1920 was an important year in the contest between tractors and horses

There was a debate in rural America after World War I: Would horses or tractors be the dominant source of farm power in the coming years?

A December 1919 op-ed piece in The Daily Sentinel, reprinted from the Denver Express, declared, “Even the farm tractor and the versatile flivver [Model T Ford] do not replace the horse ... there will always, in peace and war, be a job left for the horse.”

That was becoming a minority opinion, however. The Sentinel also published articles extolling the benefits of tractors, such as this one from November 1920: “One man with a tractor plow can cover four or five times the acreage today that was possible to the man with a hand plow and a team 25 years ago.”

It turns out 1920 was a pivotal year for both tractors and horses in the United States. Sales of tractors had exploded since the end of World War I, peaking at 205,000 in 1920, nearly 10 times as many as were sold in 1916. However, a post-war agricultural depression struck the country the following year, and tractor sales decreased to about 75,000.

Moreover, horses still dominated the farm economy. The 1920 farm census showed 246,000 tractors on American farms, but 26 million horses, mules and donkeys. In fact, there were more domestic horses in the United States in 1920 than at any time in our history. (Wild horses were not included in the census).

But the numbers were moving in favor of tractors. By 1930, there were just under 19 million horses in the United States, and almost a million tractors. Thirty years later, there were under three million horses but 4.7 million tractors.

If you were farming in Mesa County in 1920, and you were considering modernizing by selling your draft horses to purchase a tractor, you likely looked at several different brands and models.

One of the most interesting was a Moline Universal Tractor like the one pictured in the advertisement for A.P. Ramsey on this page. The two-wheeled tractor that pulled various implements and had a towed seat for the driver looks awkward today, but it had substantial horsepower and inovations such as an electric starter.

Even so, there were pllenty of other options for farmers. According to the Smithsonian, there were 150 different companies manufacturing tractors in the early 1900s. That number began to delcine in the 1920s, and dropped significantly during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

I found advertisements for more than half a dozen different tractor brands in The Daily Sentinel in 1919 and 1920. The most popular seems to have been the Fordson, manufactured by the Ford Motor Co., and sold initially for about $800. However, when competition grew stronger in the next few years, Henry Ford dropped the price to about $400.

Being inexpensive, it became imensely popular. And if you wanted to purchase a Fordson tractor in Grand Junction in 1920, you went to a company that is still around today: Western Slope Ford.

Other companies selling tractors in Mesa County in 1920 included International Harvester, Case and Cleveland Tractors. However, one company that didn’t have tractor advertisements in the Sentinel then was John Deere.

There werer plenty of advertisements for John Deere farm implements — cultivators, mowers, plows and harrows — but the company’s tractor section was in flux.

John Deere had briefly tried to manufacture its own tractor early in the 20th century, but it proved too costly to generate many sales. So, in 1918, the company bought the Waterloo Boy tractor firm of Waterloo, Iowa. Waterloo built a two-cylinder tractor, and its basic engine design would be the foundation of John Deere tractors into the 1960s.

However, there is no indication the company was selling the Waterloo Boy tractors in Grand Junction in 1920 or throughout the 1920s. The earliest advertisements I found in the Sentinel for John Deere tractors was in 1929. They were sold under the John Deere brand, not Waterloo Boy.

The Fordson, Case and several other early tractors ran on kerosene rather than gasoline. Kerosene could be purchased at hardware and farm stores, so it was easy to acquire and relatively inexpensive. However, kerosene only worked well in low-compression engines, and as gasoline became more easily accessible with more gas stations, and tractor engines improved, kerosene was used less and less as a fuel.

Massive, steam-fired tractors that looked like railroad locomotives had been used on some large farms and for applications such as road building in the late 19th century and early 20th century. But they were too expensive and too difficult to operate for small farmers.

Even so, some companies continued to push smaller steam-powered autos and tractors into the 1920s. Stanley Steamer automobiles were produced through 1924. And a Colorado company called Baker Steam Motor Cars manufactured prototype steam automobiles in Pueblo from 1918 to 1922 before going out of business. In some of its advertisements, Baker suggested it planned to sell small steam tractors, as well, but I could find no evidence the Pueblo company ever produced a tractor.

In the end, steam-powered vehicles, which required a longer start-up time, were heavy and costly, couldn’t compete with autos and tractors using internal-combustion engines.

Trying to decide which tractor would work best for a particular operation was no doubt a daunting task. So, in 1920, the University of Nebraska began testing different makes and models of tractors, and issuing reports on them.

The first report, which examined 65 tractors, wasn’t published until 1921, and it didn’t rank the tractors like modern internet sites. However, discerning farmers could read the reports and see the drawbar and belt horsepower, fuel efficency and braking power of each model. Some tractor companies began advertising their products based on the outcome of the tests.

The University of Nebraska Tractor Test Lab became the official tractor testing agency for tractors manufactured in the United States, and it continues to test today.

It’s clear that by 1920, tractors were beginning to overtake horses as the primary source of farm power, even if there were still far more horses than tractors. Additionally, for farmers in the Grand Valley who wanted to continue using horses, there were plenty of opportunities. Advertisements for work horses for sale ran almost daily in the Sentinel. There were also frequent auctions at which draft horses were sold.

There were also advertisements by individuals who wanted to purchase or lease working teams of draft horses. But they weren’t as numerous as those by people wanting tractors to help them work their fields.

Sources: Early editions of The Daily Sentinel at www.newspapers.com; “USDA Horse Total, 1850-2012,” Data Paddock, https://datapaddock.com/usda-horse-total-1850-2012/; “Economic History of Tractors in the United States,” Economic History Association, https://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-tractors-in-the-united-states/; “Five Ways Tractors Changed American Farming,” by Amelia Fogarty, Smithsonian, March 1, 2018, www.si.edu/stories/five-ways-tractor-changed-american-farming; “Nebraska Tractor Tests, Made During 1920 at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Neb., published by Farm Implement News, recovered through www.babel.hathitrust.org. Author interview with retired John Deere engineer Carl Silbernagel.

Bob Silbernagel’s email is bobsilbernagel@gmail.com.