Minneapolis-Moline dates back to the Candee & Swan Plow Company of Moline, Illinois, founded in 1865. It became Moline Plow Company (later, Moline Implement Company), a major Midwestern producer of tilling equipment: plows, harrows and other tools for sowing grain crops.
The Minneapolis Threshing Company began in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 1874, and settled in Hopkins, Minnesota, in 1887. It concentrated on equipment for the last stage of small grain production: threshing.
Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company, founded in 1902, began by making heavy construction equipment and steam engines, then moved into vehicles, including tractors (the Twin City line, 1912) and buses. Its chief executive, Warren C. MacFarlane, engineered the 1929 merger of the three companies and became president.
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The merger produced a company that served farming tasks year-round: tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting and processing. Such integration was needed to compete with industrial giants like John Deere and International Harvester. All three of the constituent companies made or had made tractors. After the merger the company trimmed tractors to a single line, Twin City, made in Minneapolis. Harvesters and, later, combines, were built in Hopkins, also the company’s headquarters; tilling equipment was made in Moline.
In its first full year of operation, 1930, Minneapolis-Moline earned a profit of slightly more than one million dollars on sales of about $13,500,000. Then two catastrophes struck. The Depression devastated farm country; farmers stopped buying equipment. Then, in September 1932, Warren MacFarlane was seriously injured in a car crash. He spent five months hospitalized, partially paralyzed. By 1933, sales had fallen to $2,336,000, producing losses of over $1,500,000 and a reduction of employees from over 3,000 to just 672. Losses grew to over $2,000,000 in 1934.
The optimistic MacFarlane predicted a rebound in 1935, achieved through improved farm conditions, aggressive price-cutting and innovation. Minneapolis-Moline’s new line of combines, called Harvestor and built in Hopkins, captured 20 percent of a reviving market and helped produce a profit of $170,000. Sales grew steadily over the next five years, from $9,000,000 in 1935 to over $16,000,000 in 1940. During World War II the company made artillery shells, naval winches and construction machines for the Army and Navy, in addition to its regular agricultural line; sales and profits grew.
The post-war years were even better. The company’s best-ever profit year was 1950, when it made over $7,000,000. Minneapolis-Moline did business in all forty-eight states and across Canada, in Argentina and Mexico; it had over 2,000 dealers. Sales once reached $100 million. At home its employees, whose numbers may have reached 6,500, competed in company baseball, volleyball, bowling and sharpshooting leagues. But trouble lay ahead.
In 1951, looking to strengthen its position in the American southeast, Minneapolis-Moline acquired the B. F. Avery Company of Kentucky. The hoped-for benefits did not come. Meanwhile, the number of farms in the United States continued to fall, while M-M’s competitors—chiefly International Harvester, Allis-Chalmers, John Deere and J.I. Case—got stronger. M-M fell from fifth place among implement makers to eighth. Losses began in 1954, the same year it opened a factory in Turkey. Over the next five years losses exceeded $6,500,000.
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In 1955 a hostile takeover ousted most of the Minnesota directors; MacFarlane retired in January of 1957. His successor, J. Russell Duncan, returned the firm to profitability through cost-cutting and diversification, but he was ousted in 1960. That year the company changed its name to Motec, short for Moline Technology. In 1963 Motec was taken over by White Motor Company of Cleveland, with another new president and a return to the Minneapolis-Moline name. In 1972 White closed both the Hopkins and Minneapolis factories, putting over 1500 Minnesotans out of work. No physical trace of these enormous installations survives. By 1981, White Motors was out of business.
Bibliography
Annual Reports, Minneapolis-Moline Company, 1950?–1960. Available at the Minnesota Historical Society library as HD9486.U54 M6132.
Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company.“Can a Company Outgrow Its Name?” Advertisement. Minneapolis Star, June 8, 1961.
Gunter, Ray. “Hopkins Plant Was Once Hub of Activity.” Minneapolis Star, April 4, 1963.
Hobart, Randall. “Moline Chief Cites Gains, Optimism.” Minneapolis Star, March 4, 1958.
Hobart, Randall. “‘Mr. Mac’ of Moline Takes a Breather.” Minneapolis Star, January 28, 1958.
Howe, Richard. “Three Factors Are Sighted in Motec Presidential Changes.” Minneapolis Tribune, March 25, 1962, F9.
Inskip, Leonard. “Chicagoan Elected President of Moline.” Minneapolis Tribune, November 16, 1957.
——— . “Motec Says It Will Sell to White.” Minneapolis Tribune, October 19, 1962.
Letourneau, P. A., ed. Twin City Tractor Photo Archive: Photographs from the Minneapolis-Moline Company Records. Iconografix, 1993.
Mason, Ralph. “Reorganized Moline Forging New Ideas.” Minneapolis Star, February 10, 1961.
McCarty, Pat. “Motec is Moline Again; Loss Reported.” Minneapolis Tribune, January 30, 1963.
“Minneapolis-Moline—A Leader in Its Field of Industry.” Minneapolis Tribune, November 26, 1939.
“Minneapolis-Moline Observes 75th Anniversary.” Minneapolis Star, April 7, 1940.
“Moline Firm Plans Output of $750,000.” Minneapolis Journal, December 2, 1934.
“Moline Plant Hums, Nears 1929 Record.” Minneapolis Journal, June 5, 1936.
Petersen Jr, Chester, and Rob Beemer. Minneapolis-Moline Farm Tractors. MBI Publishing Company, 2000.
“The Romance of ‘Harvestor.’” Implement and Tractor, April 4, 1936, 24–25.
Schaefer, Ed. “Management Miracle at Minneapolis-Moline.” Minneapolis Star, August 7, 1959.
Thomas, Norman F. Minneapolis-Moline: A History of Its Formation and Operations. Arno Press, 1976.
“We Are Hard At Work.” Minneapolis Tribune, January 1, 1930.
“Where the Velvet Begins.” TIME 35, no. 1 (January 1, 1940): 37–38.
Wendel, C. H. Minneapolis-Moline Tractors 1870–1969. Motorbooks International, 1990.
Wickland, John A. “At 15 He Built a Tractor—and It Worked!” Minneapolis Tribune, June 24, 1956.
——— . “Moline Tractors Take On New Look.” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, January 15, 1956.
Youngblood, Dick. “2 Twin Cities Plants to Close, Idling 1,300.” Minneapolis Tribune, January 7, 1972.
Related Resources
Primary
M/A 0208
Collection on Minneapolis Moline Power Implement Company, 1915-2001 1915-1979
Manuscripts Collection, Hennepin County Library Special Collections, Minneapolis
Description: The collection contains clippings, advertisements, photographs, reports, and correspondence, machinery catalogs, and scrapbooks. A number of papers and correspondence detail the 1929 merger of the company. Machinery catalogs are arranged by machine type. The scrapbooks consist of newspaper clippings from local and national papers. The four scrapbooks cover the following years: 1916–1954, 1929–1932, 1932–1944, and 1943–1954.
https://archives.hclib.org/repositories/2/resources/121
Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company. “Our Policy is Progress” Advertisement. Minneapolis Star, January 9, 1966.
Secondary
Leffingwell, Randy. America’s Classic Farm Tractors. MBI Publishing, 1999.
Wendel, C. H. Encyclopedia of American Farm Tractors. Crestline Publishing, 1979.
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