Did You Know There Was A Model T of Tractors?
I didn’t. And now I do. Don’t you just love it when some chance event opens a whole new perspective on some bit of history?
That happened to me this week. When my sister and I were sorting through old family, pulled out an album she had rescued from the house of an aunt. Large, handsomely bound, about 18 inches high and three feet long, it recorded Fordson demonstrations on my great-uncle’s farm in 1921.
Fordson Tractor Demonstration and Ploughing Match, Bishopdown Farm, April 7th 1921.
Although in my childhood tractors (Massey-Fergusons in this case) were still regarded with relief by farmers who could remember struggling with horses, I’d never thought much about the history of tractors. So off I went to Wikipedia.
World War I destroyed crops across much of Europe, creating new markets for grain. And as horses fell in their thousands on the battlefields, European farmers lost much of their tractive power. So incidentally did the armies. A mechanical horse was desperately needed.
Manufacturers were quick to seize the opportunity. In 1917, Ford began manufacturing tractors. It wasn’t the first manufacturer but its tractors were reliable, affordable, and widely available, farm machines that paralleled its Model T.
By 1920, Ford was manufacturing its tractors in Britain. The following Spring, someone, presumably a dealer grateful for a farmer who would allow a demonstration, presented this handsome album to my great-uncle’s wife. My great-uncle was pretty quick off the mark, wouldn’t you say?
Each page contained four fine photographs, perhaps 30 or more in all, most of which I quickly snapped with my cell phone, hence apologies for the quality.
Farmers examining a Fordson tractor
Bishopdown Farm was open arable land on the Wiltshire Downs (now it’s a housing estate on the edge of Salisbury, England).
Tractor driver ploughing with a Fordson tractor
It would have been a good place for a demonstration because the soil is lighter there than the heavy clay of the valleys.
Farmers looking at the furrow
And the Fordson wasn’t just good for ploughing and other field work such as harrowing. It could be hitched up to power an elevator. Getting hay up to a rick or to the upper level of a barn was back breaking work. Having an elevator, even if it was sometimes tricky to get going, made it much easier. So important was the elevator to tractor sales that in 1923 Popular Science had an article expounding the wonder of being able to raise grain or hay or straw mechanically instead of using pitchforks and muscle power to heave it up.
Demonstrating how a Fordson could power an elevator to get hay onto a rick or into the upper level of a barn
In 1928, Ford stopped making tractors in the US but it continued in Britain, exporting them from there to other parts of the world.
Many had already been exported from the US to the Soviet Union, and from the mid-1920s, the Soviets began building clones of the Fordson.
I may have been ignorant of the Fordson but it still has lots of admirers who restore and demonstrate old models, write about them, and form clubs to celebrate them. So I’ll finish with a link to a video where you can see them working.
Wonderful to see the story of the impact of tractors in England. I cover the story from the beginning in my book, Midwest Maize, but as the title suggests, I pretty much stick to their impact in the U.S. Heartland. Fascinating history, though. The Waterloo Boy (named for Waterloo, Iowa — no connection to Napoleon) came out in 1892 — and the Waterloo Tractor Works, now owned by John Deere, is still one of the biggest tractor companies in the country. Others followed — and inspired Ford. Ford triggered a pricing war with his contribution in 1917, but the Farmall from International Harvester (1924) was the real game-changer in the Midwest. Loved seeing the photos and the video. Most people don’t realize that horses were still widely used until World War II.
Thanks for all these details. I had no idea you ere writing about maize in the Midwest and now I can’t wait to read the book. It’s a great story and I bet you tell it really well.
Thanks, Rachel. The corn story is an amazing story — but also a lot of fun, and connected to our lives at so many points. I loved doing the research — and meeting the farmers. Remarkable group of people.
Cynthia
Well, it’s good to hear somebody saying something good about maize!
I was aware of these tractors! One of the advantages of living a block away from the Museum of American Heritage is they have interesting talks. There was one last fall on the history of Henry Ford and his tractors. Apparently he liked his tractors better than his cars, but the car made more money.
Henry Ferguson, of Massey-Ferguson, was “partnered” with Ford from 1938 to 1947. The whole tractor development world of the first half of the 20th century is quite interesting, and maybe the most important period in the history of mechanized farming.
Oh, Peter, I bet you have. You are so very knowledgeable. I felt such a fool for not knowing about it particularly as it was part of my past.