AGRICULTURE: Harvester Goes to Town

International Harvester Co. last week uncorked the new plans it has for its six million U.S. farm customers. To put them into effect it plans to spend more than $100,000,000 in new plants, turn out a score of new products.

Harvester plans to build:

¶ A plant in Memphis where automatic cotton-pickers will be mass-produced for the first time. (Tentative price of the picker: $4,750.)

¶ A $47-million plant at Wood River, Ill. to build Harvester’s three smallest tractors.

If it can be had at a reasonable price, Harvester plans to buy the $71-million RFC plant outside Chicago in Melrose Park, where Buick has been building plane motors.

Harvester’s able, lanky President Fowler McCormick has great hopes for his small (only 1,050 Ibs.) Cub Tractor. It is designed for the 2,200,000 farmers with less than 40 acres, who now shy away from high-priced mechanization. Harvester officials hope that the Cub, complete with all necessary farm implements, can be sold “for no more than the cost of a good team of horses”—i.e., less than $1,000.