. 
 
 The elimination of the unfit will go on, but there will 
 be attracted to the dealer forces a much higher grade 
 
 [204] 
 
of intelligence and business alertness than was ever the 
 case before. The agricultural colleges are turning out 
 hundreds of young men with technical knowledge of 
 agricultural economics and mechanical engineering 
 who will be attracted by the dealer possibilities of the 
 tractor. More and more dealers will send up their sons 
 for this training. A good many of the colleges have 
 established courses in salesmanship. If you have a 
 grain of optimism in your system you must see that 
 the prospect is peculiarly rosy. 
 
 [205) 
 
XII 
 
 The Horseless Farm 
 
 YOU might as well try to sum up the vagaries of 
 womankind as attempt to cap a climax to a 
 discussion of farm tractors during the industry's 
 present spasms of regeneration, or rejuvenation, or 
 recrudescence, or whatever you desire to call its 1916 
 labor pains. 
 
 I have been poring over scores of essays written by 
 engineers and experts in hurry-up response to emer- 
 gency appeals for copy, but they agree only on the 
 score of their uncertainties. No, that is not exactly 
 accurate. There is a harmonious tone to their opti- 
 mism. The majority of them express themselves as 
 scientific optimists. It has been denied that there is 
 such a critter. Let me explain. When these technical 
 specialists get away from the backing and filling of 
 their technical discussion they step right up to the 
 front of the rostrum and let go to this effect: 
 
 *' Whatever happens, the tractor is here with bells 
 on and going so fast you can't see it for sparks and 
 smoke." 
 
 This is just a common kitchen-garden variety of 
 hysteria, but when you see it develop in scientists 
 you may gamble there is som.e good sound reason 
 for it. 
 
 [206] 
 
During the extensive tour I made through the 
 tractor centers of manufacture and distribution I 
 met a variety of types of enthusiasts — probably not 
 all the types, but I beheve a majority of them. One 
 of the most interesting was the horse eliminator. 
 
 He was one of a force of 750 earnest workers em- 
 ployed in the experimental department of the biggest 
 concern that makes tractors and farm implements. He 
 was assigned to just one specialty and he certainly 
 took that specialty to heart. It was a sort of one- 
 cylinder, three-speed, no-reverse, direct-drive hobby. 
 That preeminent hobby-horseman of English litera- 
 ture. Uncle Toby, was a chronic diversifier by com- 
 parison with this earnest, chubby little gentleman, 
 who has given up the greater part of his life to con- 
 triving patents that should ultimately eliminate horse 
 power from farming. 
 
 He was almost up to his neck in blue-print designs 
 when I visited him in a Chicago skyscraper. Almost 
 the first phrase he uttered was "horseless farm." In 
 the next breath he told me he was no mere skyscraper 
 theorist, but a real farmer. He lived on a farm — a 
 horseless farm. It was part of his job to promote the 
 horselessness of this farm. 
 
 He still kept a few horses — kept them round just for 
 the sake of having them there to prove how easily he 
 could do without them. Furthermore, he was figuring 
 out to a nicety what these horses cost to maintain and 
 just how much power they delivered in return for their 
 upkeep. He had entered the purchase price of this 
 work stock, estimated their depreciation to a hair day 
 by day, worked out the average of horse ailments and 
 
 [207] 
 
horse accidents on a large number of farms. He had 
 balanced his horse quota as to sex so as to get the 
 average returns from reproduction and its value, also 
 he measured and estimated the value of manure return. 
 
 **I intend to play fair with the horse," he said, "and 
 to get its value as high as the averages carry. Only by 
 doing that will I succeed in driving myself at the top 
 speed to replace the horse by diversified tractor service. 
 I am working now on a great many patents for rede- 
 signing farm machinery and farm equipment so as to 
 increase the utility of the tractor and make it earn 
 dividends on an average small farm of 150 acres. The 
 smaller the farm, the greater must be the range of 
 activity of the tractor. We must drive toward the 
 complete elimination of the horse to make the tractor 
 a paying investment on the really small farm. 
 
 "We are redesigning our harvester as a small tractor 
 harvester, so that we can take it off and utilize the 
 transmission drive of the tractor as the drive of the 
 harvester. I am working on no end of patents for a 
 tractor cultivator. There are a good many snags in the 
 way, but we are going to cut through them. We are 
 redesigning our mowers, so as to put on as many sets 
 of knives as the tractor will pull. We have worked out 
 a header-separator for the grain districts. 
 
 "When we get our tractor cultivator worked out it 
 will cultivate four rows with three men and then it will 
 be possible to cultivate two or three times where we 
 cultivate only once now. There will be no need then to 
 cultivate any farther when the corn is so high as to 
 interfere with tractor traction. The increased yields 
 should be incalculable. 
 
 [208] 
 
"In the course of my experimental work I have be- 
 come a small tractor-fanatic. I do not see the need of 
 large tractors at all. If more power is needed add more 
 small-tractor units. I believe a six or eight drawbar 
 pull will be all the power necessary in these small 
 power units. 
 
 "Each small tractor will take care of one manure 
 spreader, one harvester, one mower, one hay loader, 
 one hayrack, and so on. The hayrack may be mounted 
 on a two-wheel trailer. The trailer can be used to carry 
 the grain to the carrier and the tractor will operate 
 the carrier to unload. I have worked this out with 
 potatoes, sugar beets, and many other crops besides 
 hay and grain, by running the end of the carrier box 
 into the car that is to be loaded. Can't you see that 
 when we get this down pat the horse will be completely 
 out of it? There'll be no use at all for animal power. 
 We can begin in the spring with the manure spreader 
 and work right through to the delivery of crops at the 
 elevator or the freight car. All we have to do is to be 
 sure that our small-unit tractor has power enough to 
 operate all these various machines." 
 
 "What about the additional cost of labor for the ad- 
 ditional small-tractor units .f"' I asked; then added: 
 "It is quite generally urged that there is an important 
 economic gain to be made In eliminating man labor. 
 A plurality of small tractors on the farm will certainly 
 call for a plurality of operators." 
 
 "That will be a mere trifle," he retorted; "when we 
 
 have our readjustment down to a fine point and have 
 
 eliminated the horse. The economies accomplished by 
 
 each small-tractor unit will pay for the extra man labor 
 
 14 [ 209 ] 
 
and leave a wide margin of surplus to spare. There is 
 an immense amount of waste man labor on the farm 
 today, due to horse labor. The small tractor will take 
 care of that waste." 
 
 "The more small-tractor units the more farm ma- 
 chinery," I remarked. *'What about the cost of dou- 
 bling and tripling the number of machines? Isn't it 
 true that the bigger the machine the less per horse 
 power the cost of the power it delivers ? Of course it 7 
 would be better for the implement manufacturers to 
 double up the number of machines, from manure 
 spreaders to side-delivery rakes, hay loaders, and so 
 on, but where will the farmer get off? He is already 
 pretty heavily overpowered on the small farm." 
 
 "That is merely an assumption of the superficial 
 economists. When a farmer has a number of teams of 
 horses he must have a number of wagons, binders, 
 mowers, and so on, for these teams to pull. If he buys 
 a large tractor he can pull only one machine at a time, 
 and must discard the smaller machines for larger ones. 
 To employ these large machines he should have large 
 fields to operate in. 
 
 "Now, say, a farmer takes on three $700 tractors 
 instead of one $2000 tractor. Does he not add then a 
 much greater elasticity to his farm operations .f* His 
 small tractors can pull all his various equipment in 
 fields of whatever size he cares to divide his farm. He 
 can do infinitely more small work with his small 
 tractors than he could with his big one." 
 
 "Then you don't give much weight to the argument 
 that the average farmer is overequipped with ma- 
 chinery?" 
 
 [210] 
 
**If he is, it is all because of the horse!" exclaimed 
 the horse eliminator vehemently. **The horse is the 
 great economic burden. I'll prove this to a hair. Just 
 leave it to me." 
 
 I reckon we'll have to do just that — leave it to him, 
 though I doubt if he will live to see the day when the 
 horse is completely eliminated from the farm. Our 
 Department of Agriculture has been working out this 
 tractor versus horse problem, and one of the young 
 men who has been gathering valuable farm-manage- 
 ment material has this to say in defense of the horse: 
 
 "While power produced by mechanical means costs 
 less per unit than that produced by animals, the diffi- 
 culties encountered in its efficient application very 
 frequently make the cost of performing mechanical 
 power considerably greater than when done with horses. 
 
 "Many of the estimates published concerning the 
 cost of doing farm work with a tractor are decidedly 
 misleading, because they fail to take into considera- 
 tion one of the largest items that constitute the total 
 cost — that is, depreciation. Sometimes the deprecia- 
 tion cost is considered, but it is generally entered at 
 too low an estimate and based upon the assumption 
 that the life of a tractor is ten years. If this estimate 
 were cut in half, it would be nearer the actual life of 
 the tractor in its present state of development. 
 
 "Another thing — too often the average cost of work 
 with horses is compared to the maximum possibilities 
 of the tractor. If the maximum of tractor utility is 
 used, the maximum of horse utility should be also used. 
 Worked out on such a basis, it is my opinion that the 
 
 horse would win. 
 
 I211] 
 
m 
 
 "It is only fair to the horse to state that his capa- 
 bihties are very inefficiently used by the average 
 farmer. The average farm horse is employed only 
 about one-third of the working days of the year, which 
 makes his cost per hour much greater than it would be 
 if he were employed throughout the year, as he must 
 be fed whether working or idle. 
 
 "It should be noted, however, that the cost of feed- 
 ing idle horses is about one-third less than the cost of 
 feeding horses that are doing daily work. Yet you 
 hear it stated almost generally as a tractor argument 
 that it costs just as much to feed a horse when idle as 
 when at work. 
 
 "While on most farms it is practically impossible 
 to provide work for the horses during the entire year, 
 it is quite possible to plan the work so as to use 
 horses which must be kept a great deal more than 
 most farm horses are used. 
 
 "Here is an important phase in that connection: 
 You hear a great deal of the extensive use of the tractor 
 for custom work. Now, while there are perhaps not so 
 many kinds of custom work for which the horse can be 
 used, in many sections of the country farmers would 
 have little more trouble in finding profitable custom 
 work for their horses than for their tractor. 
 
 "But it seems that a number of horses standing idle 
 in the stable is a matter of small concern to most 
 farmers, and no effort is made to find work for them to 
 do off the home farm. 
 
 "But provide these same men with a tractor and 
 they will frequently neglect their own farms to do 
 work with the tractor for neighbors." 
 
 [212] 
 
This is valuable as discussion and well worth digest- 
 ing. But it is far from the final word for or against the 
 horse. Conclusions drawn from averages are too often 
 false conclusions, as Mr. Average Man is almost as 
 difficult to find as Mr. Perfect Man. When you go out 
 scouting for him you are bound to bump into one 
 of the other fellows — James Above- the-Average, Esq., 
 or plain Jim No-Account. One great trouble with 
 experts and investigators is that they delude them- 
 selves into the belief that there is such a species as Bill 
 Henry Average. If there only were, modern business 
 could discard about fifty per cent of its complexities 
 and perplexities. 
 
 The expert quoted above made a pertinent reference 
 to the much-vaunted custom-work possibilities of the 
 tractor. The appearance of the small tractor in great 
 numbers is going to knock custom-work possibilities 
 into a cocked hat and completely revise them. 
 
 I 213 1 
 
XIII 
 
 Government Selection 
 
 CHOOSING a wife is nobody's business but 
 your own. Butters-in are not invited to take 
 part. You stand or fall by your personal choice. 
 
 Almost the same rule should apply to picking farm 
 machinery or selecting an automobile. The vagaries 
 that govern selection are very similar. Or, viewed the 
 other way round, perfection standards are just as in- 
 determinate. 
 
 The Department of Agriculture is continually bom- 
 barded with requests for advice in the purchase of 
 farm tractors. In addition to this bombardment there 
 is the steady inflow of demands for specific information 
 concerning the relative values of a vast assortment of 
 farm machines. 
 
 This situation applies not only to the Department of 
 Agriculture, but to reliable farm publications as well. 
 Every mail brings to these journals a considerable 
 number of such letters. 
 
 The writers desire first aid and safe guidance in 
 
 the choice of farm implements. The same writers 
 
 would never in the wide, wide world dream of asking 
 
 assistance in choosing wives, or even in picking out 
 
 automobiles, sewing machines, pianos, or dining-room 
 
 furniture. 
 
 [214] 
 
Undoubtedly a great many citizens are baffled by 
 the evasive and noncommittal replies they receive from 
 Government officials and others they have come to re- 
 gard in the light of experts. It is perfectly true that 
 these repHes rarely contain a sufficient explanation to 
 account for their evasiveness. Very often they are 
 perfunctorily curt or officiously snappy. 
 
 Though there is no excuse for this sort of rejoinder, 
 there is ample excuse for not being able to tell the whole 
 story and explain all the whyfores of refusal to give 
 exact information concerning the relative value of an 
 ever-increasing variety of farm machinery. 
 
 The purpose of this chapter is to tell the story in 
 detail. 
 
 It is too generally taken for granted that inasmuch 
 as the Department of Agriculture recommends or con- 
 demns certain seeds and passes upon the merits of 
 foodstuffs, it should, logically, pass upon the merits of 
 the various machines and implements offered to the 
 farmer. But the matter of determining the relative 
 merits of varieties of seeds is very different from that 
 of determining the relative merits of different types 
 and kinds of machines. 
 
 It is possible by careful tests of seeds to establish 
 absolute and unchangeable facts, and it is perfectly 
 safe to publish such facts. 
 
 But with a machine it is otherwise. A very slight 
 change or readjustment may create the difference 
 between bungling inefficiency and successful opera- 
 tion. 
 
 Take, for instance, a test in which two machines 
 were put through a series of trials in which one fell 
 
 [215] 
 
down and the other stood up. A few changes in the de- 
 tails of operation or construction of the superior ma- 
 chine might reverse the results. At the very next dem- 
 onstration the inferior machine might be on top, and if 
 you were an official who had condemned it on its first 
 test, how much standing would you have a little later 
 on when the product you condemned proved itself the 
 superior of all rivals .? 
 
 As a matter of fact, no competitive test of machinery 
 can be considered final. It may be a simple thing to 
 cast out a worthless machine, or an instrument that is 
 fifty per cent shoddy and made for no purpose other 
 than to sell on its appearance. But when implements 
 and machines are backed by responsible manufactur- 
 ers, of whom there are great numbers, and when the 
 variation of efficiency is slight, it is a mightly ticklish 
 question for the expert to guide the purchaser. 
 
 Take the case of stationary gas and oil engines. Ap- 
 proximately a million and a half of these machines are 
 installed on farms today. Suppose a few thousand do 
 not perform up to expectations. A few thousand 
 kickers can make considerable clamor. Say they de- 
 mand the appointment of a board of experts by the 
 Government to pass upon the exact merits of station- 
 ary engines. What would this board face in the way 
 of arriving at positive conclusions which would be of 
 value to all prospective purchasers of stationary en- 
 gines? 
 
 First, it should be the duty of this board to examine 
 every type and make of engine offered on the market. 
 Otherwise the best one, or possibly the poorest one, 
 might be missed. There are 500 makers of gasoline 
 
 I 216] 
 
engines in the United States. They are scattered over 
 an immense area. A great many of them make from 
 ten to twelve sizes, and sometimes two or three grades 
 of each size. A really comprehensive test would in- 
 clude several thousand engines. 
 
 Just consider the expense of making these tests, 
 even though they were tests of very brief duration. 
 And if they were tests of very brief duration, of what 
 actual value would they be as tests? The purchaser of 
 a stationary engine does not buy it to show it off for a 
 few hours to his friends. He buys it for continued 
 lasting service. The only way a board of Government, 
 state, or otherwise constituted experts could render a 
 fair test would be to take over the engine after it had 
 come from the shop and run it till it wore out. And 
 how many new and better types might come on the 
 market during this interval .f* 
 
 The expense of such tests would be practically pro- 
 hibitive. It is doubtful if the entire Federal Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture as now constituted could, by con- 
 centrating all its energies upon a series of such tests, 
 take care of all the kinds, types and varieties of imple- 
 ments and machines that are offered the farmer for 
 sale. 
 
 The stationary engine is as near standard as any 
 piece of farm machinery. Yet its performance is 
 directly influenced by climatic conditions. There 
 would be no end of a pow-wow over the selection of a 
 central site for Government tests. If the first tests 
 were made in a heavy, soggy atmosphere, that fact 
 would have to be noted and allowed for. Manufactur- 
 ers would clamor to have the tests made under ideal 
 
 [ 217] 
 
conditions, with fuel of the highest standard. The 
 judges of the tests would very likely not agree concern- 
 ing what were ideal climatic conditions or ideal grades 
 of fuel. Experts are as prone to disagreement as the 
 common run of folks, if not more so. 
 
 It is estimated that if a central site for testing sta- 
 tionary engines were selected, it would cost at least 
 $40,000 for the hauling of the engines to the testing 
 site alone. No estimate is offered as to the likely cost 
 of fuel, the possible charges to the Government for 
 damage to machinery, the cost of renting or buying a 
 site and the erection of proper testing shelters, the sal- 
 ary of official testers and supernumeraries. 
 
 Having begun with stationary engines, let us assume 
 that the Government took on tractors, threshing ma- 
 chines, harvesting machines — all manner, sorts, types 
 and varieties of tillage apparatus. We might even 
 carry it down to garden tools and then to miscellane- 
 ous hardware. Before we got through we should have 
 what would amount to practical Government control 
 of every mechanical device. 
 
 Just the cost of diversified tests would run away up 
 into the millions. The testing bureaus would become 
 top-heavy branches of the Government. They would 
 call for more experts than there were on tap in all the 
 mechanical industries, and the natural sequence 
 would be to fill the jobs with job-hunters, pork-barrel 
 appointees, and so on. In no time at all we would be 
 muck-raking the testers to learn from what manufac- 
 turer they were accepting graft. 
 
 To return to the mechanical intricacies of such tests: 
 If each maker were allowed to prepare a special engine 
 
 [218] 
 
for the Government test there would be no guaranty 
 whatever that the machines sold to the farmer by that 
 manufacturer would be of equal quality in either 
 material or workmanship. To insure the obtaining of 
 stock machines in every case selection would have to 
 be made by a representative of the testing board, and 
 just how the members of the board would cover the 
 ground for this purpose would be an important prob- 
 lem by itself. 
 
 Here is still another little item that should make 
 your puzzler spin: There would always be the possi- 
 bility that the machine selected for the test might be an 
 exceptionally good or an exceptionally poor one, for 
 there is frequently a marked difference in the working 
 qualities of two machines, even when made from the 
 same lot of materials, by the same workmen and by 
 the same tools. The only way to check up this phase 
 would be to select at random two or three engines or 
 machines of each kind and type and subject them to 
 the specified try-out ordeal. This sort of thoroughness 
 would still further multiply the number of machines to 
 be tested and raise the cost of an official trying out to 
 a dismaying total. 
 
 An expert in the Department of Agriculture, who 
 was directed to make a careful study of the possibility 
 of such tests, summed up the difficulties and objections 
 as follows: 
 
 1. The work would involve enormous if not pro- 
 hibitive cost. 
 
 2. Tests of many kinds of implements, unless made 
 in the field and under actual service conditions, would 
 be useless. Hay loaders, cotton pickers and potato 
 
 [219I 
 
diggers are examples of such machines. Naturally the 
 try outs would be confined to a limited season. 
 
 3. Unless the tests were made at very frequent inter- 
 vals, it is quite probable that changes might be made 
 in machines that had not previously come up to stan- 
 dard which would make them equal to any on the mar- 
 ket, if not superior. For this reason no tests of ma- 
 chines could be considered as final, inasmuch as change 
 could be made in design and material in a very short 
 time, which might vastly improve the machine. 
 
 4. The recommendation of any particular machine 
 would tend to create a monopoly, since it would in- 
 crease the business of the concerns making the ap- 
 proved machines and decrease the business of less for- 
 tunate competitors, in the end, most likely, driving 
 them out of business. 
 
 5. It is extremely difficult to carry out an absolutely 
 fair and accurate test such as would be required on 
 many of the different machines, because it would be 
 practically impossible to keep testing instruments in 
 uniform condition at all times. This fact was borne 
 out in the competitive test of only a small number of 
 farm tractors, held at Winnipeg, Canada, when the 
 rope on the brake-drum would sometimes stick and 
 cause the speed of the engine being tested to vary con- 
 siderably. It was also demonstrated at a similar test 
 that it was almost impossible to obtain a uniform grade 
 of fuel. 
 
 6. It would be very difficult to find a sufficient num- 
 ber of competent men to conduct such tests — that is, 
 men who had gained their proficiency from sources 
 other than the employ of manufacturers. In that case 
 
 [ 220 ] 
 
there would be a very strong likelihood of prejudice 
 in favor of certain manufacturers. 
 
 7. There would be no assurance whatever that the 
 machines placed on the market by any company would 
 be equal in quality to those tested. Even though the 
 maker desired to maintain quality standards, if his 
 business were suddenly increased to a considerable ex- 
 tent, as would naturally follow in case his machine 
 was recommended by the Government, it would ne- 
 cessitate taking on a large number of new hands who 
 would not likely turn out so good a grade of work as 
 the older and more experienced men. 
 
 8. It is also highly probable that the manufacturers 
 whose product was recommended would take advan- 
 tage of the fact to raise the price, thus causing the 
 farmers to pay more for the machine than they other- 
 wise would. Such a result would prove more of a bur- 
 den than a blessing to the farmer. 
 
 9. In testing most types of machines, of which there 
 are a large number, the tests of individual machines 
 would necessarily last only a short time. This sort of 
 testing would in no way determine the probable life 
 of the machine, which is an essentially important fac- 
 tor. A machine that proved superior in a few hours* 
 test might possess only a fraction of the life of com- 
 peting machines. 
 
 10. The establishment and carrying on of such offi- 
 cial test by the Government would undoubtedly ham- 
 per and embarrass the agricultural-implement in- 
 dustry, serving to keep off the market many experi- 
 mental machines that otherwise might develop ex- 
 ceptional value. It should be mentioned in this 
 
 I 221] 
 
connection that the cost of developing a machine must 
 be borne by the user, no matter whether it is developed 
 by tests made by the manufacturer or in actual ser- 
 vice. The manufacturer must naturally add the cost 
 of experimental work to the selling price of the ma- 
 chines. Otherwise it would be impossible for him to 
 do any experimental work. 
 
 The man who prepared this series of ten objections 
 informed me that he could string the list out almost 
 endlessly. There were separate and specific objections 
 in the case of nearly every type of machine he had 
 studied. The manufacturers, individually and in 
 groups, could undoubtedly raise a great many objec- 
 tions that had not occurred to him. 
 
 This subject will become increasingly important as 
 more and more mechanical power is developed on the 
 farm. The farmer is really better off relying on his 
 own judgment and experience than he would be if he 
 relied upon superficial government tests. His oppor- 
 tunities for studying the other fellow's machines are 
 constantly expanding, and very often his judgment and 
 opinion are far superior to the judgment and opinion 
 of many so-called experts who might, through pull or 
 political preference, be appointed to a government 
 testing board. 
 
 [ 222 ] 
 
XIV 
 
 No Fixed Rules to Guide 
 
 WITH the big tractor, where there were broad 
 areas of virgin sod to be broken, a tractor 
 buyer could figure on making his tractor 
 earn its way on off days. Tractor owners west of the 
 Mississippi Valley reported that they could work their 
 outfits an average of lOO days a year. These owners 
 were located on farms that averaged 700 acres in size 
 and their neighbors were ranchers who were eager to 
 contract for sod-breaking. 
 
 But even this sort of custom work was as often as 
 not unprofitable, particularly when there was any 
 competition. Owners accepted the contract work at 
 too low a figure, failing to make sufl&cient allowance for 
 depreciation or repair charges and the value of their 
 own time. 
 
 Getting down into Illinois, where there are very 
 limited areas for sod-breaking of any kind, one hundred 
 tractor-owning farmers found that they operated their 
 tractors on an average of forty to forty-five days a year 
 on their own farms and that their contract work did 
 not run above fifteen days' service. This gives a total 
 of not more than sixty days a year. The farms from 
 which these reports were obtained averaged about 400 
 
 acres in extent. 
 
 [223 ] 
 
Careful consideration of this feature has guided 
 good many manufacturers in planning to diversify the 
 utility of the small tractor for actual home-farm work. 
 This is the only logical plan for any look-ahead tractor 
 maker. Every additional tractor in a district dimin- 
 ishes the possibilities of contract work. 
 
 The staffs of experts now employed by at least a 
 score of tractor makers are making a close study of all 
 these angles and phases so vitally important to the 
 future expansion of the industry. Manufacturers are 
 pretty generally requesting all their customers to keep 
 tabs and close accounting on their tractor work and to 
 send in detailed reports at the end of the year. 
 
 Some of these first-year reports are being used for 
 advertising purposes; but the farmer who reads them 
 in the form of advertisements should reckon that the 
 undesirable chaff — for boosting purposes — has been 
 sifted out. He should consider further that some of the 
 reports were prepared by farmers who are getting a 
 rake-off as agents for the tractor. Still further, he 
 should read them in the light of first-year reports. 
 
 If your tractor is promised to give you at the very 
 lowest not less than five years' service, a first-year 
 report on its cost of operation is not nearly so impor- 
 tant as a second-year report. The farmers who run 
 automobiles need not be advised about this. 
 
 It would be a fine thing if someone could lay down a 
 little table of inflexible rules to guide the farmer in the 
 purchase of a tractor. But it can't be done. Any advice 
 you offer must be flexible. It would be a good deal the 
 same as giving young men advice about marriage. 
 Ben Franklin did and he was a great philosopher. 
 
 [224] 
 
 1 
 
He advised the choice of spinsters. But if you 
 urged a young chap who preferred raven-haired bru- 
 nettes to choose a strawberry blonde, he'd follow the 
 inspiration of his preference and tell you to go hang 
 with your advice. 
 
 So, if you advise a farmer who has formed a prefer- 
 ence for three-wheel tractors that he would better 
 purchase a four-wheel tractor, or a bull-wheel-in- 
 the-furrow tractor, or a caterpillar, or a steel zebra, 
 or something else, he will immediately conceive that 
 you have some ulterior purpose in plugging the 
 *' wrong" tractor. 
 
 If you figure out for him that a kerosene burner will 
 save him fifty per cent in fuel cost he will retort that a 
 gasoline burner has fifty per cent superior efficiency 
 and will get him through his work in high gear. Then, 
 to give specific advice to a tractor prospect demands 
 that you have specific knowledge of that man and 
 his farm. These are indispensable items of knowledge 
 in forming judgment. 
 
 There are at least a score of tractors I should like to 
 recommend on the general principle of their mechani- 
 cal excellence, but if the wrong man with the wrong 
 farm got hold of one of these on my advice and then 
 bungled its operation the result would be unfortunate 
 all around. 
 
 The farmer must work out his tractor preferences 
 for himself by careful study and observation, as he has 
 worked out his preference in choosing his farm, devis- 
 ing his farm management and adding his equipment. 
 If he can increase both his theoretical and practical 
 knowledge of mechanics, so much the better. 
 15 [ 225 1 
 
Efficiency in operation of the tractor, whether it be 
 a small or a large one, is indispensable to its successful 
 use on the farm, and no man may operate a tractor 
 with anything approaching complete success unless he 
 keeps painstaking account of operating costs. Fuel 
 economy has become increasingly important within 
 the past year, as the price of gasoline has soared. 
 
 There will always be some uncertainty, from season 
 to season, concerning the probable cost of engine fuel 
 and lubricants. There can be no uncertainty about 
 definite economies in fuel consumption due to careful 
 operation. The operator who does not understand car- 
 buretion and ignition cannot hope to accomplish fuel 
 economies. He must watch for carbon in his cylinders 
 and keep them clean; he must watch his spark plugs, 
 learn how to adjust his carburetor so as to obtain the 
 most effective and at the same time economical mix- 
 ture. Likewise he must devote the same keen, un- 
 flagging scrutiny to his lubrication. If he allows any 
 of his wearing parts to run dry he may do more damage 
 in a few minutes than a year's fuel economy would pay 
 for. 
 
 There is fully as much, if not more, waste from the 
 careless operation of machinery than there is from nor- 
 mal wear and tear. You hear tell of fool-proof tractors, 
 but there are really none such. Nor will there ever be, 
 no matter what the engineers of the future accomplish 
 in simplification and refinement of material. Risks and 
 dangers may be reduced, but they will never be elimi- 
 nated. The too-fussy mechanic may be a joke among 
 his neighbors, but to the man who sells him machinery 
 he is a shining light and a guiding principle. 
 
 [2261 
 
The idle tractor may not eat its head off, but it de- 
 mands constant grooming, faithful and methodical 
 overhauling. The successful tractor farm of the future, 
 which, I believe, is going to be the pacemaking farm, 
 the leadership competitor in practically every farming 
 area in America, must have its shelter shed for all its 
 farm machinery and an adequate repair shop, rather 
 oversupplied than undersupplied with tools and equip- 
 ment. 
 
 And the operator of that farm must, in the nature of 
 things, become a skillful mechanic and a hard-headed 
 bookkeeper. There is a new dignity, a new interest and 
 a new zest to this sort of farming. It will tend to 
 eliminate drudgery and it will also tend to raise the 
 average of intelligence, but it will not in any sense 
 make farming a soft snap or a kid-glove avocation. 
 
 The farmer's son who abhors dust and grime and 
 sweat would better keep right on up the highway to 
 the city. Neither electricity nor the internal-combus- 
 tion engine will provide him with the cotton-wool 
 wrappings he yearns for. But for the farmer's son who 
 is merely ambitious to become modern and progressive, 
 to keep in touch with the live events of the times, the 
 tractor will furnish an interest greater than any one 
 thing that has been brought to agriculture since the 
 days when barbarian slaves were shackled to the yoke 
 of wooden plows. And the time is coming in the next 
 decade or two when every farm in the United States 
 that is a real farm will own its tractor and its auto- 
 mobile too. 
 
 This may seem like a long stretch of vision in view of 
 the fact that there are today some 6,000,000 tractorless 
 
 [227I 
 
farms and not quite 1,000,000 automobiles in the rural 
 districts. But when you have seen a tractor operate 
 in a four-acre greenhouse in Northern Ohio; a tractor 
 pulling a four-furrow plow aslant Georgia's red-clay 
 hills; caterpillars operating successfully in the sandy 
 plains of Virginia and the Carolinas; a steel mule forg- 
 ing its way through slimy Louisiana swamps; tractors 
 grubbing sage in Colorado, Idaho and Utah high alti- 
 tudes; caterpillars operating on the tule islands of the 
 San Joaquin Delta and breaking sod for rice culture in 
 Texas, Louisiana and California; whole squadrons of 
 tractors tilling the grain prairies of Kansas, Nebraska 
 and the Dakotas, you begin to get a magnificent view 
 of the future possibilities of applied mechanical power 
 on the farm. 
 
 3477 4 1 228 ] 
 
 ^