Chapter 319: New Ventures Part 2

The Monday morning planning session at Plant One looked less like an automobile conference and more like an agricultural debate.

Ernest stood by the large slate board, on which he had chalked three words:

AGRICULTURAL MOTOR TRACTION

Arthur was already sitting with his chin in his hand. "How much is this one going to cost us before we see a single riel?"

"We haven’t drafted the blueprints yet, Arthur," Ernest said.

"Which means it will be twice as expensive as whatever you’re about to tell me," Arthur retorted.

Hollen laughed into his mug. "He’s not wrong, Ernest."

A senior draftsman raised a hand from the far end of the table. "My Lord, are we discussing steam tractors? Several estates in the western valley already hire steam threshers from English syndicates."

"No steam," Ernest said firmly. "Steam traction engines weigh eight to ten tons. They pack the topsoil until nothing can sprout, they need a dedicated water wagon following them everywhere, and they take two hours just to raise operating pressure. We are building an internal-combustion machine."

He picked up a piece of chalk and sketched a rough profile: four wheels, an exposed frame, a high operator’s perch, and massive, broad-rimmed rear steel wheels.

Arthur frowned at the sketch. "What do you call that thing?"

"A tractor," Ernest said. "From traction. A machine designed not for road speed, but for raw draft."

"Like a motorized mule," Hollen mused, leaning forward to study the sketch. "Our Cargo One engine produces sixteen horsepower, but it’s cammed for road RPMs. In a muddy furrow, it would bog down and stall the second the plow hits a tree root."

"Exactly," Ernest agreed. "We don’t need high speed. We need low-end torque. The machine only needs to travel at two to three miles per hour while plowing, but it must pull two thousand pounds of continuous drawbar resistance without overheating."

"What about our stationary industrial engine?" Hollen suggested, tapping the table. "The single-cylinder block we cast for municipal pumps. It runs on kerosene once warmed up, hits its power band at just six hundred revolutions, and runs all day on a bucket of fuel."

"Enlarge the bore and stroke to give us twenty-two horsepower," Ernest said, sketching the drivetrain. "Pair it with an unsynchronized, heavy-spur gearbox and a massive ring gear on the rear axle. And add a side belt pulley off the transmission."

Arthur looked up. "A belt pulley? Why?"

"Because plowing only lasts a few weeks a year," Ernest explained. "If a farmer buys a machine, it can’t sit idle for ten months. With a belt pulley, that same tractor can park beside a barn and run a grain separator, a silage chopper, or a water pump all autumn."

"A portable power plant," Arthur conceded, his expression softening. "That makes the capital investment considerably easier to justify."

"Speaking of capital," Hollen broke in with a smirk, "what are we naming it? Teucher Agricultural Engine Number One?"

"Boring," Arthur muttered.

Hollen grinned. "How about the Fieldmaster?"

Ernest considered the name, testing the sound of it, then smiled. "The Teucher Fieldmaster. Build the chassis."

Over the next four weeks, the experimental shop at the back of Plant One sounded like a boiler factory.

There was no coachwork to speak of. The Fieldmaster was built out of bare iron channels, rough timber planks for the floorboard, and cold-rolled steel. The biggest engineering hurdle was neither the engine nor the gears, but the wheels.

Rubber tires were useless in wet dirt; they simply spun until they dug their own grave. Instead, Hollen forged two massive, three-foot-wide steel wheels fitted with angled triangular cleats—grousers—riveted along the rim. When the tractor rolled forward, the cleats bit into the soil like claws.

The initial transmission tests were deafening. The straight-cut spur gears whined with such a piercing shriek that workers on the nearby assembly line wore cotton in their ears.

"It sounds like a banshee being fed through a threshing drum," Arthur complained, plugging his ears during a yard trial.

"It’s loud because the teeth are heavy enough to pull a house down," Hollen shouted back over the roar. "Farmers don’t care about quiet. They care about broken gear teeth."

Eleanor stopped by the workshop one afternoon to find Ernest wiped with soot, oil dripping from his collar, grinning as he tightened an oil cup over the main crank bearing.

She inspected the crude, open iron seat perched directly over the exposed rear axle. "Where does the driver sit?"

Ernest pointed to the iron pan seat. "Right there."

"In the rain?"

"He’s a farmer, Eleanor."

"He’s a human being, Ernest," she countered firmly, folding her arms. "Put a canvas sunshade over his head before you bake him alive in July."

Hollen let out a booming laugh from under the chassis. "Listen to her, Ernest! Put the canopy on!"

Ernest conceded with a sheepish grin. "A canvas top will be fitted on the production version."

A week later, a railway flatcar shunted onto the siding near Thomas Bell’s district, carrying the finished prototype under a canvas tarp.

When the ropes were cut and the tarp pulled back, half the township was leaning over the fence to stare. The Fieldmaster was not a pretty sight. It was painted dull industrial grey, with an upright exhaust pipe pointing toward the sky, enormous spoked steel wheels, and a heavy brass grease gun strapped to the steering column.

Thomas Bell walked around it three times without speaking, his sons hovering behind him.

"Where’s the harness?" one of the boys whispered.

"No harness, lad," Hollen replied proudly, jumping down from the flatcar. "Just twenty-two mechanical horses crammed into an iron box."

They rolled the machine down the timber ramp and hitched a two-share iron plow to the rear drawbar. The field before them was damp clay—the very soil that had ground Bell’s horse teams to a crawl the previous week.

Ernest climbed up to the iron seat, pulled the decompression lever, and signaled the shop mechanic to heave on the heavy front starting crank.

CLANK. CHUFF. BANG.

With a plume of blue-grey smoke, the big single-cylinder engine caught. The entire chassis shook to the deep, steady beat of the heavy flywheel:

CHUG... CHUG... CHUG... CHUG.

The crowd stepped back in unison. Even the farm dogs bolted behind the barn.

Ernest leaned forward, pushed the heavy clutch lever forward, and engaged low gear. He eased the clutch back.

The steel cleats bit into the turf. The iron shares dropped into the sod with a dull tearing sound.

For the first thirty yards, the machine was a revelation. The engine barely dropped RPM as it sheared straight through roots and sod, turning two deep, ribbon-straight black furrows behind it. Bell’s sons ran alongside the fence, shouting in delight.

Then, halfway across the lower dip where drainage water collected, the front wheels struck a patch of soft loam.

The rear steel wheels began to dig. The exhaust barked sharply as the governor opened wide—BANG-BANG-BANG—but the cleats couldn’t clear the wet muck. The clay balled up between the iron teeth, turning the driving wheels into smooth, spinning drums. The tractor shuddered, dropped two inches into the mud, and ground to a complete halt.

Ernest cut the clutch immediately, letting the engine idle.

The field fell dead silent.

Hollen trudged through the mud, boots squelching, and crouched beside the bogged drive wheel. He poked a stick into the solid lump of clay clogging the cleats.

"Wheel slip," Hollen said, wiping his brow. "The cleats are spaced too close together. The mud doesn’t shed; it packs tight until you’re running on slick iron."

Bell walked over, looking down at the buried axle with a worried frown. "Is it ruined, sir?"

"Not at all," Ernest said, wiping a streak of oil from his cheek as he climbed down into the mud. "She didn’t break a tooth, and the engine didn’t overheat. She just needs better shoes."

They unhitched the plow, used timber planks under the wheels to back the tractor out under its own power, and adjusted the plow to a shallower cut for the afternoon runs. With less draft, the Fieldmaster finished forty yards of furrows without another stop, rolling steadily toward the tree line as the sun dipped behind the hills.

Standing at the edge of the turned field that evening, Bell held a handful of dark, crumbly soil, watching the cooling tractor tick as its iron contracted.

"My Lord," the farmer asked quietly, "will a man like me ever be able to buy one of these?"

Ernest looked at the muddy, iron contraption, then at the modest farmhouse across the road. "Not right away, Mr. Bell. Right now, it’s too expensive for forty-eight acres."

Bell’s face fell slightly, but Ernest continued.

"That’s why we’re setting up contractor pools. One machine, owned by a local station syndicate or shared among five farms. You pay by the acre plowed, and the tractor moves from farm to farm until the valley is planted."

Bell thought about that for a long moment, then smiled. "That... might actually work. A team that doesn’t eat my hay all winter."

"Exactly," Ernest said.

As the crew loaded the Fieldmaster back onto the rail siding under the lanterns, Hollen leaned against the wagon rail next to Ernest.

"Well," Hollen said, lighting a cigarette against the damp wind. "We’ve got work to do. Self-cleaning wheel cleats, a broader gear range, and a steering box that doesn’t dislocate a man’s shoulder on a turn."

"A great deal of work," Ernest agreed, watching the steam rise off the cooling cylinder block.

Behind them, two long, straight furrows of dark earth cut cleanly across the valley floor, smelling rich and damp in the night air. For a hundred years, that earth had moved only as fast as a tired horse could pull. Tonight, the ground had yielded to iron and gasoline.

The industrial revolution had finally left the paved streets of the cities—and planted its boots firmly in the soil.