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Whatever Happened to McCormick-Deering?
By Sam Moore
Not long ago, someone asked: "Whatever happened to McCormick-Deering?"
As most of you know, McCormick-Deering was never a "company" itself, but the trademark name of a line of tractors and farm machinery manufactured by the International Harvester Company,
Between the mid-1880's and 1902, a vicious battle known as "the Harvester Wars" was waged on America's grain fields. The farm equipment manufacturer's capacity to build harvesting machines far exceeded demand, so sales representatives of the two giants, McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. and Deering Harvester Co., along with their smaller rivals, tried every trick possible to sell their binders to reluctant farmers. The struggle became so intense that competing salesmen would not only bribe farmers to buy, but allegedly sabotaged the competition's machines, and physically attacked people.
For many years after the merger, IHC sold two parallel lines of equipment, one named McCormick and one named Deering, each slightly different from the other, but wearing the IHC logo. This was deemed necessary since each line had its loyal customers, and there was usually both a McCormick and a Deering dealer in every farm community.
The U.S. government filed an antitrust action against IHC in 1912, and the suit dragged on until a consent decree was signed in 1918. One of the terms of the agreement called for IHC to have only one dealer in each town, meaning that the dual McCormick and Deering lines of equipment could no longer be maintained. Indeed, the expense of designing, building and supporting both lines of equipment had been a serious drag on the company, so in 1923 a new grain binder - one combining the best features of each of the older machines - was introduced and called the McCormick-Deering. All of IHC's other farm implements soon followed suit, and the famous McCormick-Deering line was born.
McCormick-Deering farm implements and Fgrmall tractors helped IHC become the grant of the industry. Its 1923 U.S. farm equipment sales of $150 million tripled those of second place Deere & Co. "Harvester is, of course, the greatest single agricultural enterprise in the world," trumpeted Fortune magazine at the time.
However, even a corporate giant such as IHC wasn't immune to the calamity of the Great Depression. By 1932, its U.S. sales fell 78 percent, and the price of its stock dropped to $10.37 from a 1929 peak of $142 per share. Tens of thousands of Harvester employees were laid off and remained so through most of the lean 1930s.
The McCormick family had, starting as early as 1862, crushed several attempts at unionization by their own workers. In the late 1930s, though, the unions started organizing among Harvester's workforce of 60,000. IHC management fought bitterly, but by 1945, most every worker was a union member.
After VJ Day, Harvester started a round of diversification and acquisition that cost the company a fortune and diluted its focus. The old core business of farm equipment and trucks was joined by construction equipment and home refrigeration. Meanwhile, the attitude of IHC's management was summed up by one long-time dealer: