PAGEANT OF PROGRESS

[Music] [Music] so [Music] through this entrance and into the bleachers beyond streamed thousands of visitors to see an unusual presentation of farming history first a parade of plows showing 5 000 years of cloud development and second a march of machines presenting the highlights of over a hundred years of threshing and farm power progress as each history making machine was shown the narrator explained the operation and its place in the history of farming music was provided by a special band its members as well as the pageant cats were almost all case employees [Music] the conquest of hunger began with the invention of the plow early man or woman scratched the earth with his crude orchid stitch dropped a seed in the wounds he had made and trusted that months later he would be rewarded by a harvest but even the primitive savage learned that to plow better he needed more power he found that power in the muscles of his neighbors he enslaved those weaker than himself and made them beasts of birds from a tree he cut a larger forked branch and to it he harnessed his conquered slaves but human power the muscle and sweat of fellow man was not enough already cattle had been domesticated for meat so why not harness them to the plow thus the farmer of 5 000 years ago solved his power problem with the office in the egypt of the pharaohs the straining oxen and the plow with which they broke the soil became the very symbols of the nation's prosperity but here progress stopped having discovered and applied animal power men simply called it a day [Music] the time is about 1830 the place america pioneer settlers pouring westward into illinois spilling across the mississippi into missouri and iowa found the richest soil on earth and they came with a time-worn colonial plows tied to the sides of their conestoga wagons but just when they were counting their blessings just when everything looked happiest calamity struck once broken the virgin soil of the prairie could not be turned again successfully the crude colonial claw with wooden moldboard and cast iron chair refused to scour in the rich black earth after the original sod was broken so desperate became the plight of the settlers that some gave up their homesteads and returned to the east but others sought a miracle a plow that would scour in prairie soil [Music] the local blacksmith hammered the steel moldboard from a broken saw blade and andrus himself made the wooden frame hopefully they took the plow into the field and the steel moldboard scoured here is a replica of the major andrus 1837 steel plow without it the midwest might never have become the breadbasket of the world two-wheel and three-wheel salty plows were patented one of the most famous was the little yankee of 1893. the flower shown here was built a few years later planted wheels reduced landside pressure and helped to keep the furrows straight when plows with wheels were designed the americans farmer began to ask for some easy way to lift the plow bottoms out of the ground the answer came in this famous emerson footlift bulky plow introduced back in 1899 a push on the pedal with a plowman's left foot lifted one or two bottoms to a clearance of six inches another pedal lowered the flower yes the old gray mare stopped being what she used to be when early gas tractors began to roll out of farm equipment factories this is the famous old 2040 model of 1912. the plow is an independent beam tractor plow with each bottom lifting separately it was built to plow the prairies which sometimes ran to a succession of hummus with the coming of smaller lighter tractors like this 1913 model with the 25 rating a different type of tractor plow was needed and the independent beam power went out of use in this tractor considerable power was crammed into relatively small size the plows developed to match such power were lighter in draft and with fewer bottoms as shown in this 1915 grand detour plow such machines pointed the way to an intensive development of lightweight outfits from them came a succession of constantly improved plows culminating in this modern centennial moldboard plow introduced in 1936 to celebrate 100 years of steel plow progress this modern plow has unusual lightness of draft it employs a unique tiller type rear wheel which practically eliminates land size pressure it has extra high clearance for turning under heavy cover crops without clogging or delay the new plows are adapted to many new uses such as terrace buildings and are ideal for other soil saving practices such as contour farming [Music] what a contrast between tillage like this and the work of the forked stick used so long ago what a contrast even between the first grand detour steel plow of 1837 and the modern moldboard plow of today [Music] [Music] the first ancient threshing method shown is treading threshing with the hooves of horses a slow laborious method which for all its prudence is still in use in some sections of the world it is small wonder that the problem of threshing placed a limit on food production for thousands of years while people went hungry besides treading flailing the other ancient threshing method was in common use even in america when jerome i case came to the territory of wisconsin in 1842 flailing was woman's work too and many a pioneer mother spent long cold days beating out the grain in a drastic barn the work was bitterly unrewarding or even the strongest man could not hope to flail out more than seven or eight bushels of wheat a day and after flailing the grain had to be widowed an equally slow and tedious progress before there could be food in abundance a farmer needed a mechanical thresher for thousands of years all mankind was chained to a life of primitive threshing methods and meager rations history waited to honor the man who could perfect the thresher in 1842 as wheat moved west into wisconsin territory case a young man in his early twenties moved with it after two years of experimenting with fresher design he established his thresher factory at racine where he was to develop and build more pressures than any other man who ever lived here is an old groundhog thresher but his case might have built in his racine factory during the 1840s this century-old machine features a shaker device for separating drain from straw and shaft the rig takes a four-man crew including feeder fan cutter and two straw tenders the tread power for one or two horses was a common way of getting rotary motions from enemies average production with the groundhog and shaker ran about 80 bushels per day far superior to flailing or treading notice how the feeders spread each bundle across the width of the cylinder back in those days the bundles were bound by hand with some of the straw watch how the band is formed and how it is twisted to hold securing one of the early threshers with marked improvements was the case eclipse of 1869 perhaps the first thresher in history to start separation immediately behind the cylinder it became well known for large capacity and clean work the thresh grain was generally handled in bags if health was scarce the women held the bags at the machine and tied them as they were filled with a pioneer watchword so every peck was carefully accounted for driving the equipped thresher is perhaps the most famous agricultural steam engine ever built it's the famous case number one built in 1869 and still capable of delivering real power old number one helped usher in a whole new era of farm power steamers were the star performers in what many old timers consider the most romantic period in all farm history their black sides glistening in the sun and chimneys belching smoke their whistles signaling across the fields they were the original iron man in agriculture [Music] but there is a constant overlapping between machines and methods long after steam was popular horsepower served many farmers during harvest time in fact sweet powers similar to the one you see here were sold as late as 1917. this thresher was one of the most famous ever to be used in the wheat fields anywhere it is the case agitator first introduced in 1880 the principle it used of counter balancing the grain pan and straw rack and their movement is still basic to stretching today note the hand feeding in the old wooden pitchforks crude by today's standards yet well on the way toward large-scale capacity this rig threshed about 1 000 bushels of wheat per day employing a crew of from 15 to 20. yes the old agitator was good but better things were just ahead only a generation ago the very peak of farm power perfection was the kind embodied in this big 65 horsepower steam engine long after gas tractors began to sweep the country machinery companies continued to build and sell steamers delivering the last barely a decade ago it took large crews to run the steamers and the threshers they powered an engineer or six or eight rack wagons three or four field pitchers two or three grain handlers and before the days of self-feeders and windstackers it took an additional two pitchers two band cutters and two or three straw stackers those were the days when farm women competed with one another in feeding the harvest cruise as farmers traded health during the threshing season the steamer is driving a 36 year old all steel thresher of the well-known 3254 size the steel thresher was introduced by case in 1904 the use of sheet metal soon made wooden machines obsolete for the benefit of old timers in the pageant audiences the steamer ran through its repertoire of whistle signals just as they were heard on farms everywhere years ago let's listen to some of this whistle language the call to work one long signal to start too short so bundle haulers to hurry free shorts water wagon to hurry three long so [Music] but steam had to go gas tractors succeeded steam because they were faster smaller more compact yet capable of driving the same kind of threshers but you'll know how steam engine construction influenced the design of the early gas tractors such as this 2040 model of 1912. this gas tractor was a revelation in its day but it wasn't long before its place was taken by an improved model which could put out more work on less fuel this new tractor was the model l first introduced in 1929. contrasted with the 2040 it weighed less than half as much cost only half yet it did nearly twice as much work per day in addition it cost much less to operate and maintain in free america the best becomes constantly better even the famous model l tractor was supplanted by new and better machines and the steel pressure gave way as the combine came into its own the combine this magical machine harvests and crushes in one operation at modern tractor speeds handling more grain in a day than pioneer farmers could flail out in two months harvesting many different crops working cleaner as well as faster here we have a modern rice harvest going rapidly forward in spite of wet fields and high levees with this modern six-foot machine shown here in a contoured field one man can cut and fresh 15 to 30 acres a day or 300 to 600 bushels per day in 20 bushels week where straw is saved for feed or bedding the slicer baler introduced in 1940 reduced straw handling to a quick machine operation now let's lift our eyes and minds to the amazing significance of this march of machines and parade of clouds we have just witnessed something of the struggles failures and triumphs which have marked the development of agriculture through 5 000 years for more than a century the united states of america has been the productive marvel of the world from the farms and factories of our land have come an abundance of food and goods such as the world has never seen before here under the constitution men were given freedom to invent and to produce machines which could bring forth food in abundance here americans conquered hunger for themselves and for millions in other parts of the world for food farm machinery and freedom are inseparable a fundamental truth which we will do well to cherish and to defend [Music] you