My Forty Years with Ford

17. Tractor Troubles

C H A P T E R 17 Tractor Troubles 11OTHING should be simpler than putting a seed in the ground, then wait three or four months and reap the product . But around this supposedly simple seed-to-harvest progress has arisen the Farm Problem, a vexatious complication which affects national elections. Ford Motor Company had its Farm Problem, centering around tractors and a $341,000,000 lawsuit simply because Henry Ford did not believe in written contracts so long as two men gave each other their word. One thing which impelled the youthful Henry Ford into Detroit and a mechanic's job was his dislike of farm drudgery. The steam engines, like city steam rollers but with smaller wheels, which hauled threshing machines from farm to farm and then furnished the power to operate them, fascinated him; and he issupposed to have repaired one. He saw no reason why, ultimately, machine power should not supplant the horse on the farm. Whether at work or not, a horse had to be fed. But not a machine; it needed to be fed fuel only when working. The frugal Ford boy never forgot that contrast. The fall of 1905, the year I went to work for him, Henry Ford began talking about making a farm tractor but did not want this to conflict with what we were doing at the Piquette 232 TRACTOR TROUBLES 233 Avenue works. Early onemorning I went with him about three blocks from the plant to a house on Woodward Avenue. There was a big horse and carriage barn in the rear with a large overhead loft. We decided that this was a suitable place for putting in a few draftsmen and developing a new unit, and it was rented on the spot. The place got a thorough housecleaning and a little organization moved in with Joe Galamb as its head. Joe mademany studies, but it was 1907 before a tractor was built. We used a copper, water-jacketed, four-cylinder engine that we had taken out of ModelB. The contraption was sent out to the Ford farm, where it helped to mow hay, harvest oats and wheat, and power other tools on the farm. All told, we built three of these vehicles and kept them in service plowing throughout the fall, and manure spreading during the winter. The manufacturing of this tractor had to be delayed, obviously becausewe had more than we could do designing and building motorcars. However, Mr. Ford applied for patents in 1910. When Ford Motor Company expanded to Highland Park he tried to tie tractor operations in with the company but could not sell this idea to the directors. Accordingly , in 1915 he left Ford Motor Company, organized Henry Ford &Son, and moved with me to Dearborn, a short distance from Fair Lane, his new home, to begin manufacture of tractors. The plant on the south side of the Michigan Central Railroad had been a former brickyard. Adjoining it Mr. Ford had two good-sized farms which we could use for experimental work on the new tractor. There were still a lot of bricks stored in some sheds.We decided that we would use these for putting up a 180 by 60 buildingsuitablefor engineering and some light machine operation work. Starting with me on the job were Gene Farkas, Seyburn Livingston, and Marvin Bryant. At this time several manu- 234 MY FORTY YEARS WITH FORD facturers produced tractors, and Mr. Ford had acquired just about every available make and tried them out on his farm. We put them in one corner of a building so that we could study them. All of them impressed us as too heavy and very much underpowered, sothat becameour first problem to solve. We also found that most of these vehicles had either chain or some outside form of drive open to the dirt that wasthrown up in farming operations. So, we decided that our tractor's drive would be inside a housing just like that on a motorcar. Our next decision was for a worm and a worm-wheel drive to the rear wheels. Although this might not be the most efficient type of drive, it was evident that with a little additional horsepower it would enable us to have a thoroughly closed-in mechanism with no outside wearing parts. With this important detail settled, the next problems were an axle and a drive, an engine...