Tractor pulling a harrow across a farm field

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A tractor drags a harrow across an open field, the implement's tines turning the soil into the loose, level seedbed that planting required. Tractors like this one replaced horse teams on many American farms during the early and middle decades of the twentieth century, and the harrow was among the simplest and most common tools that came with them. Pictures of this kind document a shift in daily farm work, when a single operator could cover in an afternoon what a team and driver had once taken days to finish. Notice the open, unfenced ground and the bare tilled earth, which show how much labor the machine took over from people and animals.

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