Two Cylinder Magazine

The Waterloo Boy
Before John Deere
by Ralph Hughes

This story isn’t necessarily about Waterloo Boy Tractors. Rather, it is about the products of the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company prior to its acquisition by Deere & Company. It starts, in fact, with said acquistion and the products of that time; and then delves further into the history of the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company, exposing a diverse and creative product line that precedes the famous Waterloo Boy Models “R” and “N” which are known to tractor enthusiasts worldwide.

In early 1918, the Deere & Company board of directors was undecided as to whether or not the Company should enter the tractor market, even though field testing of John Deere experimental tractors had begun six years earlier. William Butterworth, the Company’s president and chairman of the board, opposed the idea, while other board members favored the proposition. The Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company was, at the time, a well-known tractor manufacturer; so, too, was Deere’s chief competitor, International Harvester Company.

The cover of a pre-Deere Waterloo Boy sales brochure shows the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company may have already been using green, yellow, and red — familiar John Deere colors in the early 20th Century — at least two years prior to its acquisition.

Butterworth finally relented and directed Frank Silloway, a Deere executive, to appraise the Waterloo company to determine its value, and then evaluate its marketing and manufacturing capabilities. Within two weeks, Silloway presented to the board a comprehensive and favorable report. According to Wayne G. Broehl’s book, John Deere’s Company, he stated: “I believe that, quality and price considered, it (the Waterloo Boy Tractor) is the best commercial tractor on the market today. The only real competitor it has is the I.H.C. (tractor). The Waterloo tractor is of a type which the average farmer can buy… With it we should have a satisfactory tractor (to sell) at a popular price.” Silloway continued: “Here we have an opportunity to, overnight, step into practically first place in the tractor business… I believe that we would be acting wisely if we purchased this plant.” The following day, the board passed unanimously a resolution to purchase the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company for $2,350,000 (about $32 million in today’s dollars).

How much did Frank Silloway and other members of the Deere board really know about the tractor market in which the Company would soon compete? Following are a few interesting facts gathered from a 1918 issue of Farm Implement News, a Chicago-based trade publication distributed to farm equipment dealers throughout the United States. There were more than 100 companies manufacturing tractors that year, offering 161 different models or brands. An antique tractor enthusiast may recognize many of these names: OilPull, Allis Chalmers, Aultman-Taylor, Avery, Case, Hart-Parr, International, Minneapolis, Heider (built by the Rock Island Plow Co.), Universal (built by the Moline Plow Co.), and Samson (built by General Motors Truck Co.).

Most of the other brand names, along with the companies who manufactured them, have faded into oblivion. Here are a few: Trundaar, Creeping Grip, Common Sense, Allwork, Hackney, Flour City, Happy Farmer, Twin City, Motox, Poco, Jim Dandy, Yuba, and Zella. The last two brands were manufactured in California.

Two-thirds of the 161 brands listed were equipped with four-cylinder vertical engines. Thirty-two models had two-cylinder horizontal engines. Ninety percent burned kerosene, or either kerosene and gasoline. The Twin City Tractors manufactured by the Minneapolis Steel & Machinery Co. were offered with either a four- or six-cylinder engine that burned kerosene or gasoline. Also listed in Farm Implement News were these eight tractors with four-cylinder horizontal engines: Andrews, Aultman-Taylor, Avery, Brillion, Little Giant, Neverslip, Pioneer, and Standard.

The majority of these tractors had four wheels, with the two rear wheels providing the traction. A few models were three-wheels with one drive wheel. The Depue tractor from Clinton, Iowa, and the Fitch tractor from Grand Rapids, Michigan, offered four-wheel drive. The drawbar horsepower ranged from 5 to 60. The forward speeds varied from 1-1/2 to 6 mph. The tractors were rated also both by the number of plow bottoms they could pull in average soil conditions, and by the of size threshing machine they could power. On the high side, the Avery 40-80, the Twin City 40-80, and the Rumely Oil-Pull 30-60 were rated as eight-to ten-plow tractors. On the lower end, there were at least sixty models rated as either two-or three-plow tractors, including these better known brands: Case 9-18, Hart-Parr 12-25, IHC’s Mogul 10-20, and Velie’s Biltwell 12-24 Tractor, to name only a few.

Here’s how the two Waterloo Boy Tractors included on the list fared in comparison. Both the Model “R” 12-24 (still in limited production at that time) and the Model “N” 12-25 were rated as three-plow tractors. They, of course, had kerosene-burning two-cylinder horizontal engines. According to Silloway’s report, the “R” weighed 5240 pounds and was sold to farmers for $985; the “N” weighed 5930 pounds and was priced at $1,150. The chief difference between the two models was that the “N” provided a choice of two forward speeds (2-1/4 or 3 mph), while the “R” had only one forward speed (2-1/4 mph). IHC offered farmers two tractors with two forward speeds: the three-plow Titan 10-20, selling for $1,125; and the International 15-30, priced at $1900. Frank Silloway reported that 4,558 Waterloo Boy Tractors were built in 1917, up from 2,762 the previous year.

Less than a week after Deere purchased the Waterloo company, C.D. Velie, a highly regarded member of the board, reassured Butterworth that his purchase decision was correct. In a letter, again quoting from Broehl’s book, Velie wrote: “For your own peace of mind, I want to say that the Waterloo business is being looked after very closely by C.C. Webber,
myself, and Mr. Silloway, along with others in Moline.” Both Velie and Webber were managers and part owners of Deere & Webber Company, the John Deere sales branch in Minneapolis.

Perhaps one way that these gentlemen kept track of the Waterloo company’s business was by reading the many advertisements that ran almost weekly in Farm Implement News. These ads first appeared in 1914, and continued to run even after Deere bought the company. It’s interesting to note that one of the first ads not only featured the Waterloo Boy Tractor, but also included the Waterloo Boy Stationary Engines and a Waterloo Boy Cream Separator. In 1915, one of the ads quoted a price for the Waterloo Boy Tractor at $750 — $235 lower than the price listed in Silloway’s 1918 report. An ad that ran in 1916 included a Waterloo Boy Milking Machine in addition to the three products featured in the 1914 ad.

Appearing in February 1914 issue of Farm Implement News, this was primarily a dealer recruiting ad. Note that the tractor is an artist’s drawing that combines features from two models.

The Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company ran this “full line” advertisement in a March 1916 issue of Farm Implement News. It was a common practice for manufacturing companies to include an illustration showing its factory, and Deere was certainly no exception. The Waterloo Boy Tractor pictured here has the radiator placed on the left side, and has a smaller fuel tank than was used on later models.

The names and cities of two Waterloo Boy Tractordistributors appeared in a 1917 ad, along with this headline: “They will give you prompt service.” Another 1917 ad featured both the Model “R” and “N” Tractors. Before Deere purchased the company, a Waterloo Boy ad in 1918 listed the name and location of 20 distributors of the Waterloo Boy line. This ad stated that “Every territory holds an opportunity for Waterloo Boy profits… your territory may be open.” It also proudly claimed that “Waterloo Boys are making good on more than 10,000 farms.”

The copy in another 1918 ad pointed out that the Waterloo Boy Kerosene Engine had been a “recognized leader” in the stationary engine business for 23 years, which takes us back to 1895. That year coincides with the demise of the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company — the firm that once built the Froelich tractor. It should be noted that the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company was taking some liberty at this point in that, specifically, stationary engines bearing the Waterloo Boy name didn’t enter production until 1905. Those built prior to that were horizontal stationary, vertical stationary, and portable gasoline engines marketed as Waterloo Gasoline Engines, thus the company name.

The first ad in Farm Implement News to carry the John Deere name and logo appeared in the October 17, 1918, issue. The ad was directed at both the dealer and the user. The headline read: “All selling and working problems on this tractor are permanently solved.” A later 1918 advertisement was prepared prior to the end of World War I by the Deere & Company advertising department, and had a patriotic theme: “In every part of the country, the Waterloo Boy is an important factor in the ‘Victory Drive’ for bigger acreage; and is drafted into service, because it has a record for performance behind it.”


Both the Models “R” and “N” Tractors were promoted in this March 1917 ad, along with sales figures for 1916 and the sales goal for 1917. However, the company failed to reach the 6000-unit mark that year. The ad copy claimed that “Every one of the 2874 farmers who bought Waterloo Boy Tractors last year (1916) is a booster.”	By early 1918, the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company had Waterloo Boy Tractor distributors located in 19 states. The job of each distributor was to recruit a group of dealers, thereby providing sales and service outlets throughout the state.

In late 1918, the farm tractor market changed rapidly. That year, Ford Motor Company finished field testing its new Fordson tractor and introduced it to farmers. Because of the favorable reputation of the Ford automobile, particularly in the rural communities, the Fordson was an immediate sales success. More than 34,000 were sold in 1918, and 57,000 the following year. Fordson sales also pushed IHC and Deere into second and third place in the farm tractor market. Looking back, Deere & Company made a wise choice 89 years ago when it elected to enter the emerging farm tractor market with the well-established and economically priced Waterloo Boy, rather than with an unknown and higher-priced tractor of its own design (the All-Wheel-Drive Tractor designed by Joseph Dain).

This ad appeared in the “Tractor and Truck Review” section of Farm Implement News on October 17, 1918. It was one of the first ads to include the John Deere name and trademark. The ad stated that “farmers are buying Waterloo Boys as fast as we can put them in distributor hands.” Unfortunately, retail sales dropped off significantly after the Ford Motor Company introduced its new Fordson Tractor.