Birth of the Iron Horse: General Motors Attempts a Tractor
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Samson Model M tractor.
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We’ve all heard a story about the old farmer who reluctantly bought his first tractor after farming with horses his whole life.
He did pretty well until he got to the end of the furrow, but as he intended to turn around, out of habit he hauled back mightily on the steering wheel and yelled, “Whoa!” as loud as he could. The tractor was no horse, however, and plowed majestically through the fence row and into the creek.
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A few manufacturers tried to make the transition easier for such farmers by building tractors that were started, stopped and steered by reins, just like a team of horses. An unlikely example of these manufacturers turns out to be a present-day automotive giant.
The Samson Tractor Company, a division of General Motors Corporation, was located in Janesville, Wis., and was the brainchild of William Crapo Durant. Billy Durant, as he was known, was a colorful product promoter who made and lost several fortunes in the early days of the automobile business. In 1918, Durant was the chairman of GM, owned the majority of the company’s stock, and was determined to battle Henry Ford and his successful Fordson tractor for dominance over the agricultural equipment industry.
In mid-1918, GM, at Durant’s insistence, bought Samson Tractor Works, a Stockton, Calif., firm that produced a somewhat-successful machine called the Samson Sieve-Grip tractor. Meanwhile, the Janesville Machine Company was busy building plows, cultivators and planters in Janesville. Durant asked that firm’s president, Joseph A. Craig, to manage the newly devised tractor plant. Craig agreed on the condition that GM would build a new factory at the Janesville site to build the tractors. Durant agreed and the deal was sealed.
The new company continued to make the Samson Sieve-Grip, which cost $1,750 (about $21,000 in today’s terms) and was no competition for the far-more affordable Fordson at $625 ($7,600 today). GM engineers designed a new tractor, the Samson Model M – patterned after the Fordson – and began building it on May 1, 1919. The Samson M weighed about 600 pounds more than the Fordson and outperformed its rival in Nebraska tests. The Samson M, at $650, cost a little more than the Fordson, but fenders, platform and belt pulley were included. These features were extra on a Fordson.
In late 1918, GM bought the rights to a machine named the Jim Dandy Motor Cultivator. Durant apparently thought that farmers would feel more comfortable with leather reins in their hands than a steering wheel, or he may have wanted to take advantage of the then-current popularity of motor cultivators. Regardless, the new machine was fitted with reins and operated somewhat like a team of horses. The cultivator was renamed the Samson Iron Horse Model D and introduced in early 1919. The Iron Horse cost $630 and was described as follows in a 1919 Samson sales brochure:
Wonderful is the only word that fully fits and applies to the Samson Iron Horse. For years it has been common conversation in agricultural circles that some day, somebody would bring out a four-wheel-drive tractor that would do all of the jobs on the farm that can be done with a 2- or 3-horse team.
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