Reprinted from "The Economist" of Nov. 28, 1914

      We expect the daring—the unconventional—from California, the unusual State. We look for surprises. We take for granted a change of climate from tropical to Arctic as we ascend a main traveled highway, and are not astonished at the "57 varieties" of agriculture we note along the road. Therefore, we should probably have been disappointed to find California's largest farm-machinery concern—in fact, the largest on the Pacific Coast—following the conventional lines of eastern manufacturers of similar products. But Benjamin Holt, the dominating mechanical mind of The Holt Manufacturing Company, is essentially a pioneer, and while sales and financial policies have necessarily been more or less tempered by external conditions, the products of the factories are typically Californian in their distinctiveness.

      Many years ago "Ben" Holt saw a header cutting barley, while a big stationary threshing outfit in the same field separated the grain from the straw. "Those two machines ought to be in one," he said, and set about to combine them. His neighbors and associates objected vigorously, but Holt had a factor of obstinacy of the kind possessed by McCorrnick and Edison. He built the combined harvester, perfected it, and left it for others to market.

      Steam became a necessity for plowing and freighting The Holts made steam-plowing outfits as a matter of every-day routine, years before the opening prairies of Kansas, the Dakotas and Canada stimulated eastern thresher manufacturers to build plowing engines. Holt engines pulled the Holt harvesters. They furnished steam for auxiliary motors on the harvesters long before the gasoline motor came into its own. Other motors on heavy wagons—all fed from the tractor boiler—helped move big ore and lumber trains over steep mountain grades. Holt built wagons—there were no others equal to the severe demands.

      Stockton, the principal seat of the business, lay at the gateway to the great valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, in early days the greatest wheat country in the world. It was a new country, with no machine shops at the cross-roads, and few mechanics outside of the cities—a great rough country, its great branches run by masterful men, who drove their way to fortune with a smashing hand. And Holt built big, rugged machines that withstood all manners of use and abuse.

      The hills of California, Oregon and Washington grew splendid grain, but it was left to the Holts to adapt their harvester for safe use on steep hillsides, and thus add hundreds of thousands of acres to the available crop area.

      The Holt Company has two plants, one in Peoria, Ill., and the other in Stockton, Cal. The Peoria plant was the factory of the Colean Mfg. Co., which Holt had bought after Colean's bankruptcy.

      The company was formed in 1892 as a partnership of Holt Brothers and the Stockton Wheel Co. In 1913 the company absorbed the Holt Caterpillar Co., Peoria, Ill., the Houser & Jaines Mfg. Co., the Aurora Engine Co., Stockton, Cal., and the Best Mfg. Co., San Leandro, Cal. The company also owns the Canadian Holt Co., Calgary, Alta., and manufactures also combined harvesters, plows, etc., under the trade mark, “Caterpillar.” It is capitalized at $500,000 common and $1,000,000 preferred.

Information Sources

• The Automobile, Vol 36, 05 Apr 1917, pg. 671
• Steam Power on the American Farm, by Reynold M. Wik, 1953 page 255
• Caterpiller Times, May 1915, page 8
• The Steam Tractor Encyclopedia by John F. Spalding & Robert T. Rhode, 2011 page 207
• There are several Holt Mfg. Co. catalogs at Archive.org