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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 102.3 | The History Cooperative
102.3  
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September, 2006
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Reviews

The John Deere Story
A Biography of Plowmakers John and Charles Deere

By Neil Dahlstrom and Jeremy Dahlstrom
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. Pp. xix, 204. Illustrations, appendix, notes, works cited, index. $24.00.)

The introduction of steel plows was a leading step to the opening of the midwestern prairies by pioneer farmers. Tough prairie sod could not be broken with cast iron shares, and sticky soils could not be turned with ironclad moldboards. In the 1830s, a few blacksmiths used steel to make sharper plowshares and some experimented with wrought iron moldboards. In 1837, John Deere, an ambitious smith from Vermont, newly arrived in Grand Detour, Illinois, produced a plow that cut more keenly and turned furrows more smoothly than its rivals. It sold well and Deere continued to improve the implement, importing fine steel and enlarging his workshop. In 1848, he moved to Moline on the Mississippi River, where he built a large new factory to produce even better plows for an expanding market ranging north to Minnesota and south to Missouri. In the 1850s, output soared from over 2,000 to over 13,000 plows a year. . . .
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