Agriculture

From butter churns to diesel tractors, the Museum's agricultural artifacts trace the story of Americans who work the land. Agricultural tools and machinery in the collections range from a John Deere plow of the 1830s to 20th-century cultivators and harvesters. The Museum's holdings also include overalls, aprons, and sunbonnets; farm photographs; milk cans and food jars; handmade horse collars; and some 200 oral histories of farm men and women in the South. Prints in the collections show hundreds of scenes of rural life. The politics of agriculture are part of the story, too, told in materials related to farm workers' unions and a group of artifacts donated by the family of the labor leader Cesar Chavez.

John Deere Plow
John Deere Plow, 1830s
Ronald Miller of Geneseo, Illinois, donated this threshing machine to the Museum in 1988.
Description
Ronald Miller of Geneseo, Illinois, donated this threshing machine to the Museum in 1988. The bright red paint that covered the machine when new had faded, but wood and internal parts were in excellent shape, a testament to the care that farmers lavish upon their machines.
Smithsonian conservators decided to accept the threshing machine without restoration, and this separator threshed oats at the 1991 Smithsonian Folk Festival, pulled by a Rumely Oil Pull 20-40 tractor.
The 32 x 52 designation refers to a 32-inch cylinder and the 52-inch-wide threshing shoe. The 7-ton machine was designed to have four men pitching bundles of grain into the feeder; it could thresh over 2,500 bushels a day.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1923
maker
Advance Rumely Company
ID Number
1988.0371.01
catalog number
1988.0371.01
accession number
1988.0371
Fordson tractors were in production in the US between 1917 and 1928. As gas-powered tractors dropped in price, farmers moved away from horse-drawn equipment. Seventy-five percent of tractors purchased in 1923 were Fordsons.
Description
Fordson tractors were in production in the US between 1917 and 1928. As gas-powered tractors dropped in price, farmers moved away from horse-drawn equipment. Seventy-five percent of tractors purchased in 1923 were Fordsons. This tractor is powered by a 4 cylinder, 3 speed, 20 HP engine. It measures 42" across the rear wheels and 28" across the front wheels. It has front steel wheels with lugs on the rear. The original owner added an Allison hoist to the front of the tractor.
Location
Currently not on view (crank)
date made
1918 - 1920
1918 - 1920
ID Number
AG.66A09
catalog number
66A09
accession number
268896
In 1923, John Ploesch purchased this Rumely Oil Pull tractor for $4,000 from an Advance-Rumely dealer in Woodbine, Illinois. He arranged with neighbors to thresh their crops, organizing what was called a threshing ring that lasted until 1948.
Description
In 1923, John Ploesch purchased this Rumely Oil Pull tractor for $4,000 from an Advance-Rumely dealer in Woodbine, Illinois. He arranged with neighbors to thresh their crops, organizing what was called a threshing ring that lasted until 1948. The Rumely Oil Pull was belted to the threshing machine that separated the grain. Threshing became a major social event for farmers, laborers, and their families.
The Rumely Oil Pull was the first tractor to use an oil cooling system, which kept the engine at a steady temperature no matter how heavy the tractor's load. The cooling system allowed hotter cylinders and easier ignition. The Oil Pull starts on gas but runs on kerosene, making it much lighter and easier to maneuver than its steam-driven predecessors. This Rumely Oil Pull weighs seven tons.
Rumely engineers also made space for an extra person in the tractor's cab, gave the operator a clear view in every direction, and placed all the mechanisms--gear shift, clutch, foot brake, steering wheel, carburetor, and more--in easy reach. These new design elements helped the Rumely Oil Pull to surpass most old kerosene tractors, and many of these features were further refined in gasoline-powered machines.
Because of their hot-riveted steel frame construction, Rumely Oil Pulls lasted through years of harvests. Some were still in use as late as the 1960s.
date made
1923
maker
Advance Rumely Company
assembler
Miller, Ronald E.
ID Number
1988.0372.01
catalog number
1988.0372.01
accession number
1988.0372
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1870 - 1920
ID Number
2013.0131.01
accession number
2013.0131
catalog number
2013.0131.01
Rectangular celluloid card. A photograph of the Agricultural Museum at the New York State Fair Grounds in Syracuse is on the front. Reverse has calendar for the year starting July 1920. The date of Jan 22, 1930, is circled in red to highlight the organization's homecoming.
Description (Brief)
Rectangular celluloid card. A photograph of the Agricultural Museum at the New York State Fair Grounds in Syracuse is on the front. Reverse has calendar for the year starting July 1920. The date of Jan 22, 1930, is circled in red to highlight the organization's homecoming. The back of the card reads, "The New York State Agricultural Society // The Mother Agricultural Society of New York State // Organized at Albany // April 30, 1832."
Description
One side of this celluloid card has a calendar for July 1929 – June 1930, and ad for the New York State Agricultural Society. The other has image of the Daniel Parish Whitter Agricultural Museum erected in Syracuse in 1928.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1929
advertiser
New York State Agricultural Society
maker
Bastian Bros Company
ID Number
2006.0098.0583
accession number
2006.0098
catalog number
2006.0098.0583
In 1923, D. A. McCandliss, a federal statistician, invented the crop meter as a more reliable way to estimate cotton acreage in Mississippi. The new technology soon spread to other states.
Description
In 1923, D. A. McCandliss, a federal statistician, invented the crop meter as a more reliable way to estimate cotton acreage in Mississippi. The new technology soon spread to other states. Crop meters were a vast improvement over earlier methods of crop estimation, such as counting fields or having farmers mail in estimates. The crop meter sat on a car dashboard and was connected to the speedometer shaft. As the car drove along the edge of a field, the meter measured the “frontage” of the field. Statisticians used these measurements to estimate total acreage. This meter is a “double bank” model. The two rows of keys allowed the driver to take measurements of fields on both sides of the road. The crop meter was later replaced by aerial observation.
Agricultural statistics provide valuable economic information. They are important not only to farmers but also to those in business and government. In 1912, the USDA began making crop forecasts before harvest, rather than only reporting production after the harvest. Crop forecasts were of particular interest to federal officials during the New Deal. Congress sought to regulate supply and demand for agricultural products. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 established a subsidy program that paid farmers to take fields out of production. It included seven products designated as “basic crops”: corn, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, tobacco, and milk. Subsidies came from a tax on companies that processed farm products, but in 1936, the Supreme Court ruled the tax unconstitutional. As a result, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 established a quota system and overproduction penalties.
date made
1925
ID Number
AG.69A9.12
catalog number
69A12
accession number
283306

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