page_title: Allis-Chalmers
section_title: 1930s
hierarchical_section_title: Allis-Chalmers / History / 1930s
caption_attribution_description: English: Two row field corn picker mounted on Allis-Chalmers tractor. These corn pickers were precursors to the modern combine and picked entire ears of corn loaded by the rear elevator into a trailing wagon.
context_page_description: Allis-Chalmers was a U.S. manufacturer of machinery for various industries. Its business lines included agricultural equipment, construction equipment, power generation and power transmission equipment, and machinery for use in industrial settings such as factories, flour mills, sawmills, textile mills, steel mills, refineries, mines, and ore mills. The first Allis-Chalmers Company was formed in 1901 as an amalgamation of the Edward P. Allis Company, Fraser & Chalmers, the Gates Iron Works, and the industrial business line of the Dickson Manufacturing Company. It was reorganized in 1912 as the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company. During the next 70 years its industrial machinery filled countless mills, mines, and factories around the world, and its brand gained fame among consumers mostly from its farm equipment business's orange tractors and silver combine harvesters. In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of divestitures transformed the firm and eventually dissolved it. Its successors today are Allis-Chalmers Energy and AGCO.
context_section_description: The 1930s were a pivotal decade. Despite the Great Depression, Allis-Chalmers succeeded as demand for its machinery continued.
  In 1931, it acquired Advance-Rumely of La Porte, Indiana, mostly because Merritt wanted the company's network of 24 branch houses and about 2,500 dealers, which would greatly increase Allis-Chalmers's marketing and sales power in the farm equipment business. Also in 1931, the corporation's electrical equipment business expanded via acquisition when Brown, Boveri & Cie, in a financial pinch because of the Depression, sold its U.S. electrical operations to Allis-Chalmers. After 1931 Allis-Chalmers was the licensee for U.S. sales of European products of Brown, Boveri & Cie.
  In 1932, Allis-Chalmers collaborated with Firestone to introduce pneumatic rubber tires to tractors. The innovation quickly spread industry-wide, as (to many farmers' surprise) it improved tractive force and fuel economy in the range of 10% to 20%. Within only 5 years, pneumatic rubber tires had displaced cleated steel wheels across roughly half of all tractors sold industry-wide. Cleated steel remained optional equipment into the 1940s. Also in 1932, Allis-Chalmers acquired the Ryan Manufacturing Company, which added various grader models to its construction equipment line.
  In 1933, Allis-Chalmers introduced its Model WC, its first-generation row-crop tractor, which would become its highest-selling tractor ever. In 1937, its lighter and more affordable second-generation row-crop, the Model B, arrived, and also became a top seller. Its All-Crop Harvester was the market leader in pull-type (tractor-drawn) combine harvesters.
  In October 1937, Allis-Chalmers was one of fourteen major electrical manufacturing companies that went to court to change the way labor unions excluded contractors and products in the building trades through the union use of the "Men and Means Clause". The action of Allis-Chalmers and others eventually resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision of June 18, 1945, that ended certain union practices that violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.
caption: A two-row corn picker
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