During the first decade of the 20th century, the International Harvester Company (IHC) was just dipping its toes into the fledgling tractor industry. R.W. Henderson, who later became IHC’s Manager of Road Engineers, wrote the following (edited by me) account of those early years. Mr. Henderson had worked for the Vulcan Engineering Co., at Albany, N.Y., and Russell Engine Co., of Massillon, Ohio, in the steam engine business, but decided the future lay in internal combustion as power and not steam. On March 3, 1909, he applied for a job at the Akron works of IHC and was immediately hired at “the wonderful salary of $1.75 per day of ten hours, or 17 ½ cents an hour.”
Henderson continues:Â At this time the Company was assembling three tractors a week. The engines were made at Milwaukee, thoroughly tested and shipped to Akron where we built the frame, mounted same, gave them what testing was necessary and shipped them to points where they were to be used by farmers. The Akron works was a set of ramshackle buildings that had belonged to the Buckeye Implement (Aultman, Miller Co., failed after Panic of 1907) people. The test yard was filled with foundry dirt and the dustiest place a man would want to work in.
I would take a tractor into this yard in the morning, hitch it to an old engine casting, give it a hard drag for nine hours and then turn it into the Paint Shop. The tractor was a crude affair with a full-length painted canvas canopy and the open exhaust came within about 4″ of this top. The motor was single cylinder, four cycle, open crankcase type, and with the exhaust gas blowing down in your face under the roof and the gas coming from the crankcase, together with the sand and grit rising from the ground made it practically impossible for a person to work in the test yard.
Soon they changed from painted canvas to corrugated tin roofs and ran the exhaust through the roof. This didn’t help the crankcase gas or the dust and dirt, but it did carry the exhaust gas and noise above the roof and made it a great more pleasant testing.
In November of 1909 a tractor was installed in the Akron Works’ Heat Treating Department to run a fan and Mr. Morrow assigned me as day, night and Sunday engineer. While I was only making $1.75 a day I was able to draw as high as $50.00 for two weeks work showing that I was working nearly continuously.
About this time IHC built a tractor plant in Chicago and Mr. E.A. Johnston was to be superintendent and Mr. Morrow his assistant. Mr. Morrow asked me if I would transfer and offered me $3.00 per ten hour day, which I accepted. Everyone then left for Chicago, except Mr. Morrow, Mr. Wells, and myself were left to close up shop in Akron.
Among the last things to be shipped from Akron was the two-cylinder opposed motor tractor that had been designed there in the fall. In loading this tractor which had a friction reverse and no brake, I accidentally got it going a little too fast on the car. Mr. Morrow was standing ahead guiding me and the tractor’s momentum together with the open friction reverse being covered with snow and not being able to take hold, let it go forward enough to catch Mr. Morrow between the car’s brake shaft and the tractor, tearing off the brake shaft and throwing Mr. Morrow to the tracks below. The front wheels of the tractor followed him but luckily, just as the tractor was about to overbalance and crash down upon him, the friction reverse which I had been holding against with all my power took hold and the tractor stopped half suspended from the end of the car.
With nothing to do at the Akron Works during the winter, things became very monotonous, but I was eventually called to Chicago, arriving here on the 4th day of March, 1910, just one year after starting to work for the company.
Mr. Henderson had many more adventures with International Harvester, and they may show up in a future “Looking Back” column.
Sam Moore
