The chilled-plow wars: Bissell's rival, the Casaday sulky, and the Economist Plow

1857–1902 · THE PATENT FIGHTS, FOUGHT IN THE MARKET

The fight: Oliver and Little knew what they held, and advertised it as a challenge: the partners offered a reward of $500 to anyone who could "chill or harden plowshares with equal success without infringing on their patent." The serious attack, when it came, came from inside the house. T. M. Bissell had bought into the Oliver firm in August 1860; the rival that rose against it, the South Bend Chilled Plow Company, was organized by Bissell and built, on The History Museum's account, on the Knoblock Brothers' Manufacturing Company, founded 18 April 1871 by John C., William and Theodore E. Knoblock and John H. Dolman, and incorporated under its new name on 1 July 1878, with Adam S. Baker president, J. C. Knoblock treasurer, and George W. Baker secretary.

Oliver viewed the new firm's chilled plow as an infringement of both his patent and his good will — the chilling process was associated in the trade with the name of this city — and the museum's account is plain that the entrant was understood at the time as an imminent threat to the South Bend Iron Works. The rival made good plows under its own patents, and one of them outlasted the quarrel: the "world-famed Casaday three wheel sulky plow." Its inventor was not a South Bend man but a St. Joseph County one: William L. Casaday of New Carlisle, twelve miles west, whose sulky-plow patents Ardrey's plates date 9 May 1876 and 6 September 1881, and whose Letters Patent No. 260,534, filed 18 February 1882 and granted 4 July 1882, stands in the files under his New Carlisle residence.

The geography is printed as the record gives it — a county inventor, a South Bend manufacture. A third shop fills out the city's patent map of the 1880s: Letters Patent No. 306,342, a sulky plow filed 2 January 1884 and granted 7 October 1884 to Edmund D. Meagher and Caleb E. Tower, both of South Bend, assignors to the Economist Plow Company of the same place — working inventors assigning to a hometown firm, the pattern of the whole second rank. The war's end was commercial, not judicial: the South Bend Chilled Plow Company was in time bought by the Vulcan Plow Company of Evansville, Indiana, and with that sale, in the museum's words, the firm James Oliver built "became, once again, the sole manufacturer of chilled plows in South Bend." One discipline note belongs in the text: no reported appellate decision on Oliver's chilling patent was located in the record reached for this section. The Oliver fight, as the surviving record shows it, was fought with a standing reward, a rival incorporation, and a buyout — unlike the clover huller's fight, next, which reached the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sources:

1. Company history of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works (the TTG record) — the $500 reward advertisement; Bissell's organization of the rival; the August 1860 Bissell share purchase.
2. The History Museum, South Bend, "South Bend Chilled Plow Company" — the Knoblock Brothers foundation of 18 April 1871; the incorporation of 1 July 1878 and its officers; Oliver's infringement position; the Casaday three-wheel sulky among its patented lines; the Vulcan Plow purchase and Oliver's restored sole standing.
3. U.S. Patent No. 260,534 (4 July 1882), the patent itself, via Google Patents — William L. Casaday of New Carlisle, Indiana, sulky-plow.
4. Robert L. Ardrey, American Agricultural Implements (1894), patent plates — "W. L. Casaday's Patent, May 9, 1876" and "Sept. 6, 1881."
5. U.S. Patent No. 306,342 (7 October 1884), the patent itself, via Google Patents — Meagher and Tower of South Bend, assignors to the Economist Plow Company of South Bend.