1905 Chattanooga Plow Co., Factory View
In 1878, Newell Sanders came from Bloomington, IN to establish a plow manufacturing business in Chattanooga, TN. The original name of the company was Newell Sanders & Co. The first castings were made by the Wheland Foundry.
The company changed its name to the Chattanooga Plow Co. in 1883. Chattanooga Plow Co. also added a line of cane mills, evaporators, and furnaces for processing sugar cane and making syrups.
In 1919, the company was sold to the International Harvester Company of America and continued to make chilled plows, cane mills, evaporators, and furnaces for International Harvester until 1944, when the company built a new factory in Memphis, TN.
1919 Chattanooga Plow Co., Factory View
Chattanooga Chilled Plows Added to IHC Line
"The entry of the Harvester Company into the plow business was made complete on June 1st, when it formally took over the factory and business of the Chattanooga Plow Company, having purchased the entire capital stock of that concern. By this transaction the Harvester Company acquired a line of chilled plows of such excellence in quality, reputation and popularity as to make it a worthy selling-mate of the steel plow line acquired by the previous purchase of the Parlin & Orendorff Company's factory and business.
For more than forty years the Chattanooga Plow Company has been a prosperous concern, one of the principal industries of the city where it is located and from which it takes its name. During all that time the Company has been conducted by its founder, Newell Sanders, who began the manufacture of this chilled plows during the 70's in a small frame building and built up the business to such an extent that the plant now covers about one-half of a seven-acre site.
The transfer was personally effected on behalf of the Harvester Company by Secretary and Treasurer George A. Ranney. In a statement made public at Chattanooga at the time, Mr. Ranney said:
This purchase was made for the sole purpose of completing our Company's plow line with a chilled plow of the highest excellence and reputation.
The International Harvester Company has not heretofore been in the plow business, though for a considerable time dealers in our products have been urging us to supply them with this one essential farm implement not already included among our manufactures.
When we finally decided to enter the plow business in the United States, we had two alternatives:
We must either develop a plow line of our own, or acquire by purchase the manufacturing rights, experience, and equipment needed to produce plows not inferior in quality to other Harvester implements. We chose the latter course because of the long delay that would have been inevitable if we undertook to create our own line.
About May 1st of this year, we announced the purchase of the plant and business of the Parlin & Orendorff Company of Canton, Illinois, the oldest plow-making, establishment in the country. This gives us a full and long-established line of high grade steel plows, as well as of listers, beet, corn, and cotton tools. It did not, however, provide us with chilled plows, and our search for that very element of the plow trade soon brought us to Chattanooga.
Now, with Chattanooga chilled plows and Parlin & Orendorff steel plows, we feel that we enter this department of the farm implement business on a broad and sound manufacturing basis. Our branch houses and dealers in chilled plow territory will undoubtedly be well pleased with the addition to their lines of a chilled plow that has done much in the last forty years to make the name of Chattanooga known among the farmers of the entire South.
Thus far the Chattanooga Company has for the most part limited its operations to the field south of the Ohio river, Southeastern Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and parts of Texas. Undoubtedly the Harvester selling organization will welcome the opportunity to introduce the Chattanooga Company's goods in all other territory where there is a demand for chilled plows.
There will be no change in the corporate name the Chattanooga Plow Company. The plant will continue to manufacture the Chattanooga full list of products, including disc plows and horse and power cane mills." (Quote from 1919.)
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