Early Life and Business Career
Peek was born in Polo, Illinois, on November 19, 1873. His father was a farmer. He attended Northwestern University from 1891 to 1892, but did not graduate.
He joined the Deere & Webber Company of Minneapolis in 1893, and was named Vice President of the John Deere Plow manufacturing division in Omaha, Nebraska in 1901. In 1911, he was named President of the Deere & Co. subsidiary in Moline, Illinois. In 1919, he left Deere & Co. and became President of the Moline Plow Company, where he earned the relatively large salary of $100,000 a year. He immediately hired retired Brigadier General Hugh Samuel Johnson as the company's general counsel. Peek and Johnson were deeply interested in farm economics, especially since the post-World War I recession. Peek and Johnson became strong advocates of the McNary–Haugen Farm Relief Bill, proposed federal legislation which would have established the first national system of price supports for agriculture.
Peek was a member of the War Industries Board during World War I, and after the war was a member of the Industrial Board advising the United States Department of Commerce on post-war reconversion.
Read more about this topic: George Peek
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life, business and/or career:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“There a captive sat in chains
Crooning ditties treasured well
From his Afric’s torrid plains.
Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—
Hapless sire to hapless son,—
Was the wailing song he breathed,
And his chain when life was done.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can’t mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)