"Mr. Dahlstrom...has written a superb history of the tractor and
this long-forgotten period of capitalism in U.S. agriculture. We
now know the whole story of when farming, business and the
free-market economy diverged, divided and conquered." -Wall Street
Journal Discover the untold story of the "tractor wars," the
twenty-year period that introduced power farming-the most
fundamental change in world agriculture in hundreds of years.
Before John Deere, Ford, and International Harvester became icons
of American business, they were competitors in a forgotten battle
for the farm. From 1908-1928, against the backdrop of a world war
and economic depression, these brands were engaged in a race to
introduce the tractor and revolutionize farming. By the turn of the
twentieth century, four million people had left rural America and
moved to cities, leaving the nation's farms shorthanded for the
work of plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and threshing.
That's why the introduction of the tractor is an innovation story
as essential as man's landing on the moon or the advent of the
internet-after all, with the tractor, a shrinking farm population
could still feed a growing world. But getting the tractor from the
boardroom to the drafting table, then from factory and the farm,
was a technological and competitive battle that until now, has
never been fully told. A researcher, historian, and writer, Neil
Dahlstrom has spent decades in the corporate archives at John
Deere. In Tractor Wars, Dahlstrom offers an insider's view of a
story that entwines a myriad of brands and characters, stakes and
plots: the Reverend Daniel Hartsough, a pastor turned tractor
designer; Alexander Legge, the eventual president of International
Harvester, a former cowboy who took on Henry Ford; William
Butterworth and the oft-at-odds leadership team at John Deere that
partnered with the enigmatic Ford but planned for his ultimate
failure. With all the bitterness and drama of the race between
Ford, Dodge, and General Motors, Tractor Wars is the untold story
of industry stalwarts and disruptors, inventors, and administrators
racing to invent modern agriculture-a power farming revolution that
would usher in a whole new world.
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