The intention is to create a factual history through the years of I.H. The title I.H. 100 years of History is intended to cover stories about the International Harvester in particular in America, the basic source of information has been the IHC Almanac and Encyclopedia. This was produced each year and distributed around customers. Please just imagine living on a farm in the remote parts of America, receiving an Almanac must have been fantastic, no television, no radio and very few other people to talk to. It must have been a life-saver and helper to not only keep you sane but also a great assistant showing you how to improve. Each copy is full of really good advice.
Please if you have any helpful relevant information, let me know, I will be very grateful, all the best, yours Mike michaelhuntington43@gmail.com
1. The first story comes from the 1917 Almanac, it is Titled ‘The Story of the Binder’.
Go back a 100 + years. Put yourself in the position of being a farmer on the wide acres of America, you have worked your socks off and managed to tame and cultivate the land and your crop is now ready to harvest. Now you and your family have got to harvest that crop. Your only tool is the scythe, you now have hours and hours of back-breaking work to look forward too.
The binder must have been such a fantastic invention, it really made the growing of large field based cereals a possibility.
The International Harvester Binder Worthy of Confidence.
The slogan above was printed in the IHC Almanac of 1917. The following article said as follows;
They harvest millions of acres of grain. Every year thousands of International Harvester binders leave our warehouses to take up the harvest work on American farms. Every year the small-grain crops of the country are cut and tied into bundles of convenient size for handling Champion, Deering, McCormack, Milwaukee, Osbourne and Plano binders and baler twine. Every year millions of bushels of wheat, oats, rye, barley and rice are harvested with less work and trouble than it used to harvest a few hundred acres of grain. All of this is possible only because IHC binders and binder twine have proved themselves efficient and dependable. A grain binder with the International Harvester trade-mark on it is worthy of the confidence farmers put in it.
International Harvester binders have been perfected in every possible detail. The highest grade of materials are used throughout – the kind experience in the field has shown to be best adapted to each part.
Having a high quality machine, each owner of an International Harvester binder is fully protected against loss from accident or mishap through the splendid repair service given by our eighty-eight branch houses in principle American cities and by the thousands of local dealers in all parts of the country who carry of necessary repairs or can get them from a branch house in a few hours’ time.
The binder is the reaper plus education. The reaper started the farmer toward prosperity. The grain binder has kept him so. It was no longer ago than the late 1870’s that the binder became a fact. It took a lot of hard work, much money and many experiments to evolve the principles of the first reaping machines into our modern twine binder. First a seat was added for the driver, next a platform on which two men stood to do the binding, then came the wire binder, and at last the machine that today is used wherever there are harvest fields. Write for a descriptive catalog and our book ‘Guide for the care and operation of Grain Binders’ N.B.Written 1917.
It can be suggested that the ability of America to produce cereal based products in such quantity was a basic reason why the Allies were able to win the First World War.
2. International Harvester Service 100 Years Ago.
This article was in the IHC Almanac 1918 and it explained how the IH system worked.
There was in each city a International Harvester Branch House. There were over 90 Houses in the U.S.A. (dated 1918)
The Houses supplied their local dealers, so you were never too far from back-up and service. The importance of good service and back-up was prominent. International Harvester was the farmers friend, their product range was amazing,
The farm would often have a International Harvester stationary engine, (no mains electricity or piped water) this would drive the water pump and other machines, a Wyoming Farm Bulletin (Aug. 1915) showed that the farmer’s wife supplying water for the farm-house for the year would carry the equivalent of 448,000 pounds = 200 tons of water, or the equivalent of carrying 224 horses each weighing 2,000 pounds each. Without an engine and pump, life was very hard. How far she had to carry and pump the water depended on the particular situation. They were very tough women.
The engine could also run the milking machine to milk the cows, run the roller mill to mill the grain and many other jobs. The stationary engine must have made all the difference to life on the farm, American farmers and their wives and families were made of very tough stock, they needed to be.