Farming in the 1910's

Postcard featuring an illistration of manpowered plow. Serves as an example of a pre-mechanized farm tool.

Another example of pre-mechanized farming tools - horse drawn reaper. 

In order to understand the magnitude of this shift a look into pre-mechanization agriculture is needed. The horse is the lead power source for farm work, most machinery up to this point relied on horsepower. During the 1910's The United States employed roughly twenty-five million horses and mules on its farms. Some steam powered tractors were used, around a hundred thousand, and even less gasoline tractors were in use, sixty thousand.¹ Horses were cheap in comparison and the concept of huge monetary gains was still developing, because of this many farmers did not see the appeal of spending what little profits they made on an expensive piece of machinery. However, these attitudes began to shift and new ideals were quick to develop.

 The previously common southern tenure farms were fading with the years while a new managerial organization style was rising to take their place. Farming was becoming a specialized skill, young men now went to agricultural colleges to be trained in agricultural science and this newly specialized class proved to have high success when employed in leadership positions. The increased prevalence of farms run by hired managers indicated a new capitalistic growth within the agriculture industry. Farm owners and tenders were now beginning to focus on monetary profits rather than simple subsistence farming, which meant that their methods had to become more efficient. No more wasted product or time was accepted and it is during these ten years methods such as scheduling and standardized techniques were conceptualized and put to use.² The value of farm machinery, particularly in the grain belt, increased significantly during this era because it allowed farmers to produce more product in a shorter amount of time. More product equals more profit which meant owners could afford to increase their laborers wages or take on more employees than they could previously afford.³ 

The horse powered farm machines, plows, reapers, sowers, all worked and improved farmers quality and quantity of product. 700,000,000 acres of American land was being cultivated with the help of these machines and as a result an average of 8.9 billion dollars worth of crops were produced each year from 1910 to 1919.⁴