CORPORATIONS: Reaper’s Harvest

On the north side of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue Bridge, in a small circle of dignitaries, Mayor Martin Kennelly and International Harvester Co.’s Fowler McCormick last week unveiled a plaque. It noted the Chicago centenary of the International Harvester Co., largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment in the world. Five days later, under tents and in open areas flanking nearby Soldier Field, some 275 pieces of Harvester equipment were displayed, to show how the company intends to make the second hundred years as exciting and profitable as the first.

As in the past, Harvester would do the farmer’s reaping, picking and binding, with corn-and cotton-pickers, beet harvesters, self-propelled combines. But like the U.S. farmer, Harvester had its eye firmly fixed on the all-purpose tractor. This year the company turned out 108,000tractors, more than any other piece of heavy equipment. Next year it intends to cover the market, from the giant 18-ton, 170-h.p. diesel crawler to the midget Farmall Cub, selling for $545 f.o.b. (about $1,000 with attachments). The Cub was designed to mechanize some of the 3,300,000 U.S. farms of 40 acres and less.

International Harvester was also about ready to tool up the farmer’s home. Prominently displayed were deep freezers in two sizes, and the company’s latest: an 8-cubic-ft. household refrigerator.

Out of the Forge Shop. Harvester has come a long way since 1831, when Cyrus Hall McCormick invented his reaper in the forge shop of his Virginia farm and laid the groundwork for Harvester’s greatness. Cyrus McCormick plugged his reapers with written testimonials, sold them on the installment plan ($30 down, $90 on terms). In 1847 he built a three-story brick factory in Chicago. By the time he died in 1884, the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. was one of the largest in the field. Even after it became the International Harvester Co. 18 years later, through a merger with its principal competitors, it remained “a family affair.”

Harvester’s directing head and chairman is Cyrus’ grandson. Tall, 51-year-old Fowler McCormick (who is also a grandson of John D. Rockefeller Sr.) was a latecomer to business. Princeton man McCormick studied art, archeology and music and frolicked with Manhattan’s nightclub set before he went to work in Harvester’s experimental department in 1928. He worked up as “blockman” (the company man in dealing with distributors), branch manager, vice president in charge of manufacturing, and finally president in 1941. Shy, quiet and hardworking, McCormick had a thorough Harvester education by 1946, when he became chairman. He also had a firm determination to bring peace to Harvester’s labor relations, stormy ever since the Haymarket riots of 1886 (when striking Harvester workers killed seven Chicago policemen).

Out of Luck. So far, Fowler McCormick has not had too much luck with Labor. An 80-day strike last year by the Redlined Farm Equipment and Metal Workers’ Union (C.I.O.) shut down eleven of the company’s 22 U.S. plants. Only this week 8,000 Harvester workers ended a four-day walkout over the discharge of three men. Nevertheless, by profit-sharing and pension plans, McCormick eventually hopes to bring permanent peace.

He had no better luck with his statesmanlike move last spring to stop inflation. He cut the prices of Harvester equipment between 1% arid 23% in the hope of encouraging others to do the same. As costs increased, it looked last week as if Harvester would soon boost its prices.

Despite the reductions, Harvester did better in its last fiscal year, which ends Oct. 31, than ever before. In all, it grossed $700,000,000. And it looked as if farmers, flush with cash and starved for machinery, would continue to bid for Harvester’s products for some time to come.