A foreign army’s verdict, quoted — and whose product it judges

1900–1901 · SOUTH AFRICA (BOUNDARY: SOUTH BEND’S PRODUCT); TESTED FOR THIS GROUND, NONE

The floor pattern asks for a foreign wartime trial with its verdict quoted, and the county record holds a famous one. Howard’s 1907 county history prints it from the official report, and it is quoted here whole, at its true size and under its true owner’s name: Lord Roberts, the British commander in South Africa, in his official report on the Boer War, said — as Howard prints him — “Wagons were imported for trial from the United States, and these proved to be superior to any other make, either of Cape or English manufacture. The wheels were of hickory and the metal work of steel. They were built by Messrs. Studebaker Bros. Mfg. Co., who have a great vehicle factory at South Bend, Indiana.” The underlying instrument is Roberts’s Report on the Field Transport in South Africa, published in the London Gazette of 16 April 1901 (pp. 2613–2617); the contemporary press summary of the same report adds the comparison the verdict rested on — the English wagons’ wheels “gave a great deal of trouble, requiring frequent re-tyring,” while the American buck wagons imported for trial “proved to be superior to any other pattern of either Cape or English manufacture” and “cost considerably less than the British pattern wagons.”

The verdict is South Bend’s. The factory it names stood in South Bend, the wagons were built there, and no part of the trial touches Clay or Harris township. Tested for a product of this ground, the row comes back empty, and the test is printed: the township record in Chapman (1880) and Howard (1907) names no Granger maker of wagons, vehicles or any other trial goods; the banked businesses leg’s first manufacturer on this ground is Triangle Truss (1972–1976), a construction supplier seven decades after the trial; the farms leg’s township producers sold produce and stock into the home market of the article above; and the pigeon flagship of this section is a twenty-first-century trade that no army has tried. No foreign wartime trial of a Granger-seated product exists in the record reached, and none is borrowed from the city across the line.

Sources: Howard (1907), vol. 1, Studebaker chapter (the Roberts quotation as printed there); Lord Roberts, Report on the Field Transport in South Africa, London Gazette, 16 April 1901, pp. 2613–2617 (identified through the transport literature citing it); Hawke’s Bay Herald, 15 June 1901, “Field Transport” (contemporary summary of the report, quoted phrases); the banked businesses and farms legs for the township-side test.