Technology and Culture

146 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the Second World War. The rise of companies such as Iowa Beef Processors and Excel, with their low labor costs, modern plants, and boxed meat, has established a new order in the packing industry. However, the author concludes, these newcomers may soon constitute a new oligopoly. For those seeking an overview of America’s red meat industry, Prime Cut offers a good starting point. Although I am enthusiastic about Skaggs’s effort to integrate so much material, I have two serious res­ ervations about his book. On the technical side, the references are far too spartan. The few existing footnotes do little to enlighten us about the sources or suggest differences in viewpoint. This greatly dimin­ ishes the book’s value as a research tool for other scholars. And interpretively , Prime Cut would have benefited from a tighter focus and a sharper sense of the underlying themes. A good conclusion could have tied the story together. In a broad synthesis of this nature, the unifying threads ought to be clearly identified. Mark Wildf. Dr. Wilde, a former Hagley Fellow, recently completed a dissertation on the history of America’s food-processing industries. He is currently a senior economist with the WEFA Group in Philadelphia. Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin’ Johnny: A History of the Farm Tractor and Its Impact on America. By Robert C. Williams. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Pp. ix + 232; illustrations, figures, notes, bib­ liography, index. $24.95. If your color preference in a tractor is gun-metal gray, green and yellow, red and yellow, red with black and white, blue, gray, safety yel­ low, or Persian orange, it is dealt with in this “biography” of the Amer­ ican tractor. Earlier accounts concentrated on mechanical detail or on pictures, and there are excellent histories of individual implement companies with impressive lines of tractors. This book examines the effect of the tractor (except for the crawler) as it relates to American agriculture since about 1900. Robert C. Williams, long acquainted with farming in Texas (he now operates a farm near Clarendon), adapted Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin’Johnny from his Texas Tech University dis­ sertation. He knows his topic well and presents his thesis ably. Through World War I, the first generation of American tractors, generally produced by farm implement companies, were highly ex­ perimental and best suited to the needs of small grain producers. Their implements were designed for the speed of the horse and were frequently incompatible with the faster, more powerful, pace of the tractors. The Fordson, first introduced in 1918, was an exception. Ford automobile dealers were pressured into selling the new tractor, which quickly dominated American tractor production. Henry Ford, with his own unpredictable prejudices, kept the Fordson going for a TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 147 decade without significant modifications, then he abandoned the trac­ tor business. Nevertheless, Ford contributed much from the auto­ motive business to all tractor producers. All-out competition between Fordson and International Harvester’s tractor brought introduction of IHC’s Farmall in the mid-1920s, counted as a “watershed” between past and present. Most new tractor developments, such as the power take-off, were initiated many years before they came into widespread use. The au­ thor takes note of the contribution of professional organizations such as the American Society of Agricultural Engineers on getting agree­ ment on standardization and interchangeability. Technological ma­ turity camejust prior to World War II. This period emphasized down­ sizing the tractor to fit the needs of a majority of American farms. Afterward, when almost every tractor line moved to greater power, the small tractor field was abandoned. To stay in competition, John Deere shifted from its two-cylinder engines, with their distinctive ex­ haust noise. By 1983, more than half of the tractors sold to American farmers were of foreign manufacture. The final third of the volume examines the tractor’s effect on Amer­ ican society. Williams recognizes the tractor’s contributions, but he also sees the problems, admittedly intertwined with many other fac­ tors, brought on by bigger capital needs and overproduction, and social consequences involving suffering in hard times, displaced labor, and increased farm size...