Tractor History by A.C. Seyfarth -- 1910-1934

              this it is evident that while Ford may have been experimenting with tractors for a number of years, it was from the standpoint of the automotive engineer—the adaption of an automobile to tractor purposes. The tractor industry itself, on the other hand, was being developed along entirely different lines. The field of harvesting, plowing and threshing is almost as old as history, and while Mr. Ford was busy in the virgin field of automobile engineering, these agricultural establishments were completing almost a half century of progress in the perfection of power machinery and twenty-five years in the development of the farm tractor itself.

Thus when Mr. Ford announced his plans which revealed something new to the editors of this country, more than a hundred companies were already actively interested in the business, a quarter of a century's experiment and testing was behind the tractor, its checkered career was over, and its course of future development was carefully charted. It needed only the stimulus of a war-time necessity, which v;as to come in the next few years, to bring it into full bloom as one of our essential leading industries.
1916

In 1916 tractor production jumped almost 40 per cent. Sixty- five new companies entered the field, making a total of 150 companies . experimenting or interested in the tractor in some way or other. Of ' these about 70 could be considered as in production. This is the first year in which authentic figures of production are available. The Bureau of Public Roads, U. S. Department of Agriculture, in 1918 sent a question¬ naire to all tractor manufacturers which disclosed that 29,670 tractors "¦ were manufactured in 1916, of which 27,819 were sold in the United States; 3,695 tractors were shipped into Canada. Of this production practically 80 per cent were of the two-plow size. Although all sizes were available, it is evident that the demand was running almost entirely to the smaller units. In the small tractor class Bull was no longer the largest pro¬ ducer, as the Harvester Company put out almost 6,000 two-plow outfits and several more thousand three-plow Titan tractors in the first year of production.
Probably 80 per cent of this year's production was made by the following ten tractor companies: International Harvester Company, Case Threshing Machine Company, Avery, Bull, Emerson-Brantingham, Waterloo, Holt, Heider, Happy Farmer, and Sajnson. The order in which they are named probably indicates the relative position of iihese companies in the industry.
There was very little exjxDrt business, as the demand from the warring countries had not yet materialized. The French government placed their first order for 200 American tractors.
In this year the Kansas City Tractor Club was organized to hold the first tractor show. This opened up February 27th with twenty- four exhibitors, among which were names long familiar in the tractor industry.