Wagon Works of Chicago became
an International Harvester
property. The Company’s line of
farm implements became com
plete with the acquisition in 1918 of
steel and chilled plows through the
purchase of companies which
operated the present Canton Works
at Canton, Illinois, and a plant at
Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the
addition of a line of seeding
machines manufactured at
Richmond, Indiana.
During these years, the In
ternational Harvester Company
had been rapidly developing and
putting into production new lines at
its original plants. By 1912, corn
binders, ensilage cutters, seeding
machinery, harrows, and manure
spreaders had been added to the
catalog of implements offered to
International Harvester dealers.
The pioneer light harvester
thresher was introduced in 1914;
the stationary thresher, four years
later.
The Growth Of
Power Farming
The key to all progress in
agriculture is power. As long as
there was only human energy,
supplemented by the limited use of
animal power, to perform the
multiple operations required by
farming, progress was necessarily
slow. When Cyrus Hall, Mc-
Cormick perfected the reaper, he
brought to the farmer a broader
application of animal power by
demonstrating its practical use in
the harvest. From that point,
farming methods leaped forward
to the greatest period of
development the world had ever
witnessed.
The development of agricultural
machinery was inhibited as long as
animals were the only available
source of power. By the end of the
nineteenth century, most im
plements had reached their
maximum capacity for use with
work animals, yet they were
capable of further improvement
and economies. Designers were
forced to gear their machines to
the speed of the horse and make
their draft no heavier than an
ordinary team could pull. The
grain binder, for example, had by
1900 been perfected to the point
where only additional power could
increase its efficiency. With
animals as the motive power, no
higher speed could be attained, nor
could the machine be made heavy
enough to increase the width of its
cut. Some kind of power more
efficient than that which animals
were able to provide was clearly
indicated if industry was to con
tinue its service to the farmer by
giving him machines that would
allow him to get the most out of his
land with the least effort.
It was only natural that after the
invention of the steam engine there
should be experimentation with the
use of this mighty new source of
power on the farm. The first, and
what was to be the only really
practical wide-spread application
of the steam engine, was in
threshing, during which power was
transmitted by a belt to the
threshing machine. Throughout
the last century, many attempts
were made to apply the steam
tractor to plowing, the farmer’s
most difficult job. There was no
question but that the steam engine
was a lift in pulling a plow, but its
use was extremely limited.
Because of its prohibitive cost, its
size, and general unwieldiness, it
could be employed profiably only
on the immense acreages of the
West. Farmers of quarter and half
sections never seriously con
sidered the steam tractor. The real
importance of the steam-driven
tractor lay in the fact that it was a
step in the right direction. Its
existence gave rise to the first
efforts to design and manufacture
a tractor that would employ the
internal combustion engine
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beginning to be seriously con
sidered development about 1900.
As the internal combustion tractor
emerged from its experimental
stages, the steam tractor was
doomed, although it continued to
be used in threshing for many
years. The farmer was only too
glad to substitute the new tractor
for an engine suitable only for
heavy duty and requiring much
more expert care and attention
then he was capable of giving.
Even before the introduction of
the Farmall tractor, the In
ternational Harvester Company
pioneered in the development of
the power take-off, which, when it
appeared in 1913, finally
eliminated the necessity for the
ground drive wheel. This feature
permitted direct transmission of
power from the tractor to the
drawn machine, minimizing the
loss of power and opening the way
to the design of lighter, more
compact implements. By 1934, the
power take-off had been built into
nearly every tractor on the
market.
A further improvement was the
introduction of pneumatic-tired
tractors in 1933. Although they
increased the original cost of the
tractor, rubber tires had many
advantages, the most important of
which was the lessened costs.
Rubber tires for the first time
admitted the tractor to the paved
highway, an invaluable aid in
moving equipment from one field
to another on farms crossed by
important roads. Their cushioning
action added greatly to the life of
the tractor and the comfort of the
driver. Since their adoption,
manufacturers have been able to
build high speeds into tractors and
design heavier, more versatile
equipment.
The success of the Farmall
design induced manufacturers to
give more attention to the needs of
the small farmer. THE In
ternational Harvester Company
led the way in this direction with
its introduction in 1933 of the
Farmall 12, the first of the one
plow tractors. This was followed in
1939 by Farmall A and B, even
smaller and less expensive
machines. The Farma-1 Cub was
finalized for production in 1945-
ready to serve all the purposes of
the nation’s smallest farms. These
small tractors brought with them,
as collateral developments,
equipment also adapted to the
farm of limited acreage. This
equipment could be mounted on
the tractor or used with the power
take-off in the same manner as the
larger machines.
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Beginning with Deering's Appleby binder of 1880, the automatic grain binder
dominated the harvesting industry for fifty years. After 1930, grain binders and
stationary threshers gradually gave way to the combined harvester-thresher. In
ternational Harvester Company dominated the grain binder business for some fifty
years, finally closing out production in 1956. Of particular note is humane treatment
which was given beasts of burden back at the turn of the century. In this photograph the
horses are wearing hula skirts, which are actually ‘fly-chasers.’ The motion of the
animals put the strips in motion which in turn kept the flies from lighting.
Experimental work on the first
International Harvester tractor
began in 1905 at the former Rock
Falls Works under the supervision
of Mr. Johnson. This was a cum
bersome three-wheeled machine
with a single wide wheel in front.
The following year, the Company
put its first tractor on the market.
These were built under an
arrangement with the Ohio
Manufacturing Company of
Sandusky, Ohio, which supplied
the truck and transmission on
which an International engine
made at Milwauxee Works was
mounted.
Just as the Civil War hastened
the final unequivocal acceptance
of the reaper. World War I gave a
tremendous impetus to the use of
tractors of the farm. Confronted by
an unprecadented demand of for
food, both in this country and in
Europe, and war’s inevitable
drainage of manpower from
normal pursuits, farmers turned to
tractors in increasing numbers as
the only solution to their problems.
Here they found the answer to both
labor and power shortages.
In spite of considerable loss of
farm animals to the Army, there
was a marked increase in farm
production. Moreover, the fact that
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tractors did not use up feed as did
farm animals allowed that much
more grain to be channeled to a
hungry world. During the war
years, tractor production at In
ternational Harvester more than
doubled. This clear demonstration
of the efficiency of tractor power
on the farm started a decline in the
use of animal power that has been
steady ever since.
International Harvester
engineers had been working for
many years on a tractor, which,
unlike the standard four-wheeled
machine, could be used effectively
for cultivating row crops. The first
such attempt was a motor
cultivator, produced ex
perimentally in 1915. Because of its
high manufacturing cost and
limited utility, this machine has
dropped from production in 1919 in
favor of conventrated ex
perimentation on all all-purpose
tractor. Up to this time, it had been
felt in many quarters that two
tractors would be necessary to the
efficient operation of a farm
without animal power: a con
ventional four-wheeled model for
all duties except cultivating and a
motor cultivator of some type.
The Farmall model was the first
successful attempt at building a
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genuine all-purpose tractor. Its
advent in 1922 revolutionized the
tractor industry. Daring that year,
20 of the experimental Farmall
tractors were sent to the field for
testing and careful observation by
International Harvester experts;
in 1923, 26 more were sent out for
trial after further field-tested
refinements had been made. The
following year regular production
on a limited schedule was begun at
Tractor Works.
Producing For
Victory
World War II focused attention
on International Harvester’s/mass
production plants as vital sources
of war material. In earlier wars
the Company’s prinicpal war effort
had centered in the production of
farm equipment needed to replace
hand labor. In the early years of
World War 11, by government
order, the manufacture of farm
equipment was drastically
reduced; however, large quan
tities of farm equipment parts
were made to keep existing
machines in operation. Many of
International Harvester’s fac
tories were converted to the
production of military trucks and
tractors, aircraft torpedoes, guns,
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