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| Woman stands with original steel plow at the Smithsonian in the late 1930s |
That is, if the farmers could just find a way to break through the ground.
In Illinois’ first 20 years of statehood, and for generations before, small subsistence farms had been the norm. Native Americans followed by settlers from the rocky Appalachians and the sandy eastern states had come into Illinois and worked their small plots, scraping out a living, but had not been able to farm huge plots of the prairie. Part of the blame went to their incorrect belief that the soil that produced the tallest trees had to be the most fertile, causing some to avoid the open prairies that cover most of the state. But there was another, larger problem that had stymied Illinois farmers for years.
As farmers from the east coast began moving to new land on the prairie, they found their cast-iron plows were ineffective against soil unlike any they had seen. Soil in the eastern United States tended to be light and sandy. This Illinois soil was denser, and stuck to the blades of the plow like clay. It would clump onto the blades, tiring out the team of oxen and forcing the farmer to stop and clean off the plow over and over again, an enormously time-consuming process that severely limited the amount of ground a farmer could plow in a day. An innovation was needed if Illinois was ever going to become a leading farm state.
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| John Deere |
He brought a few tools with him to Illinois in 1837 seeking new business opportunities. Deere settled in Grand Detour, on the Rock River near Dixon. Soon he found the opportunity he was looking for. Setting up his own blacksmith business in the small town, he met some of the local farmers; some of them transplanted Vermonters like himself; when they brought in broken cast-iron and wooden plows that had not been designed with the thicker Illinois soil in mind.
Sometimes he met the same farmers over and over because their plows kept breaking.
Deere wondered if he could come up with something better, and remembered the polished pitchforks and shovels that had been so successful in Vermont. In 1838 he produced his first plow, made of steel from a broken saw blade. A local farmer named Lewis Crandall tried it out and found that the soil did not stick to the steel blades the way it had gummed up the other plows. Word spread, and in that first year Deere made and sold three of his new plows. A few more followed the next year, and then a few dozen the year after that. Deere soon partnered with Leonard Andrus, “in the art and trade of blacksmithing, plow-making and all things thereto.”
The innovative new plow had the potential to transform Illinois agriculture, but Deere wasn’t finished. He disdained the practice of awaiting orders and then manufacturing the requested item. Instead, he built several of the new plows and offered them to the farmers to buy. This new business practice was an advance in manufacturing, and it also helped advertise his extraordinary new product. By 1846, Deere was manufacturing as many as 1000 steel plows. A decade later, it was ten times that.
Demand for the invention skyrocketed, and it became difficult to keep up. Acquiring steel and shipping it to Grand Detour was proving to be a significant challenge. Deere moved to Moline in 1848, using the Mississippi River both as a source of power and a method of transportation. The business had 16 employees the next year. They produced two kinds of plows, a one-horse model that sold for somewhere between $6 and $9, and a larger plow, called a “breaker” for $23.
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| Gentlemen stand with a trailer full of original plows. Photo from deere.com |
While rolling out plow after plow, Deere insisted on a dedication to quality. “I will never put my name on a product that does not have in it the best that is in me,” he said. Once, a business partner reproached him for this devotion to quality when he could just offer a product to farmers on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. He replied, “They haven’t got to take what we make and somebody else will beat us, and we will lose our trade.”
The business was formally incorporated as “Deere and Company” in 1868. Deere’s son, Charles, became Vice President of the company and took over its day-to-day operations. Meanwhile, John Deere remained engaged in the community, including a two-year term as Mayor of Moline. He died in 1886, having revolutionized farming in the Midwest and opened the door (and the ground) to Illinois agriculture.
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| Farmer cuts alfalfa with John Deere #4 horse drawn enclosed gear mower, 1937. Photo from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum |
Today, Illinois-based Deere and Company is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of farm apparatus, as well as equipment for construction and forestry. The past, present and future of John Deere is cataloged at the John Deere Pavilion in Moline, while the company offers tours of the facilities in Moline and East Moline where combines and planters are still manufactured today.
Last year, as part of the Illinois Top 200 contest, Illinoisans determined that John Deere’s invention of the steel plow was the top choice in the category of inventions and innovations. It was an acknowledgement of the way in which the blacksmith from Grand Detour revolutionized agriculture and changed the course of Illinois history.