John Deere—The Man Who Tamed America's Heartland

On this episode of Our American Stories, has your neighbor ever had a crazy idea? John Deere did. Let's dig right into it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of the man who tamed the soil of our
heartland and became the founder of a company whose products
most can recognize solely because of their green coat of paint.
Here's Kirk Higgins, the senior director of Content at the
Bill of Rights Institute, with the story of John Deere.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
The green machines are instantly recognized across America. Tractors, combines, balers,
lawnmowers painted in that distinctive bright green coat with yellow accents.
Even from a distance, most people know who made them,
John Deere. For the past one hundred and eighty seven years,
John Deere has been an American business success story. The

(00:58):
company's technology tame the soil of America's heartland, helping make
it possible for us not just to expand to the West,
but thrive there too and realize our prairie's great potential.
But who was John Deere? Not just the company and
the brand, but the man behind it all. John Dee

(01:28):
was born in February of eighteen oh four in Vermont.
He never really knew his father, who, in eighteen oh
eight set sail for England. He never returned and was
presumed to have drowned during his voyage. His mother was
left alone to raise the family. Growing up in near
poverty meant that young John looked for work to help
support the family from an early age. As a young teenager,

(01:48):
in exchange for some money, a pair of shoes, and
some old clothes, he took a job at a tannery.
At seventeen, Deer would receive his mother's blessing to leave
home to apprentice under Captain Benjamin Laurence, a reputable Vermont blacksmith.
It was long, hot, and difficult work, but it was
excellent on the job training for Deer. He was also
paid for his work thirty dollars for his first year,

(02:11):
in additional five dollars for each year that followed. By
eighteen twenty six, Deer was ready to end his apprenticeship
and begin working to support his own growing family. Over
the next several years, he would continue working as a blacksmith,
producing various household items like pots and pans, to shoeing horses,
to furnishing ironwork for stagecoaches and mills. Work was easy

(02:34):
to come by, but tragedy would strike again. Deer's blacksmith
shop would burn down not once, but twice. The first
time dented his bank account, the second time put his
family in serious debt. Then, in eighteen thirty six, Deer
received a summons from the village of Leicester demanding he

(02:57):
paid seventy eight dollars and seventy six cents to a
Not paying he would mean at best losing his land,
and at worst he could face debtor's prison. In the
United States of eighteen thirty six, declaring bankruptcy was not
an option, and if someone like Robert Morris, one of
America's founders and a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
could end up in a debtor's prison for three years,

(03:19):
so could a Vermont blacksmith like John Deere. The economic
climate in Vermont had become challenging too. The state had
faced years of deforestation and grasshopper plagues, and significant losses
to the fertile soil. John Deere was truly stuck between

(03:40):
a rock and a hard place, and while lost to history,
whether it was his debts, the threat of prison, or
the failing soil that motivated him, Deer left Vermont in
eighteen thirty six with just seventy three dollars in his pocket.
And made his way to Grand Detour, Illinois. At thirty two,
he was starting his life over. Deer rented some land
on a river, set up a smithy, and his family
joined him in their new home within a year. To say,

(04:02):
his services were in demand, and Grand Detour under sells
the need they were essential. During the first half of
the nineteenth century, the fertile expanse of the western prairies
drew thousands of settlers. With his rapid growth came a
growing demand for skilled tradesmen like blacksmith's who could show
the oxen needed for plowing, create knives and silverware, and
repair broken tools needed to run farms. John Deere could

(04:23):
do at all, and the two things he hadn't left
behind in Vermont is diligent work, ethic and eye for
perfection served him well and were noticed by many. A
clerk who worked across the street from dear smithy recalled,
I had heard Deer's hammering in the morning when I
was in the store in bed at three o'clock, and
at ten o'clock at night. He had such an indomitable
determination to do and work what he had in his mind.

(04:47):
He would soon set his mind to his next challenge
taming the difficult Midwestern soil that was giving farmers fits.
Many farmers in the region were accustomed to the dryer,
pebbly soil of New England, but the soil in the
Midwest was often very different. It was sticky, clumped. Some
farmers spent more time knocking soil off their plows than

(05:08):
actually plowing, and the problem was threatening to send many
farmers back east. John Deere was intimately familiar with the
problems farmers were having. After all, it was his job
to fix their broken plows, and in eighteen thirty seven,
just a year after having moved to Illinois, John Deere
thought he had a solution. Dear reason that a highly polished,
curved plow blade would cut through the soil easily and

(05:30):
that dirt would not stick to it. So he took
a broken steel saw blade, cut and molded it and
created his first prototype of a steel self cleaning plow,
and was met with plenty of skepticism from local farmers.
But can you blame them. The farmers had suffered through
backbreaking labor trying to make a living day in and
day out. It would have been hard to believe that

(05:52):
any device could cut easily through the thick, sticky prairie soil.
Let alone a device and neighbor had made out of
scrap metal, but Deer was committed to working on his concept.
That same year, when John Deere tested the plow, his
biggest critics would turn out to watch. They stood in
silence as Deer walked it up and down a friend's
field without stopping. According to one account, a farmer looked

(06:16):
at the blade afterwards and exclaimed, by cracky, she's clean.
But the plow wasn't just clean, he was light, light
enough for a strong man to carry. Could this really
be the beginning of the end for the heavy, oxen
driven plows Midwestern farmers needed to make a living? For
eight thousand years, the plow had roughly remained the same.

(06:37):
But here was something truly astonishing. But the year after
Deer demonstrated his new plow, you could count on one
hand the number he sold. Three. The following year he
filled ten orders. The truth of the matter wasn't that
Deer was a bad salesman or that his product wasn't
good enough. It was that steel was hard to come by.
Most of it had to be imported from England. Also,

(06:59):
Deer neither had the money nor the capacity to fashion
more than a handful of plows a year. As such,
Deer would continue the day to day routine of blacksmithing
anything and everything needed for the local community until he
decided to risk everything and place his bets entirely on
his plow. It was a decision that worked out for
He began to manufacture his plows in advance and recruited

(07:22):
farmers to help sell his plows on commission, and exhibited
a model with the signed self polisher in front of
his shop. The business model, much like his plow, was
novel for the time. Most businesses made their products when
orders came in. Also, Deer's idea of displaying models of
equipment that were not for purchase was really a new concept.
Deer wasn't just a good blacksmith, he was a natural businessmith,

(07:44):
and in eighteen forty six Deer manufactured about one thousand
plows and had a factory. Deer and his company eventually
outgrew Grandee to Illinois, so in eighteen forty seven, Deer
established a plow factory in Moline, Illinois, on the banks
of the Misias Sippy, building a factory in Molene made
it easy for Deer to import steel for Pittsburgh, as

(08:05):
well as to increase his distribution range. Riverboats could now
swing right by the factory. By eighteen fifty six, Deer's
Molen Plow Works was producing thirteen thousand plows a year.
Molene remains the global headquarters for the John Deer Company
to this day. The years of Molene were not all
easy for John Deere. He battled copycat manufacturers and had

(08:26):
problems managing and expanding dealer network. Still, as Deer's business
continued to grow, it became a family affair. His second
oldest son, Charles, began working for the business at the
age of sixteen. In eighteen fifty eight, when he was
just twenty one years old, Charles Deer assumed primary management
duties for the company, and he would guide it for
nearly half a century. Charles, for his part, was an

(08:47):
incredible businessman. He'd traveled to farms to demonstrate his father's
products in action, and in the eighteen seventies had one
of the company's products, a cornplanter painted green and yellow.
In nineteen eighteen, when the company released its first marketable tractor,
it became standard for all John Deere products to be
painted that way. As for John der himself, even as
he reduced his role at the company he founded, he'd

(09:09):
stay plenty busy in the community. He even served as
mayor of Moleen. Politically, there was a Whig, a staunch
abolitionist and supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Interesting side note, John
Deere met Abraham Lincoln during one of Lincoln's most important
cases as the trial lawyer. In eighteen fifty six, a
steamboat named F. E. Afton crashed into the Rock Island Bridge,

(09:30):
the first railroad bridge over the Mississippi River. The steamboat
owners sought damages. The case sparked national attention. It pitted
steamboats against railroads and raised questions about whether the railroad
bridges were dangerous for boats. Lincoln was one of the
attorneys representing the railroad company, and Deer testified on the
company's behalf. Lincoln and the railroad company ultimately prevailed, which
paved the way for railroads to further open the West

(09:52):
to development. Over time, John Deere and his company helped
make that development possible too. Deer's products were helping tame
the prairies and were supporting small and large scale farming
that helped make America the bread basket of the world.
John Deere died on May seventeenth, eighteen eighty six, at
the age of eighty two. The legendary businessman and inventor

(10:14):
who had helped tame the prairies was gone, but his
story was far from over. The company that coined the
slogan nothing runs like a deer is indeed still running
one hundred and eighty seven years after its founder, a
hard working blacksmith by trade who overcame adversity and fought
his way to success, demonstrated a single handmade plowed on
a borrowed field and a.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Special thanks to Kirk Higgins. He's the senior director of
content at the Bill of Rights Institute. The story of
John Deere, the blacksmith who transformed America's prairies here on
our American Stories