The Oliver
Corporation History-Part 2 of the History of the Oliver
Chilled Plow Works
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Big
thanks to Sherry Schaefer editor of the Hart-Parr Oliver
Collector Magazine for her material!
As of September 1, 2003, the original No. 1 Oliver
Chilled Plow Works factory has been demolished.
The old powerhouse building is being renovated to house Rose
Fuel & Materials, Inc. You can visit Rose Fuel
& Materials by clicking
here
On
April 21, 1868 James Oliver received his first patent,
Number 76,939.1 It
covered the essential features of the chilled iron plow and
in February of the following year, he was granted another
patent that covered the unique chilling process, which Mr.
Oliver had developed.2
By 1868 the small Oliver factory
was incorporated and renamed as the South Bend Iron Works.
The stockholders of this newly formed company included
George Milburn (of Milburn Wagon Company, Mishawaka,
Indiana), his son-in-law Clement Studebaker (of the
Studebaker Manufacturing Company), and a few other important
businessmen of South Bend.
The South
Bend Iron Works built a new foundry, warehouse, machine
shop, and a wood shop. The factory, in addition to
making plows, kept busy by making castings for Singer Sewing
Machine Company, casting wagon skeins for Studebaker, and
making numerous other castings on order. Oliver
continued making wagon skeins for Studebaker until 1874, by
which time the volume of plow orders had grown so much that
Oliver then devoted full time to making the Oliver Chilled
Plow.
In 1870 the
Oliver trademark was adopted and would, from then on, appear
on every Oliver Chilled
Plow produced. The South Bend Register
commented in 1871 that Oliver "...[if he keeps on
improving his plow] it will soon have no rivals in the
country. The popularity of the Oliver Chilled Plow is
almost unprecedented in the history of plows."3
In 1871 the factory sold 1,500 plows, three years later the
company made and sold 17,000 plows and had outgrown their
factory. In 1874 Mr. Oliver bought 40 acres of
property in the southwest portion of South Bend (the
property started at the northwest corner of Sample and
Chapin Streets).4
Not 
only
did the factory increase in size, the Oliver product line
began to increase as well. Clement Studebaker thought
Mr. Oliver was spending too much money and sold his shares
back to the Oliver family. The Oliver family now owned
1,713 of the original 2,000 shares the company issued.
The Oliver company had 200 employees.
By 1877 the
company had established branch houses (dealerships of Oliver
equipment) in Mansfield, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Rochester, New
York; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and San Francisco,
California. In 1879 the company began to export the
Oliver plow to Scotland. Also, the plant expanded and
railroad tracks were extended into the plant. By 1881
James Oliver had purchased the remaining stock, which made
the company a completely family owned business. The
plant was producing 600 plows per day and employed 900
people.
However, in
1885 there were problems. Labor strikes, riots, and
disputes plagued the factory. On January 12, 1885 a
great strike and riot started when men forcibly entered the
Oliver plant and forced the employees to stop working.
The next day at 7:00 a.m. 200 men armed with clubs and iron
bars assembled at the front gates and refused admittance to
the factory. There is a story that a South Bend
resident by the name of Captain Nicar, an old Civil War
veteran, forced his way into the office after receiving
several wounds on his head and arms. Captain Nicar was
forced to draw his revolver and held the mob at bay. A
policeman that was answering Mr. Nicar's call for help was
severely beaten.5
The mob then entered the factory and 100 men went through
the building breaking windows and plow bases. Nicar
called in the veteran guard, which arrived with about 50 men
(with fixed bayonets). The crowd was dispersed with no
further bloodshed. Twelve deputy sheriffs were called
in to protect the factory throughout the night. All
firearms were removed from the local gun shops in South Bend
and locked up in the South Bend Court House.6
Ten men were arrested on charges of riot, assault and
battery.
The factory
remained closed until March 3, 1885. James had
seriously considered moving the plant and plow operations to
another city, leaving South Bend altogether. On
February 21, 1885 there was a mass meeting at the
courthouse, called by the mayor, to try and persuade the
Olivers to remain in South Bend. Resolutions were
adopted and presented to the Olivers who relayed the pledges
made would be considered.7
On March 3, 1885, James wrote in his journal, "have
determined to start the factory tomorrow."8
Several of the rioters that were arrested were fined $100
and given 30 to 60 days in jail.
In
1887 the Oliver company began exporting plows to South
America, which resulted in thousands and thousands of Oliver
plows sold that year. The plow market then expanded to
include Africa, Australia, and France. The phrase
"Plowmakers for the World" was adopted as a
trademark of the Oliver plow.
In 1901 the
South Bend Iron Works was incorporated and the name was
changed to the Oliver Chilled Plow Works with all 5,000
company shares held by members of the Oliver family.9
By 1905, James Oliver had been in the plow business for 50
years. This was also the most productive and
successful year for the Oliver Chilled Plow Works.
The following
year, at the age of 83, James was granted the last of his 45
patents. He had been successful in making the plow a
useful and strong farming instrument. In a U.S. Senate
report to Congress it was stated that if, for a single year,
all the farmers in the United States would use the Oliver
Chilled Plow instead of regular steel or iron plows, the
savings in labor would have totaled the sum of $45,000,000
(and this was the early 1900s)!10
In 1910 it required 135 man-hours to produce 100 bushels of
corn. Through the innovations of James Oliver, that
amount of time had decreased to 23 man-hours by 1960.11
In 1908 James
Oliver died at the age of 85. His son, Joseph Doty
Oliver (J.D.), replaced him as
president and J.D.'s son, James II, became director.
The company was continuing to grow and by 1909 there were
2,600 employees working at the Oliver Chilled Plow Works in
South Bend. More branch houses (dealerships) were
established in St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee;
Billings, Montana; and the expansion of a new plant in
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. From 1913 to 1914 sales
began to drop and business was becoming slow. However,
it was a temporary slow down, because business began to
increase in the years leading up to 1918. Business had
increased so much that the Oliver company built plant number
two for the purpose of building tractor plows.
Motorized, internal combustion engines were now becoming
accessible to the general farmer.
The
Oliver Chilled Plow Works had been the sole producer of
tractor plows for Henry Ford's tractor (Fordson).
However, Henry Ford was beginning to show more interest in
his automobile business than tractor production. J.D.
realized that if Ford pulled out, they would lose a large
portion of their business. The Oliver company started
to experiment with the creation of a tractor of their own.
The first tractor they produced was called the Oliver
Chilled Plow Tractor. There were only about 20
manufactured and distributed throughout the United States,
where it was well-received.12
J.D. was now
getting older, but he still had the incredible ability to
peer into the future of agriculture and farming. He
knew that the Oliver Chilled Plow Works needed to offer a
full-range of farming equipment to remain a competitive
company. In order for this to happen, it would require
a huge expansion and a lot of money and capital. The
only option available to the Oliver company was to merge
with other companies to make a full-line company. The
result was the merger of four companies. These four
companies were:
-
Hart-Parr
Tractor Works
Nichols&Shepard Company
Oliver Chilled Plow Works
American Seeding Company
J.D. was
named as the chairman of the board and his son, James II,
became vice-president. The assets of the Oliver
Chilled Plow Works exceeded the combined assets of the other
companies and J.D. was quoted as saying, "my name goes
on the company, or the deal's off." Thus the
Oliver Farm Equipment Company was the chosen name.13
Even though J.D. died in 1933, his legacy continued.
Soon the Oliver Farm Equipment Company began adding to their
line of machinery by acquiring additional plants.
There were four plants established and each produced their
own products. These plants were located in: South
Bend, Indiana; Charles City, Iowa; Battle Creek, Michigan;
and Springfield, Ohio. The following companies made up
the Oliver Farm Equipment Company:
American
Seeding Machine Company
The American
Seeding Machine Company was organized in 1903. The merger
brought together many competing companies. The
partners in the 1903 American Seeding Machine merger
included the Hoosier Drill Company of Richmond, Indiana.
The Hoosier
Drill Company was started by Joseph Ingels in 1857 and
operated at Milton, Indiana
until 1868 when the company was reorganized as the Hoosier
Drill Company. They manufactured, at first, corn
planting drills (hollow spikes that 'drilled' into the
ground and deposited a seed) and then broadcast seeders.
P.P. Mast and
Company, of Springfield, Ohio was another member of the
American Seeding merger. This company was formed in
1856 by John Thomas and P.P. Mast, under the name Thomas and
Mast. They built grain drills and cider presses, but
during the 1860s they expanded their manufacturing line by
introducing cultivators and other implements. During
1871 Thomas and Mast dissolved their partnership, being then
known as P.P. Mast and Company. This company built the
Buckeye Drill.14
Several other
drill manufacturers made up the 1903 merger under American
Seeding Machine Company. Superior Drill Company,
Empire Drill Company, and Bickford & Huffman were also
merged (with the previously mentioned companies) into the
American Seeding Machine and lost their individual
identities in the 1929 merger into the Oliver Farm Equipment
Company.
Hart-Parr
Company
Charles
Walter Hart and Charles H. Parr met at the University of
Wisconsin and became very close friends. Close to the
end of their college career they decided to work
cooperatively on a thesis that brought about the development
of their first engine. Their thesis dealt with the
limitations of early internal combustion engines and
Hart/Parr developed an engine that eliminated those
limitations (or most of them). They were so successful
in their ideas that the Hart-Parr company was organized in
Madison, Wisconsin on April 29, 1897. Until 1901 they
operated their engine factory, perfected their valve-in-head
engine design, as well as a cooling system employing oil as
the cooling medium.15
They
continued building superior engines until they needed larger
facilities and because they lacked the capital to build,
Hart's father financed the factory if they moved to Charles
City, Iowa. The Hart-Parr Company was organized on
June 12, 1901 at Charles City. Ground was broken for a
new factory July 5th of the same year. Their
development of the steam and gas powered tractors caused the
company to grow very rapidly. By 1911 the Hart-Parr
Company employed 1,100 people and tractor production was
growing every year. By 1915 the company was
capitalized at $2.5 million.
Charles
Hart left the company in 1917 and pursued business ventures
on his own. He left Charles City and only returned
upon the event of his death in 1937. The 1929 merger
of Hart-Parr into the Oliver Farm Equipment Company brought
about the Oliver
Hart-Parr "Row Crop" tractor, an entirely new
model with a unit frame design and vertical engine.
Nichols
& Shepard Company
John Nichols
started out as a blacksmith in Battle Creek, Michigan in the
mid-1800s. He took in David Shepard as a partner very
early in the history of the company. Hardly anything
is known about the early history of the company; Nichols and
Shepard probably relied on word-of-mouth as advertising for
their products).
The Pitts
brothers developed their first threshing machine in 1837.
Their threshing machine used a type of wooden slatted apron
to separate grain from the straw and chaff. This type
of threshing machine was used for more than twenty years.
However, Nichols and Shepard decided that this type of
threshing machine was never going to be a success. So,
they experimented with ways to separate grain from the plant
it grew upon with varying degrees of success. About
1857 Nichols and Shepard developed their first vibrator
thresher, which utilized an entirely different design.16
The Nichols and Shepard thresher was a big hit with farmers
and the company entered into the era of big business.
Around
1900 the company introduced their famous Red River Special
line of threshers. Along with threshing machines,
Nichols and Shepard designed and created a line of combines.
After the merger of 1929, the Oliver company continued, for
several years, to manufacture the Red River line of
threshing machines and an entire line of combines and corn
pickers first developed by Nichols and Shepard.
Later
Acquisitions
The Oliver
Farm Equipment Company also merged with other farm equipment
companies after the 1929 merger of the above
mentioned companies.
Ann Arbor
Machine Company
The Ann Arbor
Machine Company had its foundation in 1882. They were
known for, mainly, their production of hay presses (hay
bailers). The company's main hay press was the
Columbia. This 
model was manufactured for over 20 years until a lighter
weight machine was developed and produced. The new
model was designated as the Model 20 and only weighted 3,400
pounds. In comparison, the Columbia weighed in at over
three tons!17 The
Model 20 was produced through the 1920s. The Model 40
was then introduced in 1924, designed to be a successor to
the Model 20.
The company
began in Ann Arbor, Michigan and then moved in the 1920s to
Shelbyville, Illinois. In 1943 a long-term business
lease was extended to the company from the Oliver Farm
Equipment Company. The Shelbyville plant was closed in
1970 and absorbed into the Oliver factories at South Bend,
Charles City, Iowa, and Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
Cleveland
Tractor Company
Rollin H.
White organized the Cleveland Tractor Company and
incorporated it on January 29, 1916.18
Rollin and his brother were busy inventors and probably had
invented a type of tractor as early as 1911. The
Cleveland Motor Company manufactured tracked crawling
tractors that used
steel tracks instead of wheels.
The Cleveland
Tractor Company's plant in Cleveland, Ohio was acquired in
1944. They patented the name of their tractor, the
Cletrac. They produced a full range of crawlers with
worldwide distribution. They patented a controlled
differential steering, which is still in use by crawler and
heavy machinery manufacturers today. The Oliver
company continued to build Cletracs until 1962 when White
Motor Corporation (a separate company that evolved out of
R.H. White's invention of a steam 'car') purchased the
Oliver Farm Equipment Company.
Cockshutt
Farm Equipment Company
James
Cockshutt formed the Cockshutt Plow Company in 1877.
It was incorporated in 1882 and the factory was located in
Brantford, Ontario, Canada. The company first produced
plows and other planting implements, however, they are best
known for their tractors. Their two-digit models of
tractors were produced between 1946 and 1957.19
Tractor production at the Brantford plant ceased and all
production turned to combine manufacturing for both Oliver
and Cockshutt. The Cockshutt-built tractors were
replaced with Oliver-built tractors painted the Cockshutt
colors in Charles City, Iowa. White Motors, the parent
company of the Oliver Corporation, acquired Cockshutt in
1962. The Cockshutt name continued to be used until
1972, when they were slowly phased out by White. As
side notes...Cockshutt tractor production didn't really move
to Charles City. Cockshutt tractors were never built
again. Instead, Oliver supplied them with tractors.
At the same time Oliver-built combines were discontinued and
Cockshutt became the combine builder for both companies.
White Motors was the name of White until 1969. By then
it had acquired both Cockshutt and Minneapolis-Moline and
reorganized as White Farm Equipment.
A.B.
Farquhar Company
In 1889,
A(rthur). B. Farquhar began building threshing machines and
other farm machinery. 
Later, the company started the production of cultivators for
farm use (especially potato harvesting equipment).
Farquhar produced some steam engines early then moved onto
the production of traction engines. In 1952 the A.B.
Farquhar Company was sold to the Oliver Farm Equipment
Company. When White Farm Equipment took over the
Oliver Corporation, the Farquhar company was not included in
the merger and ceased to exist.
The Last
Days of the Oliver Farm Equipment Company
There was
much more to the Oliver company than just production of farm
implements. They built airplane fuselages for Boeing's
RB-47E Reconnaissance planes. In fact, the Battle
Creek, Michigan plant had an entire aviation division set up
for defense contracts. At that time, 37% of Oliver's
production was for defense contracts.20
The Charles City, Iowa plant was busy assembling
transmissions for the 25-ton crane carriers for the U.S.
Army Corp of Engineers. They also built and assembled
the 106MM recoilless rifle gun mounts for the Army.
The Cleveland, Ohio plant built the MG-1 crawler for the
Army, as well as, the M-47 tank final drives. They
were also responsible for the turrets on the tanks.
The Gilroy, California plant produced the 76MM guns for the
Walker Bull-Dog tank, including many other gun tubes and
parts. The Shelbyville, Ohio plant built the 155MM
Howitzer gun parts.
The Oliver
Corporation also built an industrial line of equipment that
included industrial road
graders, forklifts, road rollers, crawlers, and power units
to be used by other companies. By 1947, the Oliver
Corporation employed 9,000 and business was continuing to
grow. There were still members of James and J.D.
Oliver's family on the board of the Oliver Corporation.
However, during the 1950s the company started to change.21
Oliver stock
was being bought by people outside the company, which led to
a corporate takeover. The majority of stockholders
wanted to sell parts of the company off in order to make
bigger profits (and to 'line their pockets'). And
that's what a majority of stockholders agreed upon and the
most successful part of the Oliver company was bought by
White Motor Company, making it a wholly owned subsidiary.
At this time, all of the remaining Oliver family left the
board of the Oliver Corporation. White Motors, now
unimpeded, proceeded to keep what they wanted and sell off
the rest.
Production of
the White line of tractors and implements continued for
several years. Oliver (or White) then began to buy up
other companies and close plants to cut overhead expenses
(and create more profits). This resulted in the
closing of many of the oldest Oliver factories. Oliver
tractors were manufactured until 1976 when the last Oliver
2255 rolled down the assembly line. The silver-colored
White tractors had replaced the Oliver tractor.
Throughout the many mergers and corporation maneuvering,
nothing remains of the original Oliver company (except some
of the vacant Oliver factory buildings at the corner of
Sample and Chapin Streets here in South Bend), which began
it legacy in South Bend, Indiana. As of 2002, there
isn't even a White tractor company anymore. White Farm
Equipment is owned by AGCO and the Oliver's legacy must be
left to be preserved by the many men and women who restore
and show Oliver tractors and equipment.
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If
you would like to information about becoming a member of the
Hart-Parr Oliver Collector's Association visit
hartparroliver.org by
clicking the Oliver shield 
You can visit
the AGCO company's website by clicking their trademark
1Wendel,
C.H. Oliver Hart-Parr. MBI: Wisconsin, 1993.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
4Schaefer, Sherry. Unpublished
presentation, 2001. Mrs. Schaefer is the editor of the
Hart-Parr Oliver Collector Magazine. Visit them at www.oliverinformation.com
5Davis, H. Gail. Index to Oliver
Historical Data: 1770-1929. Unpublished, 1955.
6Ibid.
7Ibid.
8Oliver, James. Personal Journal.
Unpublished.
9Schaefer, Sherry. Unpublished
presentation, 2001. Ms. Schaefer is the editor of the
Hart-Parr Oliver Collector Magazine. Visit them at www.oliverinformation.com
10Ibid.
11Ibid.
12Ibid.
13Ibid.
14Wendel, C.H. Oliver Hart-Parr. MBI:
Wisconsin, 1993.
15Ibid.
16Ibid.
17Ibid.
18Ibid.
19Ibid.
20Schaefer, Sherry. Unpublished
presentation, 2001. Ms. Schaefer is the editor of the
Hart-Parr Oliver Collector Magazine. Visit them at www.oliverinformation.com
21Ibid.
