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| Deere
History: The
Story of John Deere |
 The
story of John Deere, who developed the world's first commercially
successful, self-scouring steel plow, closely parallels the settlement and
development of the midwestern United States, an area that the homesteaders
of the 19th century considered the golden land of promise.
John Deere was born in Rutland, Vermont, February 7,
1804. He spent his boyhood and young adulthood in Middlebury, Vermont,
where he received a common school education and served a four-year
apprenticeship learning the blacksmith's trade.
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| Gained
Fame as a Blacksmith |
| In 1825, he began his
career as a journeyman blacksmith and soon gained considerable fame for
his careful workmanship and ingenuity. His highly polished hay forks and
shovels especially were in great demand throughout western Vermont. But
business conditions in Vermont became depressed in the mid-1830s, and the
future looked gloomy for the ambitious young blacksmith. Many natives of
Vermont emigrated to the West, and the tales of golden opportunity that
filtered back to Vermont so stirred John Deere's enthusiasm that he
decided to dispose of his business and join the pioneers.
He left his wife and family, who
were to join him later, and set out with a bundle of tools and a small
amount of cash. After traveling many weeks by canal boat, lake boat, and
stagecoach, he reached the village of Grand Detour, Illinois, which had
been settled by Leonard Andrus and others from his native Vermont. The
need for a blacksmith was so great that two days after his arrival in 1836
he had built a forge and was busy serving the community.
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| Cast-Iron
Plows Wouldn't Work |
| There was much to be done - shoeing
horses and oxen, and repairing the plows and other equipment for the
pioneer farmers. From them he learned of the serious problem they
encountered in trying to farm the fertile soil of the Midwest. The
cast-iron plows they had brought with them from the East were designed for
the light, sandy New England soil. The rich midwestern soil clung to the
plow bottoms and every few steps it was necessary to scrape the soil from
the plow. Plowing was a slow and laborious task. Many pioneers were
discouraged and were considering moving on, or heading back east.
John Deere studied the problem and became convinced
that a plow with a highly polished and properly shaped moldboard and share
ought to scour itself as it turned the furrow slice. He fashioned such a
plow in 1837, using the steel from a broken saw blade, and successfully
tested it on the farm of Lewis Crandall near Grand Detour.
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| Steel
Plow Met Prairie Needs |
| Deere's steel plow
proved to be the answer pioneer farmers needed for successful farming in
what was then "the West". But his contribution to the growth of
American agriculture far exceeded just the development of a successful
steel plow.
It was the practice of that day
for blacksmiths to build tools on order for customers. But John Deere went
into the business of manufacturing plows before he had orders for them. He
would produce a supply of plows and then take them to the country to be
sold - an entirely new approach to manufacturing and selling in those
early pioneer days, and one that quickly spread the word of John Deere's
"self-polishers".
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| Imported
Steel from England |
| There were
many problems involved in attempting to operate a manufacturing business
on the frontier - few banks, poor transportation, and a scarcity of steel,
among others. John Deere's first plows had to be produced with whatever
pieces of steel he could locate. In 1843, he arranged for a shipment of
special rolled steel from England. This steel had to be shipped across the
Atlantic Ocean by steamship, up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers by
packet boat, and overland by wagon 40 miles to the little plow factory in
Grand Detour.
In 1846, the first slab
of cast plow steel ever rolled in the United States was made for John
Deere and shipped from Pittsburgh to Moline, Illinois, where it was ready
for use in the factory Deere opened there in 1848 to take advantage of the
water power and transportation offered by the Mississippi River.
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| Insisted
on Quality and Research |
| Ten years
after he developed his first plow, John Deere was producing 1,000 plows a
year. In those early years of his business, Deere laid down several
precepts that have been followed faithfully since then by the company he
founded. Among them was his insistence on high standards of quality. John
Deere vowed: "I will never put my name on a plow that does not have
in it the best that is in me."
One of his early
partners chided him for constantly making changes in design. His partner
said his work was unnecessary because the farmers had to take whatever
they produced. Deere replied: "No, they don't have to take what we
produce. If we don't improve our product, somebody else will." Deere
& Company has continued throughout its history to place a strong
emphasis on product development and improvement. It has consistently
devoted a higher share of its income to product research and development
than most other companies in its industries.
In 1868, Deere's
business was incorporated under the name Deere & Company. The
following year John Deere's son, Charles, who was later to succeed him as
president, was elected vice president and treasurer.
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| Charles
Deere Expanded Company |
| Charles Deere
was an outstanding businessman who established marketing centers, called
branch houses, to serve the network of independent retail dealers. By the
time of Charles Deere's death in 1907, the company was making a wide range
of steel plows, cultivators, corn and cotton planters, and other
implements.
In 1911, under Deere
& Company's third president, William Butterworth, six non-competing
farm equipment companies were brought into the Deere organization,
establishing the company as a full-line manufacturer of farm equipment. In
1918, the company purchased the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company
in Waterloo, Iowa, and tractors became an important part of the John Deere
line.
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| Emphasis
on Research and Engineering |
| Charles Deere
Wiman, a great-grandson of John Deere, took over direction of the company
in 1928. During the period when modern agriculture was developing, his
strong emphasis on engineering and product development resulted in rapid
growth. Despite the depression that gripped the nation in the 1930s, the
company achieved $100 million in gross sales for the first time in its
history in 1937, the year of its centennial celebration. During World War
II, Wiman and wartime president Burton Peek continued the emphasis on
product design, putting the company in a strong position competitively in
the postwar market. Before Wiman's death in 1955, the company was firmly
established as one of the nation's 100 largest manufacturing businesses.
Under the leadership of
William A. Hewitt, who headed the company from 1955 to 1982, the John
Deere organization experienced one of its greatest periods of growth.
Manufacturing and marketing operations were established worldwide, and
Deere became the leading producer of farm equipment in the world, as well
as a major producer of construction and forestry equipment, and lawn care
products.
Robert A. Hanson, who
had served the company as president and chief operating officer, succeeded
Hewitt as chief executive officer in 1982 and guided the company through
one of its most difficult economic periods. Under his leadership, the
company emerged as a more dynamic, flexible organization, better able to
react to growing worldwide competition. The company rose from the
turbulence of the 1980s to post record sales and earnings in the last
three years of the decade.
Hans W. Becherer was
elected chairman in 1990, succeeding Hanson, with whom he had served as
president and chief executive officer. Becherer had been closely involved
in the management actions that were so successful in establishing the
company on the new foundations demanded by the 1980s and beyond. Like
Hanson, Becherer has invested much of his long career in developing the
company's international operations.
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