And how did all these improvements come about? If you just read the history books, you might think it was a series of small miracles that led from the horse-drawn plow to the modern air-conditioned tractor, equipped with TV and computer. In the nineteenth century, close to 80% of America worked in agriculture. Today’s tractors allow a mere 8% of the population to plow the whole Mid West and feed America and much of the world. But looking around the grounds of this antique tractor museum, I believe I could see how those miracles took place.
My husband truly loves these old machines. Each old engine prompted a story about how some old farmer must have figured out this or that about how to make something or other work better. My husband got excited as he explained to me that once you had figured out how to make a steam engine work, you could use that same engine for many purposes.
You could use a drive belt to connect the engine to your washing machine, or to a saw mill. And he knew people of his grandfather’s generation, who had done just that. They took the engine they normally used around the farmhouse, up into the woods when they had lumber to mill.
As I watched my husband and the other guys, looking at antique engines with love in their eyes, I realized those men weren’t just looking at old rusty machines. Every man there was filled with admiration for the men who made those machines, admiration for the lives they lived and the lives they made possible. These were once little boys who loved their toy trains and tractors and cars. They grew up to be men who make things happen, who look for a better way, and who figure out, one step at a time, easier and cheaper and safer ways to do things. These are men who honor the past, not by preserving it, but by building on it, improving it.
I am convinced that men like these are the key to understanding the secret of American wealth. This is how all the little miracles of innovation took place. Because they owned their little farms and had the right to any improvements they made, American men had every incentive to find better ways and to share their knowledge with others. These men take pride in the fact that they can confront reality on reality’s terms. They are accountable to reality in a way that no talking head or academic can truly be. Even when I was an academic myself, and even now when I am surrounded by talking heads, I love being married to an engineer. He keeps me grounded.
The American way is about small business and individual initiative. Our country’s system of private property and personal innovation harnesses the unique gifts of men and places those gifts at the service of the common good. We are a rich country because we turn little boys who love tractors into grown-up men who make things work better.