page_title: Allis-Chalmers
section_title: 1920s
hierarchical_section_title: Allis-Chalmers / History / 1920s
caption_attribution_description: English: Allis-Chalmers model United tractor. Photo taken by Evan Jennings, Nov. 2006 at Woodland, California, AG History Center.
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: As had also been true of the 1900–1920 period, the Roaring Twenties were a favorable time for consolidation and even conglomeration throughout the business world. It was also a time of strongly continuing mechanization on North American farms. At Allis-Chalmers, the 1920s brought yet more tractors, such as the 18-30, the 12-20, the 15-25, and the United tractor/Model U.
  Famed inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla spent the period 1919-1922 working in Milwaukee for Allis-Chalmers.
  In 1926 Falk hired Harry Merritt, who would be a senior executive in Allis-Chalmers's tractor business for many years. Merritt had worked in the sales and marketing of various brands of farm and construction equipment, most recently Holt, when Falk hired him away. Buescher, who worked under Merritt, credited Merritt with turning around Allis-Chalmers's ailing farm equipment business and transforming it into the main profit center for the parent corporation. He said, "Some say that General Falk pulled Harry Merritt into Milwaukee to liquidate the ailing tractor division. Others say that he was brought in to breathe new life into the moribund and unprofitable operation. Even if the first appraisal is correct, the second proved to be the way it turned out. […] After Merritt's arrival, the profit picture changed. The farm equipment business proved to be a financial lifesaver for the corporation. […] From next to nothing in 1927, Merritt saw the percentage of farm equipment business go to just short of sixty percent of corporate sales."
  Also in 1926, Allis-Chalmers acquired Nordyke Marmon & Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, a maker of flour-milling equipment. In 1927, it acquired the Pittsburgh Transformer Company, a maker of electrical transformers.
  In 1928, Allis-Chalmers acquired the Monarch Tractor Company of Springfield, Illinois, thus adding a line of crawler tractors. In 1929, it acquired the La Crosse Plow Works of La Crosse, Wisconsin. The La Crosse Plow Works had a good-quality plow and various desirable implements, which now expanded the Allis-Chalmers implement line. Also in 1929, Harry Merritt was in California when the bright orange California poppy blossoms inspired him to think about the use of bright colors in marketing. Brightly colored things that can be seen from far away had potential in farm equipment marketing. He soon changed the paint color of Allis-Chalmers's tractors to Persian Orange, the available paint color that he felt most closely resembled the California poppy's color. Thus began the tradition of orange Allis-Chalmers tractors. Various competitors would follow suit over the next decade, as International Harvester switched to all-red (1936), Minneapolis-Moline switched to Prairie Gold (late 1930s), and Case switched to Flambeau Red (late 1930s). John Deere already had a distinctive color scheme with its bright green and yellow.
  In 1928, Henry Ford canceled U.S. production of the Fordson tractor. This disrupted the business of many firms: farm equipment dealers who sold Fordsons and aftermarket equipment builders whose attachments were designed to mount on Fordsons (for example, the Gleaner combines of the 1920s mounted on Fordsons, and many Fordson industrial tractors used aftermarket attachments). Many of these firms formed a conglomerate in 1928 called the United Tractor & Equipment corporation. United arranged a deal with Allis-Chalmers to build a tractor to substitute for the now-missing Fordson. Around 1930, the United conglomerate collapsed. The reasons that various authors have given have been disagreements between its investors, the onset of the Great Depression, and the fact that Ford Motor Company Ltd of England, which was continuing the Fordson line independently of the U.S. Ford company, began exporting new Fordsons to America. The United tractor became the Allis-Chalmers Model U.
caption: United tractor on display at Heidrick Ag History Center, Woodland, California, USA
exif: {}