The John Deere Story
Subtitle: A Biography Of Plowmakers John & Charles Deere
Contributors: David Vaught (Introduction)
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Published: May 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9780875803364
Subjects: Agricultural engineering & machinery; Biography: general; Manufacturing industries; United States; General; Biography / Autobiography; Agricultural machinery industry; Illinois; Biography & Autobiography; Deere, John,; Biography/Autobiography; Deere, Charles; Business; 1804-1886; History; Industrialists; Plows; Biography
Description: "Today John Deere is remembered - some say mistakenly - as the inventor of the steel plow. Who was this legendary man and how did he create the internationally renowned company that still bears his name? He began as a debt-stricken blacksmith who, fleeing debt in New England in the 1830s, set up shop in a small town on the Illinois frontier. There, in response to farmers' struggles, he designed a new plow that cut through the impervious prairie sod and lay open the rich, heavy soil for planting. The demand for his polished steel plow convinced him to specialize in farm implements." "In the decades before the Civil War, John Deere envisioned a company supplying midwestern farmers with reliable, affordable equipment. Upon taking the helm in the 1860s, John's only surviving son, Charles, expanded the Moline factories to increase production, started branch houses in major midwestern cities to speed distribution, and began to transform the company into a modern corporation. The transformation didn't come without difficulties however: Charles found himself battling the Grange, facing threats of labor unions and strikes led by his own employees, and enduring patent suits and blatant thefts of product designs and advertising."--Jacket.