Neil Dahlstrom - Tractor Wars: John Deere, Henry Ford, International Harvester, and the Birth of Modern Agriculture

Contents

Praise for Tractor Wars

The mechanization of agriculture revolutionized American farm production in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Neil Dahlstroms Tractor Wars examines an important facet of this historical watershedthe development of the farm tractor. Exploring the complex relationships among industrialist Henry Ford, Alexander Legge of International Harvester, and William Butterworth of John Deerethe three key players in bringing the tractor to thousands of farmersthis book tells a fascinating story of innovation and intrigue, competition and contention, alliances and animosities that produced this essential agricultural machine. Dahlstrom has dug deeply into archival sources and writes with clarity and insight, and his Tractor Wars provides a valuable book for the historian and a compelling one for the general reader interested in American rural life.

Steven Watts, author of The Peoples Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century

Neil Dahlstroms Tractor Wars engagingly tells the story of one of the great business battles of the twentieth century. Facing the power of Henry Ford, who had long wanted to build a better tractor, and the International Harvester Company, a giant combine formed through J.P. Morgan, the smaller John Deere Company found a way to compete in the emerging tractor business. Anyone interested in business, agriculture, or tractor history will enjoy this great tale, well-told.

Gary Hoover, Executive Director, American Business History Center

For all the attention given to moments in technological innovation brought about by events like the race to the moon, its easy to overlook a period that was arguably as transformational a hundred years agoone that happened down on the farm. In Tractor Wars, author and industry expert Neil Dahlstrom brings his own deep understanding of business and history to harvest a deeply compelling story about the colorful characters behind a two-decade battle that would affect everythingfrom the food we put on the tableto the growth of our cities and, ultimately, an American landscape fundamentally transformed. Tractor Wars breaks new ground in the American narrative of the twentieth century. Better still for readers, Dahlstroms journey by tractor is a genuinely delightful ride.

David Brown, host of the Business Wars podcast and author of The Art of Business Wars

Also by Neil Dahlstrom

The John Deere Story: A Biography of Plowmakers

John and Charles Deere

Lincolns Wrath:

Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels, and a Presidents Mission to Destroy the Press

Tractor Wars copyright 2022 by Neil Dahlstrom

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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First E-Book Edition: January 2022

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021034770

ISBN 9781953295743 (trade cloth)

ISBN 9781637740088 (ebook)

Editing by Katie Dickman and Brian Nicol

Copyediting by Rebecca Taff

Proofreading by Jenny Bridges and Marissa Wold Uhrina

Indexing by Debra Bowman

Text design and composition by PerfecType, Nashville, TN

Cover design by Kara Klontz

Cover photos provided courtesy of John Deere (center image only) and the Wisconsin Historical Society; frame Shutterstock / K3Star

Special discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact .

To Karen and Grant, for giving me early mornings, late nights, and long weekends, and for entertaining endless tractor stories.

CONTENTS

Ford Motor Company/Henry Ford & Son

John Deere

International Harvester

W orking from sunup to sundown in the mild cold, the harsh wind, the driving rain, or whatever weather surprises Poor Richards Almanack tried its best to predict, Irish immigrant William Ford and his family worked to finish the harvest on their modest acreage in Dearborn, Michigan, outside of Detroit. The scene was repeated by millions of families each year across the country.

The farm offered an honest living to those willing to work for it. The consequences of each day were on exhibit at each meal, often taken in the field. Success was marked daily by a well-nourished, or angrily empty, stomach.

Henry Ford, Williams son, was twelve years old when a new sound captured his imagination. In 1875, the young man and his father crossed paths with a curious contraption on four wheels, sitting lifeless on the long-worn dirt road it had been traveling just outside of Detroit. Writing nearly fifty years later, Ford remembered that engine as though I had seen it only yesterday, for it was the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen.

The steam engine, which he learned was made by Nichols, Shepard & Company of Battle Creek, Michigan, had a chain drive between the engine and its two rear wheels. It was intended to drive threshing machines and power sawmills and was simply a portable engine and a boiler mounted on wheels, Ford later described, reminiscing about his long, inquisitive conversation with the engineer.

Henry Ford, a young man with demonstrated mechanical aptitude, limitless imagination, and ambition, left the farm at the age of sixteen for the city of Detroit. But in reality, he never really left. Nor could he escape the memories, sounds, and cycles of the farm, or what confounded him the most, the too easily accepted traditions of inefficiency and drudgery, as he called it, that kept American farmers from realizing their potential.

In time, as Americans developed an appetite for the automobile, Henry Ford directed his talents toward its advancement. The Model T debuted in October 1908, irreversibly accelerating American mobility and culture.