The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-04-11
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
INFORM ALTON
BURE AU
FREDERIC J. HAsKIN. Director.
Washington, D. C
THE TALE OF THE TRACTOR,
Washington, p. c

II
Washington, D. c.. April Straw
cling thru certain parts of Illinois al
night YOU may be astonished to see
searchlights moving restlessly over the
fields Ike giant fire flies, playing their
longAwhite beams over burrows and
between corn rows.
These are not flivvers gone astray:
they are tractors, blowing ground Or
cultivating corn by their own lights
For the farm tractor. during the past
few years, has multiplied, especially IN
the middle west In fact, the rise OF
the tractor is one of the most striking
and significant things in present farm
ing The tractor got a late start II
is now in that stage of rapid growth
and improvement which the automo-
bile had reached about 1910.
During last year alone, the numDer
of tractors in use more than doubled
OF course, this was partly due to the
war. Farmers were making money
and labor was scarce.
You will probably be surprised to
learn that the number of tractors now
in use is only 10000. In a land of
six million farms this is certainly not
many. But the movement has just
started The manufacturers of trac-
tors have estimated their production
for 1919 at 14,936, In other words,
they expect again more than to dou-
BILE in a single year the number of
tractors in use. Whether they will do
it remains to be seen.l They are hold
ing. out for war time prices, and some
of them are even boosting prices a lit
tie, while all of them are loudly pre-
dieting that tractor prices will stay
up for a long time. But some obSerV-
ers in the employ of the government
say that with the price of steel low
cred, tractor prices will have to come
down by 1920, and will probably be
down by next fall.
Be that as it may, the significant
thing is that the application of the
gasoline motor to farming is plainly
q the eve of a great expansion and
development. All sorts of changes
are predicted as result. The horse
less farm is in prospect, and there
are said to be horseless farms al
ready in California. Also the hired
manless farm is coming. One ener-
getic man can today with the aid of
a tractor cultivate far more acres
than ever one man could cultivate
before, and there is no telling how
much he may be able to do in the
near future, as he applies internal
combustion more and more to his
purpose.
The rise of the tractor began about
ten years ago, when there appeared
on the market makes of large plow-
ing tractors. These machines cost sew
eral thousand dollars, carried eight or
ten plows, and developed about forty
horse power at the draw-bar, which
means about eight horse power in
the engine. They attra acted a lot of
attention; pictures of them were pub
lished in all the Magazines; they were
the latest mechanical marvel.
But as farming machinery they are
a failure in most places. They survive
only on few enormous wheat farms
of the west They are too expensive
to own and to operate for the vast
majority of American farmers. Those
who bought them in the heyday of
their popularity abandoned them for
the most part in a. few years.
Yet the giant tractor, according to
government observers, accomplished
one thing for which it has never been
given credit. 1t came into use just
about the time that the last of the wild
prairie lands were being put under
the pillow. In western Kansas and
western Nebraska and in the Dakotas.
the last big patches of buffalo grass
and greasewood(Were being conquered.
And the giant tractor helped to con-
quer them. Land so dry and hard
that horse drawn plows could scarce
ly have scratched it, yielded to the
great engines, with their long rows of
pillow shares, as easily as a fallow corn
field. The men who did the work
often went broke in doing it. Many of
the great tractors that conquered the
last of the wild prairie lands were left
| to rust on the fields they had won,
because their owners could not afford
to operate them. But such is often
the fate of pioneers after their work
is done. And once the prairie soil had
| been broken by the big engines, it's
cultivation was easy.
Finding that the big tractor could
not hold permanent market. the
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