Farm Implements

Of the more than 200 manufacturers of agricultural implements in the U. S., the greatest by far is the International Harvester Co. Another, far smaller, far less staunch, is the Advance-Rumely Co. Both last week made their financial reports for 1925; found the year the best in almost a decade.

International Harvester's net profit for the year, after interest and charges, was $19,171,240. This equals, with preferred dividends deducted, $14.82 a share on $99,876,772 common stock (authorized capital: $130,000,000 common, $100,000,000 1% preferred). On common, $5 will be paid, the balance going to increase surplus by $9,813,770 to a total of $64,934,938.

Advance-Rumely, manufacturers of stationary, portable and tractor engines, separators, corn shellers, plowing, hulling and threshing machines, fuel and water tanks and trucks, tractor plows and accessories, profited during the year $540,577, equivalent, after proper deductions, to $4.32 on the $12,500,000 6% cumulative preferred stock. Only $3 a share was paid on this preferred, leaving in arrears $13.50 a share or a total of $1,687,500. Nothing was paid on the $13,750,000 of common stock. This showing results, despite the good business year, from the foreclosure sale in 1914 of the M. Rumely Co. and the Rumely Products Co. The Reorganization Committee bought these for $4,000,000. Now Finley P. Mount is President.

Vastly more solid is the International Harvester Co., which makes practically every tool the farmer may need: beet pullers manure spreaders cane mills motor coaches coiled springs motor truck units corn bundlers movers corn cultivators plows corn pickers potato diggers corn shellers rakes corn shredders reapers cream separators culti-packers seeding machines engines side rakes ensilage, cutters speed trucks grain binders sweep rakes grain headers tedders harrows threshers harvest threshers tillage implements hay loaders tractors hay presses hay stackers twine listers wagons, etc. These are made at plants in Chicago, Rock Falls, Canton (Ill.), Ft. Wayne, Richmond (Ind.), Akron, Springfield (Ohio), St. Paul (Minn.), Auburn (N. Y.) and Milwaukee (Wis.). Raw materials come from company-owned iron ore mines in Minnesota, coal and coke works in Kentucky and at Chicago, furnace and steel mills at Chicago, timber lands and sawmills in Missouri, sisal plantations in Cuba. The S. S. Harvester, 10,000 tons, affords transportation economies.

Subsidiary manufacturing companies of the International Harvester are: Aktiebolget International Harvester Co. (Sweden), Chatham Works (Chatham, Ont.),

Compagnie Internationale des Machines Agricoles S. A. (France), Harvester Works (Hamilton. Ont.), International Harvester Co. of Canada, .Ltd., International Harvester Co. m. b. H. (Germany), International Harvester Co. in Latvia, International Harvester Co. in Russia, Plow Works (Hamilton, Ont.), Springfield Spring Co. (Springfield, Ohio), Wisconsin Steel Co. and Wisconsin Lumber Co.

Sales are handled through companies and agencies in the U. S., Australia, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

For the parent company, Cyrus Hall McCormick is Chairman of the Board of Directors, Harold Fowler McCormick, Chairman of the Executive Committee, and Alexander Legge, President.

The romance of the reaper and the life of its prophet are forgotten, perhaps, in the cities. But in the fields of the world, men hitch everything from gas tractors to camels and musk oxen ahead of their harvesting machinery and marvel, as regularly as the world's cereals ripen, at the power over the earth given them by one man's brain.

Cyrus Hall McCormick used to go with his father, Robert, into a log hut on their Virginia farm and the two would work secretly for hours. The father was a Scotch-Irishman, quick with his hands. He had invented a hemp-brake, a cloyer-sheller, a bellows and a threshing machine that won him fame before he left the old country. He often stood pensively over a rusted wreck beside his Virginia barn, the wreck of a baffled dream. Cyrus too studied it. It was a reaper that would not reap. One day in 1831 (after his father's death), he hitched four horses to an ungainly contraption, "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying machine" (London Times), and lurched into a neighbor's hilly oatfield. Horses shied, dogs barked, boys yelled, slaves giggled as the burly 22-year-old inventor and his clumsy juggernaut slewed and jolted through a ragged swath. Farmer Ruff, owner of the oats, called a halt; he thought his grain was being thrashed standing. But a local politician rode up and invited McCormick upon his land. There the contraption reaped six acres in half a day--six men's work. Young McCormick devoted himself to his invention with monastic zeal. He avoided marriage--"Alas, I have other work"--and farmed alone. Over the countryside he preached the reaper, but (like Mohammed) converted only his own family at first. Not until 1841 did he sell a reaper, but the next year he sold seven, at $100 apiece. The family farm became a rural factory, turning out 29 machines in 1843, 50 in 1844. Then Cyrus McCormick bestrode his horse and rode into the Midwest. He saw the vast prairies, saw hogs turned loose in wheat that men had not time to harvest. He rode through Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio and New York proclaiming the reaper, calling men to buy.

In 1847, McCormick entered a swampy town at the foot of Lake Michigan. It had no railroad, no canal; only a river, flowing the wrong way. But it was busy and McCormick saw that it was good. After two minutes' talk, Chicago's first mayor, William B. Ogden, bought a half partnership and McCormick proceeded to build his factory. They sold $50,000 worth of reapers for the next harvest.

When he could, McCormick bought out Ogden. He wanted, all by himself, to make all the harvesters in the world. When, in 1871, Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern and his factory was a mass of embers, McCormick turned to his beautiful young wife and asked if he should rebuild or retire. Nettie Fowler McCormick replied: "Build again at once. I do not want, our boy to grow up in idleness." He rebuilt, bigger than ever. Their boy was Cyrus Hall Jr., then a lad of 12. The next year he had a brother, Harold Fowler. There were other children, but these two were the only ones to engage actively in their father's vast business. And today the tradition is continued by Cyrus 3rd.

But it is natural for amassed millions to lead their inheritors from industrial to cultural pursuits. And the direction of most great industries eventually passes into the hands of ladder-climbersmen schooled by industry for its own purposes. Into such hands the International Harvester Co. passed in 1922, when Alexander Legge was elected its president. Mr. Legge, great in stature, sombre of brow, "began" with the company in 1891 at Omaha.