© Mark Bialek

Family Feud

The fight for Tecumseh Products

by James Leonard

posted 5/30/2009

Ray Herrick—a master toolmaker and close friend of Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and Thomas Edison—started Hillsdale Machine & Tool Company in 1930. Four years later, it was on the brink of bankruptcy when the town of Tecumseh, full of people looking for work at the height of the Depression, agreed to give it an abandoned 30,000-square-foot factory. With a boost

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