Historic Furrow

Scarring the green breast of one of the fields on Motormaker Henry Ford's "Fairlane" estate near Detroit is a 60-foot plowed furrow. Around it Ford workmen have built a fence. Over it they have laid a tarpaulin. Why this has been done no Ford employe knows for sure, but most could hazard a sound guess: the furrow is to be preserved for posterity to look at; it will be included in the intriguing mass of Ford memorabilia which includes Luther Burbank's shovel (thrust into a block of concrete), a reproduction of the hole in the ground in Menlo Park, N. J., where Thomas A. Edison and his helpers threw their laboratory junk.

For, to Henry Ford, as much preoccupied with men on farms as with men in motors, the furrow (plowed by himself) marks a historic event. Last week he issued invitations--to industrialists, farmers, newsmen--to a luncheon at Dearborn Inn to celebrate that historical event. The event in question was his development of a tractor which convinced him that it would revolutionize agriculture.

Last week the new Ford tractor was still a deep Ford secret. The few facts obtainable about it were sufficiently extraordinary:

> 15,000 workmen will be re-employed to build it in the long disused River Rouge "B" plant (factory for Ford's Wartime Eagle boats).

> Production plans call for 1,000 a day to roll off the assembly line.

> Builder of the tractor was an Irishman named Harry Ferguson.

> It will weigh 1,700 pounds and be powered by a four-cylinder Ford engine (of the type first used in the famed Model A) driving all its four wheels.

>It has a self-starter and a system of finger-tip hydraulic controls.

This tractor is peculiarly Henry Ford's personal baby. It is his solution of his favorite problem: how to get people back to the farms. More extraordinary than the known facts about it were the claims that Henry Ford, usually far from boastful, made for it last week:

> That a special, double linkage coupling will keep the plough it draws from pulling out of the ground--keep a plough at full depth even in hard soil.

> That when the plough hits a rock or stump the tractor will not tip over backward and fall on its driver like some old-time tractors--it slips its back-wheel drive when an obstruction is encountered, keeps its nose down by pulling with its front wheels only.

> That without getting off his seat, its driver can lift his plough over any such obstacle by simply touching a finger-tip control.

> That the tractor is as simple as a motorcar, can be maintained by any farm hand, operated by any schoolboy.

> That it will plow, harrow, drag a seeder, pull a wagon better than any tractor ever made, far better than a horse which is, as Thomas Edison said, "the poorest motor ever built."

> That Inventor Ferguson will go down in history with Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright brothers.

> That this paragon of modern mechanics will be priced at no more than the cost of a good team of hay burners: somewhere between $300 and $350.

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