Although the stock market crash, Black Tuesday, occurred in 1929, the effects were not felt in South Dakota until the 1930's. The Great Depression and World War II adversely affected Lewis's business, but he was able to survive both. Lewis was able to sell the tractors he was delivered and pay for them, but Wally said he knew of one dealer in South Dakota who was unable to pay for the Titans and burned his building full of tractors to collect insurance money. As a result, International Harvester Company shipped many Titan tractors to the dealers, who had not ordered them, and forced them to pay. Wally mentioned that in 19, the years immediately following World War I, economic conditions in the United States worsened. From 1914 to 1922, 56,000 Titans were produced with 1920 being the peak year. The Titan 10-20 tractor was the forerunner of the International. ![]() corn planters, low twentieth century spreaders, Moline plows, and Titan tractors. In these first years, Lewis continued selling automobiles as well as gasoline and farm supplies and carried a full line of farm machinery: Deering and Acme binders, Weber wagons, Keystone disks, International Harvester cultivators, Kentucky seeders, C.B.Q. In 1915, Lewis purchased the Helgerson Implement Company's stock in International Harvester Company and the Helgerson building. By 1909, Harvester ranked as the fourth-largest corporation in America and the largest farm equipment monopoly in the world. The pulley wheel on the engine engaged a pulley on the chassis, giving a friction drive to the tractor. This company entered the tractor business in 1903 with an International stationary engine mounted on a chassis. In 1902, the inventor's company merged with four other leading agricultural machinery manufacturers to form International Harvester Company. Throughout years of court action and by buying others' patent rights, he established the superiority of his machines and made his company the leader. ![]() In 1847, he went to Chicago and set up a factory to manufacture reapers. McCormick built his first reaper and demonstrated it in 1831 and patented an improved model in 1834. There were too few farmhands to do the harvesting, so a substitute for hand labor had to be found, and the great stretches of flat, stoneless prairie presented an ideal terrain for the mechanical reaper. McCormick saw the need for this machine and made the most of it. Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809-1884) invented a reaping machine that stands as the symbol of the mechanical revolution in agriculture.
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