The Steam Tractor and Automobile

Early efforts to supplant the horse were not promising. By 1900 dozens of small manufacturers churned out some 5,000 steam tractors a year. Large and heavy, the steam tractor carried a quantity of water and coal. A gang of four men guided the tractor, stoked the engine with coal, and replenished the water. Although the steam tractor hitched to a combine was capable of harvesting 100 acres a day, the tractor was difficult to maneuver and had a large turning radius. Only with difficulty could the steam tractor cover uneven ground, and it bogged down in the mud. Ravenous in its consumption of labor as well as of coal and water, the steam tractor maintained the large workforce that had been a feature of agriculture in the era of the horse.

No better than the steam engine in its first manifestation on the farm was the gasoline engine. Manufacturers in the first years of the 20th century filled the pages of Implement Trade Journal, a weekly whose subscribers were largely farmers, with ads for stationary gasoline engines, but these could not be a source of traction. Mounted on a chassis, the gasoline engine instead took to the road as the automobile. As early as 1903, the year Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company, farmers hitched their plows to the automobile. They could not, however, walk fast enough to keep pace with it, and the plow skimmed the ground rather than digging a furrow.