[AT] 430V - now Deere and The Great Depression

[John Slavin]

Dean:

Great story.  Always enjoy to hear stories of our ancestors.  And Bill, your comment makes sense too.  I suspect Deere’s decision was not altogether altruistic, though.  They knew most of their customers were not deadbeats and if they could pay, they would.  The probably figured that with time, assuming the economy turned around, they would get paid. The reality though was that they probably knew they would take a haircut on repossessions.  I asked my mother one time about what it was like to live in the depression because you always hear the stories about soup kitchens etc, and she said, “We always had plenty to eat because everything we ate, we raised or grew.  And we just entertained ourselves.  The only thing we bought at the general store was salt and maybe a little coffee.  NOBODY had any money.”  I know one guy never trusted the banks and kept all his money in coffee cans.  When land was being foreclosed, he went to the courthouse steps with his coffee cans in tow and bought land for a song.  

So I rather suspect Deere thought there was no way to recoup the loans and that was the main reason they decided what they did.

John

> I thought I had heard of a general policy at the time regarding this, and found it in Broehl's book, John Deere's Company, page 504: "The company's decision ...  was to carry the farmer as long as necessary to amortize the debt."  The book goes on to speak of the credit worthiness of the farmer and states that before the depression Deere had a .009 ratio of uncollectables to total sales!  If I interpret the sentences that followed correctly, by the end of the depression that ratio had climbed to only about .01.  "The farmers' loyalty to Deere products, always strong, was greatly strengthened during the period of the Great Depression.  The company's belief in the farmer was reciprocated by a farmer response that gave Deere a priceless asset for the future."
> 
> Bill Brueck
> Pine Island, MN