John Deere's Company: A History of Deere & Company and Its Times (review)

BOOK REVIEWS359 233 periodicals, indexes to periodical literature, and the "Recent Articles" listings injournals to compile these 1,028 items. The content ofthe articles listed range from 1540 to the 1960s widi die bulk ofdiem representing the eighteenth and nineteendi centuries. In addition, Cole annotates each item in a descriptive radier dian judgmental fashion. His remarks include reasons for the trip, a briefitinerary, dates encompassed, and die general reaction of the traveler to the region visited. Cole arranges the items according to region and then state. This useful scheme is enhanced by detailed indexes, one on travelers, places, and subjects and the otiier on authors, editors, and translators. A curious aspect ofthe book is the definition oftraveler employed. Cole includes people from other countries, missionaries, migrants to the West, and even people on vacation. His rationale is that anyone traveling across an area can offer fresh insights into the places and people observed. It would be helpful if the title could convey diis broad interpretation of travelers rather than sounding as if the book focused on foreign travelers. Another small problem is the lack ofan index ofaudiors by place oforigin so that one might pull out all the observers from a particular country with ease. This would facilitate research into, for example, die Polish point of view. Given the large number of historians and otiier scholars interested in interpretations of America and its inhabitants, diis bibliography will no doubt be widely used. Glenda Riley University of Northern Iowa John Deere's Company: A History ofDeere ir Company and Its Times. By Wayne G. Broehl, Jr. (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1984. Pp. xv, 870. $24.95.) This large, copiously illustrated volume is many tilings at once—a business history of one of America's most important agricultural machinery manufacturers , the story of John Deere and his family who ran the firm as a family enterprise until 1982, and the history of rural and small-town America from the early 1800s to the mid-twentieth century. Supported indirectly by Deere and Company tiirough a grant to Dartmouth College, where Professor Broehl is on the faculty of the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, this history is based primarily on the company's voluminous and well-organized records located at its Moline headquarters . The copious endnotes are especially informative, leading die reader to a variety ofprimary and secondary sources dealingwitii the historyofthe westward movement, agricultural politics, farm implement technology, manufacturing processes, marketing, and business organization and leadership. 360CIVIL WAR HISTORY A failure in Vermont, John Deere, like many other Americans, moved west to seek his fortune. Settling in Grand Detour, Illinois, in 1837, and moving to Moline in 1848, Deere used his blacksmithing skills and natural inventiveness to develop what farmers working the rich but sticky prairie soil of Illinois needed most—a plow that would "scour" itself. Made of polished steel, Deere's plow quickly revolutionized midwestern agriculture . Almost bankrupted by die Panic of 1857, John Deere turned over management of the company to his son Charles in 1858 who ran the firm until his death in 1907. Like his business contemporaries, Charles developed modern marketing and distribution systems to meet the demands of an ever-growing market. But, unlike most odier companies, Deere's branch houses established between 1869 and 1889 in such cities as Kansas City and Minneapolis were copartnerships rather than entirely company-owned. Deere thus made an early experiment with decentralized operations combined with centralized control from Moline, more a hallmark of twentieth- rather than nineteenth-century management. It was also Charles Deere who led die company in its sometimes acrimonious confrontations with the Grangers and die Populists. Over the next several decades, Deere and Company botii broadened its product line and its markets so that by the 1980s it was a leadingAmerican corporation meeting the needs of a rapidly changing, international market for agricultural machinery. Broehl's is thus an informative history ofa significant American corporation and its multifaceted environment which will be both interesting and useful to scholars as well as the general public. Henry B. Leonard Kent State University ...