THE MOTOR CONTEST 9 



untold amounts in developing his ideas of a light farm tractor, 

 is here to study and criticise. He finds a kindred spirit in the 

 old patent expert who illustrates his conception of the light 

 tractor by the story of a cat chased up a tree by a dog. "The 

 cat," he says, "didn't have weight, but she had traction." 

 An unsympathetic bystander suggests that if a brick had been 

 tied to the cat 's tail, corresponding to the plows behind a trac- 

 tor, the dog would have put the cat out of business. 



No other annual exposition held on the American continent 

 brings together such a galaxy of big men in the farm power 

 industry as the Winnipeg exhibition with its motor contest. 

 No other one thing has done more to crystallize the thought of 

 the world upon the adaptation of mechanical power to plowing. 

 The capital and brains of a continent are concentrated at one 

 point, all intent on the one problem. Capitalists, engineers, 

 designers, salesmen, journalists, land men, oil men, farmers, 

 and teachers are all on the scene, striving to forecast the future 

 of mechanical power on the farm. Through this one annual 

 event the name of Winnipeg has become so linked with the 

 thought of traction engines and traction plowing that, when the 

 last great history of mechanical power on the farm shall have 

 been written, the name will stand out on the pages like that of 

 Chicago in the romance of the reaper, and South Bend and 

 Malone in the history of the plow- 



What is there behind all this? Are we watching a mere 

 parade of machines, or is it a race, with huge, slow-moving 

 iron Percherons in place of thoroughbreds? As ages of racing 

 have put fire and steel into structures of muscle and bone, as 

 auto races have toughened the metal of machines, so does the 

 contest bring out the temper of the contesting motors. It is 

 a race where twenty-ton engines are the entries, where the 

 skill of the designer, the craft of the workman, the cunning of 

 the general on the field, and the coolness, bravery, and resource- 

 fulness of the tractioneer are all pitted against those of rival 

 houses. 



