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1925 – 1959
1940, the first full picture: The Sixteenth Census, taken 1 April 1940, gives the county's fleet in its County Table X, "Specified Farm Machinery and Facilities": 1,063 tractors on the 1,028 farms that reported them — the first count in which reporting farms are split from machines — with 596 motortrucks on 564 farms and 2,893 automobiles on 2,364 farms standing in the same table as the measure of how completely the internal-combustion machine had already taken the farmyard. The table also dates the fleet: the average year of the latest-model tractor on the county's farms was 1934, a fleet bought substantially before and during the Depression and only beginning to renew.
1950 and 1954, the takeover completed: The postwar censuses — whose county equipment counts the Farms & Crops record carries and this entry builds on — show the curve at its steepest. In 1950 the county's farms reported 2,279 tractors on 1,634 farms. In 1954 they reported 2,939 on 1,688 farms, decomposed in the same tables into 2,374 wheel tractors other than garden, 456 garden tractors, and crawlers besides, reported by 48 farms — while horses and mules fell from 927 head on 453 farms in 1950 to 434 head on 218 farms in 1954. The horse's working exit from this county happened between those two enumerations, and the tractor's numbers are the receipt.
1959, the peak of the record: The 1959 Census of Agriculture, in its County Table 6, "Equipment and Facilities on Farms" — its figures based, as the volume's headnote states, on reports for only a sample of farms — counted 3,441 tractors on 1,536 farms in St. Joseph County, the largest tractor count in the county's documented record. Its decomposition is printed whole, because it is this city's own story in numbers: 2,771 wheel tractors; 109 crawler tractors on 95 farms; and 561 garden tractors on 531 farms — the small machines on one farm in three of those reporting tractors, in the county whose seat had been building Wheel Horse garden tractors for thirteen years. The two facts stand side by side in the record; the census does not say whose garden tractors they were, and neither does this section. The same table's 1954 comparison column restates the Farms record's figures (2,939 tractors on 1,688 farms; 456 garden tractors) exactly, which is this curve's own check on its sources.
Sources:
- Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Agriculture, Vol. I, County Table X (Second Series), Indiana, p. 618 — St. Joseph County: tractors, farms reporting 1,028, number 1,063; average year of latest model 1934; motortrucks 564 farms, 596 number; automobiles 2,364 farms, 2,893 number. (The Allen County column of the same table — 1,924 farms, 2,034 tractors — agrees with the Fort Wayne record's independent reading.)
- 1954 Census of Agriculture, Vol. I, Part 4 (Indiana), County Tables 5 and 7, as read for Farms & Crops — 1950: 2,279 tractors on 1,634 farms; 1954: 2,939 on 1,688, of which 2,374 wheel, 456 garden, crawlers on 48 farms; horses and mules 927 head (1950) to 434 (1954).
- U.S. Census of Agriculture: 1959, Vol. I, Counties, Part 11 (Indiana), County Table 6 — St. Joseph County, 1959: tractors, farms reporting 1,536, number 3,441; wheel tractors 2,771; crawler tractors 109 on 95 farms; garden tractors 561 on 531 farms; the volume's sample basis stated in its headnote; its 1954 comparative column agreeing with the 1954 volume.