Kaleidoscope by Ken Lahmers,
Aurora Advocate Editor;
The world's most famous farm and excavation machinery company marks a milestone this year.
While other firms in the industry have vanished or merged, Deere & Co. continues to go strong 160 years after its founder opened the John Deere Plow Works in Moline, Ill.
It was 1848 when Deere, a blacksmith who developed a polished-steel plow in 1837, moved from Grand Detour, Ill., to Moline. In the first year there, 16 employees built more than 2,100 plows.
Then in 1868 -- 140 years ago -- the business incorporated as Deere & Co., with four people as stockholders.
But many years passed before the firm entered into production of its most famous pieces of equipment -- the tractor -- which is the most important item on a working farm.
This year also is a milestone of when that occurred. Ninety years ago -- about the time World War I ended -- Deere bought the Waterloo Boy tractor brand, selling 5,600 units the first year.
In 1923, Deere came out with its first two-cylinder tractor -- the Model D. The firm produced several models of two-cylinder tractors -- affectionately known as Johnny Poppers or Poppin' Johnnies because of their distinctive sound -- until 1960.
The firm's best-selling models -- the A and B -- came out in 1934 and 1935, respectively, and were produced until 1952.
At that time, though, Deere & Co. was not the world's largest maker/seller of farm and industrial tractors.
That distinction did not come until 1963, when Deere surpassed International Harvester, the company resulting from the earlier entrepreneurial efforts of Cyrus McCormick and William Deering.
The firm reached the $1 billion a year sales plateau in 1966.
In 1979, the company's employment peaked at 65,000 people and its annual sales reached $5 billion, and just two years ago its earnings hit a record $1.69 billion.
Throughout the United States, many people are John Deere tractor collectors. In fact, one guy in Wisconsin owns more than 200. Some of the firm's rare classic tractors command price tags approaching six figures.
One of my acquaintances -- Johnny Welling of New Philadelphia -- who has been a farmer all his life and who I worked with as a kid, owns three or four classic Johnny Poppers.
In addition to all its accomplishments in tractor manufacturing, Deere & Co. is the industry's oldest firm which still carries its founder's name.
Henry Ford got into the tractor business in the early 1900s, but his name is no longer attached to tractors since New Holland, a part of the Fiat group, gave up the name.
Having worked on my grandpa's farm and with several other farmers in my youth, the hundreds of pictures of classic tractors in a book I bought recently brought back a lot of memories.
Countless times I drove my grandpa's/uncle's 1950 Ford 8N, known as the Red Belly Ford because of its color scheme. I plowed, cultivated, cut hay and hauled many loads of hay and grain from the fields to the barn.
To compare the price of tractors then and now, new 8Ns sold for about $1,000 to $1,200, while a similar-sized tractor today goes for more than $25,000. Much bigger tractors top $100,000.
E-mail:
klahmers@recordpub.com
Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3155