Beating Wartime Restrictions: Massey-Harris' Harvest Brigade
Let's Talk Rusty Iron
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A Massey-Harris ad for the Harvest Brigade featuring the No. 21 one-man, self-propelled combine.
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In the previous column (“The War Effort: WWII Quotas Cut Farm Machinery Supplies”), I reported on restrictions placed on farm machinery manufacturers during World War II by the U.S. government’s War Production Board (WPB). Some of these manufacturers, who generally were a resourceful lot, tried to beat the system, though, and two efforts were notable. The first, by Henry Ford in 1942, failed; it will be the subject of a future column. The second, by Massey-Harris Inc. in 1944, proved successful, positioning the company as a very strong player in the postwar machinery market.
The 1942 grain crop in the United States and Canada broke all previous records.
In the United States, the harvest tallied more than 3 billion bushels of corn and close to a billion bushels of wheat; in Canada, it amounted to more than a half billion bushels of wheat. In spite of these huge harvests, millions of the world’s people faced starvation because of the war’s devastation, and rationing of most food items was imposed in both countries.
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The U.S. War Food Administration set a 1944 goal of 1 billion bushels of wheat; even though thousands of farmers were serving in the Armed Forces and existing harvesting machines were worn out. Implement makers begged the War Production Board for a larger share of scarce raw materials so that badly needed new harvesting machines could be built, but the WPB couldn’t promise much help. The same situation existed in Canada.
Joe Tucker, vice president and sales manager of Massey-Harris in the United States, saw both a solution to the problem and an opportunity for his company. Tucker had served on the WPBs of both the United States and Canada, and was familiar with the workings and politics of both bodies.
Massey-Harris No. 21 self-propelled combine
On the eve of World War II, in spite of pressing war work, Massey-Harris rushed its famous No. 21 one-man, self-propelled (SP) combine into production. In early 1944, Tucker told the WPB that the No. 21 could, using the same amount of scarce raw material, harvest more grain than any other machine then being built. He also claimed that if he was permitted to build 500 extra machines, he could harvest at least 15 million bushels of grain from more than 1 million acres while releasing some 1,000 tractors for other work and saving 500,000 gallons of fuel.
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