Gasoline Horses for Small Farms 



Is the Small Tractor Here at Last? 



An eighteen-horsepower tractor hauling barley over a smooth California highway 



THE amazing popularity of the small 

 gasoline engine and the motor-car 

 on the farm — even the motor- 

 truck where introduced — makes it seem 

 perfectly natural that the internal com- 

 bustion tractor should pull the plow and 

 take the place of the horse in all field 

 work on the average farm. But the 

 history of agriculture for nearly eight\' 

 years has shown that the general appli- 

 cation of rnechanical power to the work- 

 ing of the soil is a problem far more 

 difficult than the use of motors in sta- 

 tionary work or road transportation. 



The problem, however, is apparently 

 near a solution, and the year 1916 may 

 see the practical fulfilment of an ideal 

 that has occupied the minds of thousands 

 of inventors, i. e., the production of farm 

 tractors mechanically and economically 

 suited to the 

 average farm, 

 as well as to the 

 great ranches 

 of the West and 

 Northwest. 



Steps in the 

 long evolution 

 may be set 

 down in order: 

 1770 — Cugnot's 

 road loco- 

 motive. 

 1800-1825 — De- 

 velopm e n t 



of steam road locomotives and 

 their practical legislation off both 

 American and English highways. 

 1858 — Fawkcs' steam plowing engine in 

 Pennsylvania. 

 1870-1875 — Adoption of the differential gear and 



friction clutch. 

 1875-1890 — Development of the steam threshing 



engine, self-propelled. 

 1890-1905 — Development of large steam plow- 

 ing tractors. 



A small tractor starting out from a state fair ground 

 to give a plowing demonstration 



1903 — First commercial gas-tractor. 

 1910-1912 — Gas-tractors actively displacing 

 steam for plowing on a large scale. 



19 13 — Success of the power-lift plow cuts 

 crew of plowing outfit to one 

 man, and makes smaller tractors 

 profitable. 



19 14 — Amazing variety of small tractors 

 produced, following virtual collapse 

 of market for large tractors and con- 

 stant increase in the cost of horse 

 and man labor. 



1915 — Numerous tractor demonstrations 

 throughout the Middle West focus 

 attention of hundreds of thousands 

 of farmers upon light tractors pull- 

 ing two or three plows. 



1916 — Will see thousands of these small 

 tractors, with the improvements 

 suggested by one or two seasons' 

 work, put to practical test by farm- 

 ers. Partial success apparently as- 

 sured by recent experience. 



From the 

 foregoing it will 

 be seen that- the 

 widely success- 

 ful light tractor 

 has hardly ar- 

 rived though 

 it may be al- 

 most here. 

 Changing con- 

 dition.s — higher 

 horse and labor 

 costs, greater 

 familiarity 

 with the gas-engine on the farmer's part, 

 a growing inclination to plow deep and 

 farm more scientifically — these, rather 

 than mechanical improvements, favor 

 the light tractor of to-dav as against 

 \er>' similar machines of five years ago. 

 The light tractor problem is difficult. 

 From the profit-and-loss standpoint, it 

 costs more in proportion to build and to 



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