Where will all this new farm technology lead? Cartoonist Herbert Johnson’s “Wireless Tractor Control Board” was a joke, but today companies are developing autonomous tractors that won’t need anyone at a control board (with or without a pitcher of cider).
Johnson was born in Sutton in 1878. He attended Western Normal College in Lincoln. In 1912 he became a political cartoonist for The Saturday Evening Post. A staunch Republican, Johnson often criticized the New Deal in his cartoons, and he favored an isolationist foreign policy until Pearl Harbor. The cartoon above is one of 250 original drawings Johnson donated to the Nebraska State Historical Society in 1944. See more of them here.
(Photo: NSHS 523P-232)
