Perhaps using settlement money from the buy-out, the Baldwins began a variety of ventures that reflected their ingenuity and diversity – if not their business acumen.
Curtis Baldwin – who seems to have been less risk averse than his brothers – also explored something quite different.
In the late 1920s, aviation pioneers Clyde Cessna, Lloyd Stearman, and Walter Beech were transforming Wichita into a booming aviation manufacturing center, luring many entrepreneurs. One of them was Curtis Baldwin.
In late 1927, Baldwin formed Lark Aircraft Corporation, Wichita’s seventh airplane company. His partners included Fred R. McConiga and Homer Weyant. McConiga, an engineer for the U.S. Air Mail Service, was a designer. Weyant had been a pilot for Cessna and became Lark’s factory superintendent.
Exactly how Baldwin came to have time for the venture is puzzling. On January 1, 1928, The Wichita Beacon observed that Baldwin, “inventor of the Baldwin combine” had established Lark Aircraft and was “beginning work on its first plane in the factory at 217 East Lincoln. The plane is a four place cabin plane, to be known as the Lark Pullman, with the pilot occupying an open cockpit at the rear of the closed compartment.”
The aircraft was to be powered by a 150 horsepower Hispano-Suiza motor and with a Wright Whirlwind.
Records indicate there was, indeed, one aircraft manufactured. Alas, while the plane may have been able to actually fly, the company could not. Lark Aircraft folded the same year it began.
Nearly simultaneous with his short flight into aviation, Curtis Baldwin and his associates formed Baldwin Harvester Company in Independence. They hired Standard Steel Company of Kansas City to build his pull-type combine, using the “Gleaner” name. Hale’s Gleaner Combine Harvester Corporation owned the rights, but agreed to the arrangement, as long as Baldwin paid royalties on all the combines they sold.
When Ford announced it would discontinue production of the Fordson in the United States, it was anticipated that sales of Baldwin’s pull-type combine might exceed those of the self-propelled Gleaner. That’s exactly what happened.
Interestingly, Hugh Hale’s Gleaner Combine Harvester Corporation negotiated an agreement with Baldwin Manufacturing and Standard Steel allowing Hale’s Gleaner corporation to take over the manufacturing and sales of the Baldwin Gleaner pull-type combines. As expected, while about 500 self-propelled combines were sold that year, more than 1,000 of the Baldwin pull-type units were sold. Gleaner Corporation sales topped $1.2 million in 1927.
In 1928, the Baldwins located new investors and founded “Baldwin Harvester Corporation” with startup capital of $2,500.000. Two Kansas City businessmen led the new board – automobile executive George T. O’Maley and C.V. Ruble of Universal Equipment Company. Baldwin Harvester immediately planned production of a new combine named the “New Baldwin.”
Hugh Hale got wind of the project and wasted little time in filing a $500,000 lawsuit in federal court. His Gleaner Combine Harvester Corporation charged Curtis Baldwin and the Baldwin Harvester Corporation with unfair competition.
Gleaner Corporation notified the court that they had purchased Curtis Baldwin’s patents, and they asked for and received an injunction prohibiting the use of the word “Baldwin” or “New Baldwin” by Baldwin Harvester Corporation or any of the other defendants associated with the company.
Curtis Baldwin simply switched to a new trademark for his combine and called it the “Curtis,” and he organized yet a new company, “Curtis Harvesters.”
In May, the lawsuit by the Gleaner Combine Harvester Corporation against the New Baldwin Harvester Company was dismissed “by agreement.” Under that agreement, the name “Baldwin” was recognized as belonging to the plaintiff, Gleaner Combine Harvester Corporation.
But Curtis Baldwin had already moved on and was working on a new invention called the “Cyclone Thresher.” It used a combination of centrifugal and vacuum principles instead of gravity and had only a single moving part which “replaces some eighty found in the gravity type of threshers,” according to Baldwin. He filed for a patent in February 1930 and started work on the machine in their North Kansas City plant.
Production of the Cyclone Thresher was meager. In 1930, Curtis Harvesters also began producing the “Curtis Model 30” combine. But the business climate was deteriorating, and they began winding down the Independence facility.
On New Year’s Day 1931, Curtis Harvesters announced they would move their operation to Ottawa and produce “1,000 harvester combines.” It never happened.
Meanwhile, Baldwin’s old company, Gleaner Combine Harvester Corporation – headed by Stephen Hale – seemed to be prospering. Hale and his partners saw production grow from 200 combines in 1925 to 4,700 in 1929. After-taxes profits topped one million dollars.
Riding high, the company received a contract from Argentina in October 1929 to deliver 3,000 units over the following three years. Hale predicted more than 8,000 units would be sold in 1930.
But on October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 25 percent in just four days, destroying confidence in Wall Street. It was a harbinger of things to come. Gleaner Combine Harvester equipment was being sold on credit, and defaults were beginning to mount.
In December 1930, Stephen Hale was replaced by W. L. Allen as chairman of the Gleaner Combine Harvester Corporation. Six weeks later, Allen resigned following the filing of a petition of receivership. The plant in Independence was shut down by the end of March 1931.
A new Gleaner Harvester Corporation emerged out of receivership. The new company resumed production of Gleaners and achieved profitability for more than two decades, until bought out by Allis-Chalmers in 1955. Allis-Chalmers realized great success with Gleaners from their Independence plant, giving new life to the brand.
