R. R. 4, Huntington, Indiana 46750
I don’t seem to be able to quit on the Moguls and Titans.
Some one wrote and asked what made them so popular in their day.
The reason was that they were so simple; anyone could work on one.
The only thing that went wrong was the magneto. That’s if they
were taken care of. They were gradually replaced when tractors had
more speed and better steering. There was a total of 29,385 Moguls
made. They sold from $675 to $2,475 for the 39-60. There was a
total 60,969 Titans built and they sold from $900 to $2,350 for the
30-60.
On Nov. 11, 1911, three 45 Moguls pulled a fifty-five bottom
14-inch plow on the James Oliver farm at South Bend, Indiana and
the same day one 34 Mogul pulled an eighteen bottom plow in the
same field. These were records at the time, but I recall later that
a Caterpillar tractor pulled a twenty-four bottom plow. At the
Winnipe contests which were the first of its kind, the big one
cylinder Moguls and Titans really showed up the steam engines,
which had formally held the field. In 1916 the 8-16 Mogual was
replaced by the 10-20 Mogul which had bore of eight and a half
inches and a stroke of twelve inches.
In 1915 I.H.C came out with a 12-25 Titan which had a four
cylinder cross mounted Horizontal engine, The first four cylinder
that they made. It pulled four bottoms and was the first tractor
that my father bought. It performed very well. In 1917 or 18 they
changed the 12-25 and called it a 15-30 International. This was to
mate up with the 8-16 International which had open drive chains but
the 15-30 had enclosed drive chains.
The photosraph above shows the International 15-30, 4 cylinder
horizontal cross mounted and John Deere 4-bottom ‘Engine
Gang’ plow going out to summer fallow. The picture was taken on
or about 1922.
After threshing my father would give my brother and myself the
Titan and baler to go out and do custom baling on our own and all
the money we made was for our school expenses. In the fall of 1922,
we were baling stacked hay for the University of Illinois. Prof.
Ray Shawl came out and said the Farm mechanics department had been
given a new tractor to try out and he wanted us to use it on the
baler that P.M. When we went to dinner we took the Titan out of the
belt and when we got back from dinner, there sat the oddest thing
we ever saw. It was gray but no name on it. We could tell by the
engine that it was an International. Needless to say it pulled the
baler O.K. It was a regular Farmall. We soon found out that I.H.C.
hada trail run of two hundred of these Farmalls and shipped most of
them to the big Farms in Texas, Ariz, and Calif. where there would
be a lot of hours put on in a short time as experimental work as
they had not made this tractor for sale yet, but were perfecting it
before putting it on the market in 1924.
They had shoved a lot of other tractors down the public’s
throat without being proven, but a man by the name of Benjamine was
in charge of the Farmall and he demanded perfection and from the
looks of the number still around he came pretty close to it. The
first Farmall sold in a Township was given a Little Wonder plow
with it. That wasn’t any great prize though. My Father and
brother bought one in 1924 and it is still running. I bought a new
F-20 in 1936 and it runs like new. Why can’t the Manufacturers
build them like that today? The answer is very simple-they would
last too long and hurt their sales. I ask you have we made any
progress or are we simply making others rich???
