Chapter 20

Dear Mr. Lewis:

I am planning to start my ranch as soon as possible. I will have to go slow until I get a barn built and can put an attendant on my place. I am at present having Alfred Cayette, Gilstrap Township, Adams County, adjoining my land, to do my farming. It is on a strictly cash basis and he will have no share in the stock raising and can take care of the stock for cash. He has informed me he can care for a dozen head on his own place. He has of stock of his own. Naturally, I want to be able to raise and sell the stock that the 800 acres will carry.

My principal income for the present is my salary which is $4,000 per annum. [Note: the equivalent of about $70,000 in 2019 dollars.] I said in my first letter this is a civil service position, not political, and permanent. I am on the staff of Region 9 of the Social Security Board, comprising the states of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

I am a legal and voting resident of North Dakota, although my Social Security duties have taken me far afield. I have made very careful studies of meteorological data and have talked with the weather bureau officials at Washington, securing data which is official, leading me to believe that moisture averages will continue to increase, plus proper tillage methods will make a combined program of agriculture and stock raising very successful.

I refer you to O.A. Erlandson, Hettinger, North Dakota businessman; H.M. Waldron, Central Lumber Company, Grafton, North Dakota; Sam Rien, Lemmon, South Dakota; who is the son-in-law of Alfred Cayette and who knows my standing with the Central Lumber Company; Byron Bobb, Haynes, North Dakota [his farm neighbor]; Judge A.M. Chris Janson, State Supreme Court, Bismarck, North Dakota; Mr. McCanna, Vice President, First National Bank, Bismarck, North Dakota; Thomas Moodie, State WPA Administrator, Bismarck, North Dakota. For other details, see “Who’s Who in America.”

[Moodie, of course, was the former North Dakota Governor.]

I have bought automobiles on time from the Fleck Motor Company, Bismarck, North Dakota, and the Smith Motor Company, Williston, North Dakota.

I should like to borrow enough money to buy not more than 12 beef animals. I want principally spring steers for marketing in 1940. I should like to get some bred heifers or cows. My preference is Hereford.

I have been in touch with H.B. McLachlin, Adams County, who has referred me to four farmers. In addition, I am a personal friend of I.E. Bratcher, who has, as you know, a very fine herd near Mott, North Dakota. You may know of a good herd, some animals of which are for sale. I can give you a mortgage on the animals or a mortgage on the 160 acres which I have that are entirely clear and in my own name. I prefer not to mortgage my mother’s homestead as she is always very disturbed by paperwork.

I shall be at my place from November 23 to 28 for the purpose of putting the stock on my ranch. Although a city man, I am more familiar with farm problems, practices, and procedures than most farmers.

Hoping you will give this application for a loan of about $400.00 favorable consideration, I am

Very sincerely yours,

Paul S. Bliss

Dear Mr. Waldron,

I didn’t do any building this year. But, I plan to build a barn next spring. It will be built over where the old stone house is [about a quarter mile west of his rammed earth buildings]. To tell you the truth, I may build it of stone, as there is a lot of field stone around, and Mr. Cayette will have plenty of time this winter to collect it. That will fit in a little better with my idea of using native materials, but there will be plenty of lumber just the same, as you know from the experiences with the house and garage.

The latest on the crop is that the wheat will be fairly good in spots. Of course, I have the insurance that will help. The corn is shot. When I left in the middle of July it looked fine, although the stand was rather poor on account of the fact that it was dry when the corn was planted. We thought at the time that it was going to make it. Received word from Mr. Cayette about a week ago that I shouldn’t buy any pigs to hog it off with as we had expected to do, as there was no corn. He’s very conservative, and may write me differently, but I expect not.

I also heard from Mr. Seeles, the WPA engineer, who told me that in three days all the crops were lost. I cannot believe that he refers to wheat as well, but it is the last word that I had. So you see that you did well to move to Grafton. However, I am not discouraged in the least, and am going to put a dam across Duck Creek, which runs across my property, and irrigate about 40 acres of land, using the water which is in Duck Creek.

Anyway, if there is not enough to irrigate with, it will build the reservoir up so it will improve the subsoil. There is some fine land along the creek, which will assure me plenty of corn. In that case I can go ahead with my cattle plan or my hog plan.

Our corn is too low to go through a corn picker. Apparently there will be several years of experimentation before I get Scoria Lily Ranch where I want it, but I haven’t lost faith one bit.

Very sincerely yours,

Paul S. Bliss

Anyone who visited the National Hardware Show at the Auditorium and saw the beautiful new models that eight of the leading tractor makers of American had on display, would be inclined to believe the farmer has now got his tractor.

Regardless whether he has or not, the farmer is certainly getting a better product and on the smaller models at least a better price. And the dealers were confident that, due in part to the generally excellent crops farmers of the nation had in 1937, there will be all the business they can attend to this year.

Some dealers think the total sales of tractors this year will go over 300,000. Others say a 500,000 unit tractor year is not far away. Such a market has put new life into the tractor industry, relatively somnolent a market for a decade. Real mass production is ahead with rich profits for the makers, lower prices for the individual unit. And what is equally important a vastly improved quality of product.

In this the farmer himself has had a good deal to say for he has not taken too good naturally some of the obvious blunders of the tractor makers and their failure to improve their product annually as the automobile dealers do theirs. In fact, so disgusted have some farmers become at sloth in the tractor business that they, through their cooperatives have designed and put on the market a tractor that represents many of their own ideas of a what tractor should be and should do in this day and age. There has been no question but that this competition, or its threat, combined with returning prosperity has pulled the trigger that has set the great agricultural implement dealers off on a race that promises to be one of the most exciting business manifestations since gasoline first came into general use as a propeller of vehicles.

It is not just optimism. It is not that the farmer is, or is getting all set to buy. The shrewd leaders in the industry see more than that. They see a definite end to horse farming. They have found that with rubber tired equipment the farmer takes better care of his equipment, justifying putting out better and—though it sounds strange in connection with such heavy equipment—more delicately built tractors. And last but not least they have found already in their 1938 sales campaigns that the city man is also in the market to a far greater extent than had hitherto been realized. One of the leading firms reported that its new model selling below $500 won more replies from city folks than from full time farmers. They attribute it to the fact that many city people are getting out onto small acreages, and are in full effect part time farmers, having now a vital interest in a good, cheap machine to do the necessary plowing and cultivating.

The question of horse farming is of course a burning question. What finally dooms the horse is not that he has to eat whether he works or not, but the fact that his traditional speed is 2½ miles per hour—and civilization has just moved out of his range. The heat of the last decade has also shown up the horse as a dependable animal. He couldn’t take it. Many farmers, more soft hearted than others, spare their animals in hot weather, often calling off work during the hotter hours of the day. This often slows down cultivating just when that work is most pressing. The tractor goes right on no matter how high the mercury climbs. It has been going, however, not much faster than the horse, and the farmer has found it hard to forgive the tractor people for making imitating the horse in that respect, rather than the fast moving automobile. The leaders have already jumped ahead and are advertising speeds as high as 10 miles per hour, while the farmers cooperatives in the machine they designed on their own ideas can travel up to 35 miles an hour on the roads after dragging five plows all day in the fields.

The industry is somewhat divided on the question of speed—but the farmers aren’t and the end is certain. In fact the great outstanding trend in the tractor industry today is to make the tractor as near as possible a field automobile.

One reason for this is the fact that farmers like city folks have been low of purse in recent years. The city man is expected to finance one piece of automotive equipment—his automobile. The farmer is expected to finance an automobile, a truck and a tractor. Prodigal as he is with his money when he has it, that is almost too much. Combining tractor and truck is one answer and anyone who has noticed the number of tractors hauling heavily loaded trailers on the roads of Texas will see which way the wind is blowing.

Another trend is so unmistakable that there can be but one answer—the passing of the iron wheel. It’s rubber from now on. The advantages are obvious. The rubber tired vehicle runs with less jolting, it can go onto roads without removing lugs—who hasn’t see [sic] the familiar roadside sign “Tractors with Lug Prohibited”—and it provides its own ballast in the form of liquid. Plain water or water with anti-freeze in cold weather—can be put into the tires for plowing where heavy traction is needed and removed when the farmer cultivates when he not only doesn’t need so much grip, but also does not want to leave a deep rut in soft ground.

Experience of all makers has been that farmers are loath to let their rubber tired vehicles sit out in the weather. Rubber, particularly deteriorates if idle in the sun. The rubber shod tractor is run under cover. With the tendency to rubber-tire all agricultural equipment on wheels, including combines the time will come when the common distressing sight over which many a business man has wept—the farm tools sitting in the snow and rain—will be over. That will mean large farm machine sheds and the possibilities of a boom in the building industry in that regard should not be overlooked.

Another trend of which there was sufficient evidence at the tractor exhibit was in safety, comfort and convenience. In none of these have tractors hitherto stood very high. And they still have far to go in all three fields.

For the first time in January the big farm magazines carried advertisements of a streamline tractor. In the distance was one of the new clipper trains at which the tractor driver was waving. It was a pretty picture—and a significant one. The day is passing when a man could throw a hat at a tractor and make it stick somewhere ten out of a dozen times. Things don’t stick out so much in the new models—with one or two exceptions. Older models have long looked a great deal neater than field models—due to the fact that branches hurling over the unprotected or unstreamlined vehicle were caught or broken.

One complaint of the farmers has always been that was no place to put his feet and not much of a seat and nothing to hold on to. Those complaints were more than justified. The 1938 trend is to a solid, comfortable footing, generally sheltered from the dust. And the seats, formerly cold iron high and easy to fall out of, are being replaced by comfortable seats similar, though smaller than those of the passenger automobile or truck.

The question of seating has its divided camps, even among the farmers. But even those who still want the iron seat are willing to accept the rubber covering that can now be had. Some farmers don’t want back rests, others do. The cooperative model has a low, comfortable seat of regular truck seat design, with back rest.

It is in the question of accessories that the tractors have lagged more than in any other. No farmer would think of buying a car that had no lights, no starter, no means of keeping out rain, dust and snow. And most of them want heaters and even radios. So far, for the larger models the farmer has had to pay the price of a deluxe automobile of the better grades merely for four wheels, a motor and a seat.

Dealers have poohpooed the idea of a starter for tractors, claiming that the farmer didn’t want it. That might have been true two years ago. In that time there has been an enormous increase in sales to farmers of wind driven wind chargers for individual house lighting and battery charging plants. Now, keeping a battery up is simpler and some of the tractor dealers have, grudging it is true, seen the light. They have arranged it so that a generator can be put on the tractor and be run by the fan belt. The question of lights is coming to be important as tractors are used for additional purposes. They can be had—but the farmer must pay extra. Soon they will be regular equipment.

The question of protection against driving dust, snow and rain and wind is of far greater importance to prairie farmers than to other. North Dakota farmers, for instance are unable to plow much in the autumn. They wait for winter snow melting to put their fields in condition to take the plow. Most of their work is done with the temperature around freezing or not much above, with the wind blowing as it can blow in the Dakotas. Generally they rig up lanterns so as to plow at night and it is too hard on the human flesh to fight such conditions without cabin or windshield. Many models now are constructed so that they make it possible for farm ingenuity to rig up something, but they are all behind hand in this regard. Even the problem of intense sunshine of midsummer is given little consideration. If a farmer wants to rig up an old surrey top, or an umbrella he can do so. But the tractor people don’t even provide a socket for such a contrivance.

The industry admits its failure in another direction—the solution of the exhaust problem. All tractors today belch their exhaust fumes right into the farmer’s face. The little pipe sticking up above the tractor front is the exhaust. If there are two, one is the air intake. Many a farmer has had a dull headache all night after a day in the field due to gas poisoning. The fumes are particularly bad when there is a wind because the wind often blows right into the driver’s face, forcing him to inhale it. On still days most of it goes over his head. But with higher speeds, both in the field, and especially out on the highway the exhaust question will have to be solved.

Even the most sensational of the new models, hit of the tractor show, and bound to be a best seller in the smaller tractor field, showed the same difficulty—only that the pipe didn’t stick out so far. Fear of blowing out seed, and fear of gassing seed are excuses given by the dealer for not conducting the fumes back to the rear as is done in automobiles. Here’s a chance for some investigator with chemical and botanical knowledge to dig up the deciding facts.

The question of radios on tractors has raised many a laugh in the farmbelt—but while seemingly incongruous at first glance, men generally find a way to mix business with pleasure. And there is no harm to envision the farmer’s taking refuge from the monotony of guiding his tractor back and forth over his expansive fields while listening to the St. Louis Blues or even to crop reports. According to Roy B. Gray, chief of the federal bureau of agricultural engineering, “It’s all a part of the general tendency to take some of the drudgery out of farming. Of course riding a tractor is a darned sight easier than walking behind a horse-drawn plow, but it’s hard sitting there all day in a dusty field. A radio breaks the monotony.” And radios in automobiles are now all but standard equipment.

Probably the most significant thing in the tractor business today is that the big makers are actually putting prices in their advertisements—only on the smaller models to be sure. For years you could look over their tractor catalogues and find everything but how much the thing costs. The industry was startled when one of the biggest makers of them all actually came out and announced that $100 had be knocked off its smaller, popular model and gave a definite figure $625. Then came another great concern and timing its announcements with the Kansas City show spread the figure $495 all over the place. But for the kind of tractors that will put three and four plows (not just one), the prices still are not far from $1,400. You couldn’t hardly pry out of the exhibitors the prices of those big farm machines and they appeared nowhere in advertisement or tag. That too is significant.

“There is a big competitive fight on,” one dealer admitted frankly. “You’re going to see the farmer buy a four plow tractor for around $1,000. And will we go to town on that. There’s millions in it.”

And with the weather bureau predicting that the cyclic drought is about over which will put all of the great plains dry land farmers back into the money there is no question but that both tractor manufacturers and farmers will go to town.

Paul Southworth Bliss