Tractor Wars by Neil Dahlstrom

Author:Neil Dahlstrom
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637740088
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2021-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

J.I. Case, Avery, and Rumely were other well-known names in Salina among a field of new companies formed from recent consolidations and partnerships. Other representatives walked the grounds in search of investors, or simply hoping that one more show would provide the means to another year of survival. There were debuts, including the Port Huron Engine & Thresher Co., the R&P Tractor Co. 122 “pad tread” tracked tractor, and the Hession Tiller & Tractor Corporation’s Hession farm and road tractor, which they would soon unabashedly advertise as “the sensation of the Salina demonstration.” It surely was for the sheer novelty of its primary feature. Its rear wheels could be removed and replaced with rubber-tired road wheels in only thirty minutes’ time.8

The Bull Tractor Company, which had seemingly overnight converted horse farmers with its small Bull tractor in 1914, brought four of its updated Big Bull tractors. A distribution deal with the Massey-Harris company sent Bulls to Canada beginning in 1917, but the company was now in a fight for its survival. A year earlier, a merger with the Whitman Agricultural Co. of St. Louis fell through, and now it was near a merger with the Madison Motors Corp. of Madison, Indiana. The deal was finalized in September 1918, with plans to move tractor production to Madison.9

The J.I. Case Plow Works Company, not to be confused with the J.I. Case Threshing Machine Company, brought fifteen Cub Jr. 15-25 tractors, one Cub 26-44, and a variety of disc and moldboard plows and harrows. Its tent was literally a glowing beacon; an electric dynamometer, driven by a Case 10-18 tractor, illuminated the tent, not to mention the giant, trademarked globe and eagle, which “could be seen for a long distance.” The company had come a long way from the sentiment of vice president F. Lee Norton, who told dealers ten years earlier that “any salesman heard praising the gasoline tractor will be fired on the spot.” The Wallis was “a masterpiece of tractor genius,” advertisements claimed. Howard Coffin, head of the U.S. Aircraft Board and designer of the “famous Hudson Super-Six motor car,” bought a Cub for his personal farm while on site. The J.I. Case Threshing Machine Co. of Racine, Wisconsin, which was in no way “interested in, or in any way connected or affiliated with the J.I. Case Plow Works, or the Wallis Tractor Company, or the J.I. Case Plow Works Co.,” exhibited an entirely separate line of tractors in five sizes, the 10-18, 10-20, Type “A”, 15-27 and 20-40.10

Case added Coffin to the list of “celebrity” customers, which included chewing gum baron William Wrigley; King Gillette, “maker of safety razors”; and H.J. Heinz, “famous because of pickles and the ‘57 Varieties.’” The king of Spain made the list as well. Less notably, George Selby of Abilene won a Stetson hat, his prize for being the first Case distributor to sell a tractor at the event.11

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