Joliet Manufacturing Company | University of Illinois Archives

Name: Joliet Manufacturing Company

Historical Note: Joliet Manufacturing Co. and its associated businesses produced farm implements from 1849 until at least the 1930s. The firm's origins began with the establishment of Dillman & Co., a Plainfield, Illinois manufacturer of iron plows; it evolved into its final form in 1867 through its move to Joliet, Illinois and its subsequent re-incorporation as Joliet Manufacturing. Throughout its history Joliet's principal stockholders operated separate, nearby factories that produced a large portion of its parts and equipments, resulting in a cluster of interrelated firms. Joliet Manufacturing Co.'s most important product was a corn sheller; it also made plows, corn-row checkers, and barbed wire. In the nineteenth century the firm's principal market was a ten-state Midwest region spanning from Ohio westward into Kansas and Nebraska. By the 1920s the company had established a nationwide network of distributors and had begun consideration of expansion into new markets in Canada, Latin America, South Africa, and the Soviet Union.