Makin' hay while the sun
shines The John Deere line of hay equipment has been an industry leader for a long time.
Historically, a few of Deere’s early hay implements were made by Deere & Mansur in Moline, but the majority of the line came from the Dain Manufacturing Company. Founded by Missouri furniture dealer Joseph Dain, Dain Manufacturing began in 1881 when he decided to build his own inventions for sweep rakes and hay stackers. He moved several times…from Meadville to Springfield…then to Armourdale, Kansas…back to Carrolltown, Missouri, where the business was incorporated in 1890…and finally to Ottumwa, Iowa in 1900. A great Dane meets a giant deer Over the years, Dain hay equipment had been sold in Deere sales branches across the country. But when a rumor circulated in October 1903 that Dain might be entertaining offers by International Harvester, Deere decided to make the relationship official. Deere offered a 5-year exclusive selling contract, which proved it was dedicated to the hay equipment line made by Dain. In fact, that move actually hampered some efforts by Deere & Mansur, the Moline company also owned by Charles Deere.
By 1911, the deal was even more official as Deere bought Dain for about $1 million in Deere & Company stock. It was agreed that Dain would maintain its separate identity although it was now a wholly owned subsidiary of Deere. Dain does it all Soon after Deere brought Dain into the fold, the Company put Joseph Dain to work with a long list of responsibilities and roles. He ran the hay tools business in Ottumwa, plus led research into harvesting equipment, became a vice-president and supervised the patent & experimental department. They really wanted him to run the entire harvester department in Moline, but Dain stayed in Ottumwa until 1913 when he finally gave in and moved to Moline. A short time later, Deere put Dain in charge of tractor design experiments. He was asked to study the tractor situation and report back to the Board. C.C. Webber of the Minneapolis Deere & Webber branch had an idea about a small two- or three-plow tractor that would sell for around $700. Dain thought he could build it but his first several experimental designs cost almost twice that. Still, by September 1917, he felt ready to test his design with a small production run of 100 units for the Dain All-Wheel Drive tractor.
But two months later, he died after catching pneumonia on a field trip to North Dakota. An earlier column discussed Dain’s first tractor design, which some say was technically Deere’s first production tractor before the Waterloo Boy acquisition in 1918. In addition to a full line of hay implements and the brief stint into tractors, Dain also built commercial cars in the early 1900s. Dain's Canadian connection In 1908, Dain also added a factory Welland, Ontario Canada to manufacture mowers and rakes for the Canadian market. Production of the Dain line of mowers, hay loaders, side rakes and other hay tools continued at the Welland plant, and John Deere spreaders and Van Brunt grain drills were also added to the line. The plant was then expanded in 1913. However, the Canadian tariff for this type of equipment was so low, it made more sense to serve Canadian customers out of the Minneapolis branch. So the decision was made to close the Welland plant and move the drill and cultivator lines back to the Horicon, Wisconsin plant, the spreader lines went back to East Moline, and the hay tools returned to Dain’s Ottumwa, Iowa factory. The Welland sales branch closed and the plant was "mothballed." Changes in the Canadian government led to Deere’s return to manufacturing in Canada. By 1931, the plant reopened to build disk tillers, grain drills, grain binders, disk harrows and gang plows.
Text Ý © 2000 Brenda Kruse. Photos by Brenda Kruse unless otherwise noted. |
