The trade: Harvester's branch house, and the Fordson in the directory

1917 – 1928, as documented

The branch house on the siding: International Harvester sold its machines in this city the way it sold them across the country — through a company branch house that stocked, shipped, and serviced for a territory of local dealers — and the company's own photograph albums, kept by the Wisconsin Historical Society, document the South Bend house directly. An interior view dated 12 September 1917 shows the Maxwell Implement Company, an International Harvester dealership "under the jurisdiction of the company's South Bend branch house," its desks, literature racks, and cash register in place. An exterior rear view dated 27 September 1919 shows the branch building itself, a railroad car standing at its loading dock, and the wall sign painted in full: "International Harvester Company of America. Farm Machines, Wagons, Cream-Separators and P&O Plows. Motor Trucks, Oil Tractors and Oil Engines." The oil tractors of the sign were Harvester's Mogul and Titan lines — kerosene-burning machines built in Milwaukee and Chicago, sold out of a South Bend warehouse by a South Bend staff. The branch still stood in 1928, when Harvester's national advertising in Scientific American listed South Bend, Indiana, among the 164 branch cities of the United States and Canada, with Fort Wayne and Gary the other Indiana names. The pattern is the documented shape of the early trade here: the tractor arrived in this county as a distributed product, warehoused on a rail siding in the hometown of Harvester's rival Oliver — and the sign's whole list, P&O plows included, is a catalogue of machines made elsewhere and sold here.

The directory's own evidence: Polk's South Bend classified directory for 1921 carries a heading the horse-age directories did not need — "Farm Tractors" — and the listing the Business Owners Roster's sweep of that classified section preserves under it is the Fordson: Ford's tractor, the best-selling machine of the age, sold here as it was sold everywhere, through the maker's dealer channel. The roster also preserves the trade's older layer at its true size: D. A. Burke, dealing in implements in the Johnson directory of 1902–03, stands for the implement houses through which the first gasoline tractors were in fact retailed in most American towns, though the record reached names no South Bend implement house as a tractor dealer in so many words. Oliver, the hometown maker, sold through its own branch-house system — its Minneapolis branch manager is documented furnishing four breaker bottoms for the Liberty tractor's 1918 demonstration trials, in Farm Collector's account — and in its home city the works itself was the presence; no separate South Bend Oliver dealership is documented in the record reached, and none is printed.

Sources:

1. Wisconsin Historical Society, International Harvester Company photo albums, c. 1899–1965 — "South Bend Branch House," 27 September 1919 (image W012ZK6), the wall sign quoted in full; "South Bend International Harvester Dealership" (the Maxwell Implement Company interior), 12 September 1917 (image W012W3C), its caption placing the dealership under the South Bend branch house's jurisdiction.
2. International Harvester Company advertisement, Scientific American, September 1928 — South Bend, Fort Wayne, and Gary in the list of 164 branch cities.
3. Polk's South Bend Directory, 1921, classified section, as swept for the Business Owners Roster — the "Farm Tractors" heading and the Fordson listing under it; D. A. Burke, implements, in Johnson's directory of 1902–03.
4. Farm Collector, "The Great Liberator" — the Oliver Chilled Plow Works' Minneapolis branch manager furnishing breaker bottoms for the 1918 Liberty tractor demonstrations; evidence of the branch system, printed at that size.