Mansfield entered the Industrial Age as a manufacturer of farming implements, and one of the largest agricultural tool factories in town was the Roderick Lean Manufacturing Company.
Located on Park Avenue East next to the railroad tracks, it was known for most of its lifetime locally as the Lean Harrow Works. They also made plows, cultivators, rollers and rotary hoes, and at the height of power they had 450 employees.
The economic crisis of the 1930s brought Lean to the end of their furrow, and the business went on manufacturing as Farm Tools Corp until the 1950s when it stopped operations and became a warehousing facility.
Today the site is occupied by Goyal Industries. Only one of the original buildings still stands: perpendicular to the street, and recognizable in the 1903 image from a Lean Co. letterhead portrait.
