Daniel P. Ott’s Harvesting History tells two parallel stories. The first concerns the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and how its origin story—the invention of the first mechanical reaper by Cyrus McCormick in 1831—came to be accepted as historical fact. While many companies used history (and more specifically, the idea of history as technological progress) to market themselves during this period, McCormick was unusual in the depth of its dedication to establishing the truth of its own historical claims and the way it consistently drew upon history to address the challenges it faced in the changing economic landscape of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ott draws upon a rich of collection of sources—the McCormick family papers, corporate archives, and reams of sales literature—to illuminate this process.
The second strand of Ott’s narrative investigates the family’s enlistment of professional historians to support its historical project. McCormick was not satisfied only transmitting its history through catalogs, pamphlets, posters, sales literature, or even visual displays at world’s fairs and museums. Under the leadership of Cyrus McCormick II, the company sought historians to help them find evidence and give their historical claims the stamp of objectivity. For the most part, Progressive Era historians were happy to participate. Eager to demonstrate their utility to the industrial economy, they saw no conflict between their professional goals and the aims of corporations. As Ott tells it, this was a reciprocal relationship: each side lent the other credibility and legitimacy.
Though the essence of the reaper story remained the same, the way it was told shifted over time in response to the particular challenges faced by the company between the 1870s and the 1930s. Rival manufacturers were unwilling to concede that, as McCormick’s 1893 World’s Fair exhibit claimed, “All Harvesters of To-Day Are Based Upon the Features C.H. McCormick Invented and Built in 1831” (64). Other members of the McCormick family didn’t even agree with this interpretation. As far as they were concerned, it was Robert Hall McCormick, the father of Cyrus, who had actually invented the reaper. While he constantly sought out new evidence (for example, by hiring historian Louis Dent to do research at the Congressional Library and Patent Office), Cyrus II also understood that constant repetition of the “well-known fact” that Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper was also effective in drowning out rival claims.
While attempting to shape its own historical narrative, McCormick faced challenges from popular political movements. In the late 1880s, the company responded to Populist activism and the larger rhetoric of producerism by making much of the fact that Cyrus McCormick himself had started out as a mere farmer. Marketing materials urged potential customers to think of him not as an industrialist, profiting from the labor of others, but a laborer not unlike themselves who wished only to make farming less onerous and more productive. Such rhetoric served to justify the McCormick family’s prosperity (was it not, after all, simply the result of Cyrus’s hard work and ingenuity?) while encouraging farmers to think of themselves as capitalists who could maximize the productivity of their land through machinery.
When McCormick merged with four major competitors and became International Harvester in 1902, fending off the historical claims of business rivals became less important. The company shifted its attention to public criticism and legal threats over its monopolistic practices, which culminated in a 1912 federal antitrust suit. International Harvester rolled out a new marketing strategy in 1909, which included an unsettling new mascot (“Prospy”) as well as outreach to chautauquas, agricultural schools, extension programs, and other community organizations. The Service Bureau, under the leadership of Edwin Lincoln Baker (a former theatrical producer), created a series of booklets, motion pictures, and lantern-slide lectures which, without specifically mentioning International Harvester, presented a vision of history in which corporations worked hand in hand with farmers to bring about prosperity and abundance. In a shift away from its earlier producerist appeals, McCormick increasingly celebrated mechanized agriculture for allowing other industries to flourish and unleashing a flood of consumer goods.
It was around this time that Cyrus McCormick II happened to meet historian Clarence W. Alvord, a leading member of the newly organized Mississippi Valley Historical Association (MVHA). The meeting transformed the family’s relationship to the historical profession. The McCormicks had worked with historians before. Ott, for instance, focuses on the McCormicks’ decades-long campaign to have Cyrus McCormick inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. As part of this project, they had established the McCormick Biographical Association in 1900 and employed historical laborers to perform research, organize libraries, and write narratives. After the conclusion of the antitrust suit in 1918, the company scaled back its public educational efforts and began promoting academic history to legitimize its heritage.
Cyrus McCormick II agreed to provide financial support for the MVHA’s new journal with the understanding that the organization would help protect and promote the McCormick legacy. As Ott demonstrates, the McCormick family and the MVHA shared a common interest in promoting the historical significance of the Midwest and charting the “westward march of American civilization.” (165) The MVHA was responsible for the hiring of historian Herbert Kellar by the McCormick Historical Association, the successor to the Biographical Association. As the name change suggests, the new organization had broader goals than simply documenting the life and accomplishments of Cyrus McCormick. Kellar worked there from 1915 until 1955, and with his guidance, it became a significant repository of manuscripts documenting the larger history of agriculture.
In Harvesting History, Ott illuminates the close and mutually beneficial relationship between corporations and the historical profession during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Both shared an interpretation of the past that saw the development of big business as a natural and inevitable outcome of historical forces. Perhaps most significantly, Ott makes a strong case for including historians among the cadre of white-collar workers who helped create the modern corporation. Far from bystanders, historians inside and outside traditional academic institutions performed essential labor that made American corporate capitalism possible.
