The Romance in Your

Cultivator

N 1785 Robert Ransome, a young Iron-founder I Just out of his apprenticeship, started business on his own account in Suffolk, England, and gave special attention to the production of plough-shares which would retain sharpness. His business grew, and he established himself in Ipswich—but still he was dissatisfied with his plough-shares, and continued his experiments.

One day, the container in his foundry burst, and the molten metal spread over the floor.

When it was cold, Mr. Ransome proceeded to break it up, to re-melt it. He noticed that cer tain of the iron, -which had cooled while in contact with iron already cold, was much harder than the rest. Thus, practically by accident, he came upon the secret of chilled steel. In 1805, he took out patents for his famous chilled steel plough-share.

This discovery, plus the general excellence of the agricultural machinery which the firm made, established Ransomes, of Ipswich, as one of the notable makers of agricultural machinery in England. Right from the beginning, it was a firm of great enterprise—it would send displays of agricultural machinery to any accessible gathering of farmers in England, and it would build bridges, or steam engines, or ships, if asked. Over 100 years ago its young men were going over to the continent of Europe and sell ing their products there.

Robert Ransome established a great English industry. His spirit lived, not only in the traditions which he imposed upon his firm, but in the staunchness, vision and enterprise of

those who inherited his blood and name, and succeeded him in control of the business.

The firm became Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies, Ltd., in 1884, and its products nowadays are known in every corner of the civilised world.

Photographs in a book which has just been published, describing the firm’s 150 years, show the firm’s ploughs being pulled by camels in Palestine, by elephants in India, by steam tractors in Canada, and by draught horses in New Zealand. One sees their cultivators in the plantations of Fiji and New Guinea, and their lawn-mowers busy on the lawns of Canberra and Capetown.

The firm already was big when war broke out in 1914. Within two years, 2,000 of its employees had gone to fight and been replaced by women, and the firm was turning out mili tary aeroplanes, lorries, and parts of big guns.

The firm had been supplying agricultural mach inery on a huge scale to Russia. When the Bolsheviks took charge in 1917 and repudiated the country’s liabilities, the firm’s losses were enormous.

But after the war it was re-built. Skilled salesmen penetrated every continent. When war came again in 1939 the business Ransomes, Sims

and Jefferies in South America and South Africa, India and Australia and the Pacific Islands probably was bigger than that of any similar British firm. It will come again. Of such stuff is the heart of England made.