It could pull almost any size wagon. It never got stuck. And in a pinch, you could hook up a chain to a stump and rip it from the ground – a job that would take two men all day to dig out by hand. I remember when my Grandpa used to have to pull the old hay wagon with a team of mules, Jenny and Bessie. (I’m not sure but I think every pair of mules must be named Jenny and Bessie.) He’d yell “Gee!” and they would turn right. He’d yell “Haw!” and they would turn left. It took a week to gather the hay with mules. The tractor changed the farming world. It moved farming from hand labor and use of animals to mechanization. It brought an “industrial revolution” to farming. With the new tractors, it only took us two days to gather the same amount of hay.
The tractor brought a dramatic increase in productivity to American farming. And it changed the American labor force. Millions of farm laborers, operators, unpaid family workers, and farm hands were freed up to relocate to cities to provide skilled, hard-working labor to factories, service industries, and other professions.
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