GRAPHIC 1908 MINNESOTA MOLINE PLOW CO. LETTERHEAD, MINNEAPOLIS BRANCH

Description

GRAPHIC 1908 MINNESOTA MOLINE PLOW CO. LETTERHEAD, MINNEAPOLIS BRANCH OF MOLINE PLOW CO.  MOLINE ILLINOIS. ORIGINAL
"AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS, WAGONS AND VEHICLES"
401-407 THIRD ST. NORTH
MINNESOTA MANAGER:  C M DURKEE
G A STEPHENS; PRESIDENT
F C ALLEN; VP
C R STEVENS: SECRETARY AND SUPR.
ADDRESSED TO CLARA CITY MERCANTILE
SEE MY STORE: VINTAGE HARDWARE STORE COLLECTIBLES
The
Moline Plow Company
was an American manufacturer of
plows
and other
farm implements
, headquartered in
Moline, Illinois
, USA.
Moline Plow was formed in the 1870s when the firm of Candee & Swan, a competitor of
Deere and Company
(also of Moline), won a lawsuit against Deere allowing it to use the "Moline Plow" name.
[3]
Reorganized under the new name, it built a line of
horse-drawn
plows and other implements to serve the large American agricultural market. The implement line included
wagons
and
carriages
. The company absorbed various smaller wagon and carriage building companies.
In 1915, Moline Plow purchased the Universal Tractor Company of
Columbus, Ohio
, manufacturer of the
Universal Tractor
for its patents. Moline redesigned the tractor, and from about 1916 until 1923, the company sold the Moline Universal Tractor, which was an early attempt to serve unmet market demand for a small, light, affordable, general-purpose tractor. It was a
two-wheel tractor
whose trailing implement provided the rear wheels to form a four-wheel articulated unit. Its nimble design was more suitable for
cultivating
row crops than were most contemporary tractors and its front powered design was familiar to farmers using horses.
Also around 1916, Moline Plow entered the
automobile business
with the
Stephens
brand, named after one of the founders of Moline Plow.
Around 1918 or 1919, the
Willys-Overland Company
purchased a majority interest in the Moline Plow Company. The company continued to function without a
branding
change.
The Moline Universal was a commercial success, but the unfavorable economic climate of the early 1920s, including the
post?World War I recession
, the
depression of 1920?21
, and the
tractor wars
, forced it out of production in 1923.
[3]
The Stephens brand of automobiles ended in 1924. With the end of these two business lines, Moline Plow had divested itself from the tractor and automobile businesses, and it chose the implement line for its future focus. It changed its name to the
Moline Implement Company
to reflect this.
Several famous people served as executives or engineers at Moline Plow, including
Frank Gates Allen
,
William P. Bettendorf
,
George Peek
, and
Hugh S. Johnson
.
In 1929, the Moline Implement Company was merged with two other companies, the Minneapolis Steel & Machinery Company and the Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company (both of
Minneapolis, Minnesota
), to form the
Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company
.
[3]
ORIGINAL, LETTERHEADS, BILLHEAD, BILLHEADS, HARDWARE.