Iowans' inventions transformed agriculture
A persuasive argument can be made that Iowans are responsible for the transformation of American agriculture in the 20th century. No machine transformed American farming more than the tractor; and the earliest useful machines can be credited to Iowans.
Today Iowa farmers discuss their preference for green, red, orange and blue tractors but that debate had yet to begin in 1893. John Froehlich, originally from Clayton County, moved to Waterloo, secured investors and founded the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company. Froelich’s tractor was comprised of a gasoline engine mounted on a frame with a set of gears to power the rear wheels. It was the first successful liquid-fuel tractor.
He used the term “traction engine” which was what manufacturers of self-propelled steam engines called their machines. Froelich took the machine to South Dakota and powered stationary threshing machines to knock grain off the straw and separate the chaff. He proved that a gasoline machine could do the same work as the larger and more costly steam engines. When Froelich left the company, it was reorganized as the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company. In 1918 John Deere Co. of Moline, Ill., purchased the business. This explains why John Deere’s primary North American tractor factory is in Waterloo.
It was Charles Hart and Charles Parr who moved Hart-Parr Company to Hart’s hometown of Charles City from Wisconsin in 1900. Their company popularized the term "tractor" and their machines were some of the earliest to be commercially successful. Because of Froelich and Hart and Parr, Iowa can claim the title of the birthplace of the tractor.
The earliest tractors handled plowing, planting and harvesting well, but in an era of mechanical weed removal it took horses to walk between rows to complete that task. Delbert “Bert” Benjamin of Newton graduated in mechanical engineering from Iowa State College in 1893 and took a job with McCormick-Deering. That company joined with others to become International Harvester (I-H). As I-H experimented with gasoline-powered machines, Benjamin recognized the value of a tractor with high clearance and distance between wheels that straddled crops planted in rows, primarily corn, to design a “row-crop” tractor. He developed the Farmall Regular as the first commercially successful, row-crop tractor in 1923.
Tractors introduced significant changes in Iowa farming. Non-renewable fossil fuels replaced oats, grown by solar power, as the fuel for farming. When tractor-pulled combines came into use, neighbors no longer used horses and no longer shared work to harvest oats. Tractors allowed farm families to increase the size of their operation and contributed to population loss in rural communities. Factors of consolidation have continued and larger tractors further increased productivity on farms. This productivity and the decreasing birthrate have contributed to the shrinking population of rural Iowa.
Today Iowa has about 89,000 farms and most operators use tractors. This change was fast. In 1919 less than 1 percent of Iowa farmers reported using tractors. Thirty years later, almost 80 percent of all Iowa farms had a tractor.
Leo Landis is the curator of the State Historical Society of Iowa.
IOWA HISTORY MONTH
Gov. Kim Reynolds has declared March as Iowa History Month. The Register will publish stories about our state's history throughout the month.