USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Naugatuck > History of Naugatuck, Connecticut > Part 17
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On the other hand, in one respect Naugatuck departed widely from the course set in most New England mill towns: in Naugatuck labor unions played virtually no part. A car- penters' union, organized in 1891, twenty-five years later a plumbers' local, and in 1917 a painters' and decorators' union represented the building trades. At the foundry a molders' union appeared early in the century, fought one or two successful skirmishes with company officers, and then subsided into little more than a social club that conducted annual picnics and balls. The attempt to unionize the rub- ber shops in 1919 ended in nothing permanent.
Of the three factors accounting for this divergence from the norm, first is the fact that in 1920 the borough still num- bered less than 15,000 inhabitants, so that no class of people was wholly cut off from contact with any other. Despite the increased impersonality of the corporations, employers lived too close to their employees to be able to shut their eyes to any situation that created misery for workers' families. The effects of this proximity, since Naugatuck factories, with the exception of the rubber shops, were still controlled by Nau- gatuck money and Naugatuck men, was to make impossible a complete disregard of the well-being of the community as a whole. The primary reason for unionizing was thus miss- ing.
In the second place, an influx of foreign workers speaking no English added an undigestible lump to Naugatuck's labor- ing classes. Until the Poles, Russians, and Lithuanians em- ployed by the rubber company and others could understand the language enough to comprehend issues at stake, they were bound to be a drag upon any group aiming at labor
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organization. The presence of an interpreter at workers' meetings, as at the time of the rubber strike, proved at best hampering. Moreover, the meagre standard of living to which these East European peasants were accustomed tended to diminish any wish to protest the conditions they found here. Naugatuck wages, fairly high, may well have seemed munificent.
Finally, it seems probable that owing to the nature of Naugatuck's industries many factory workers as late as the 1920's nursed hopes of advancing into the ranks of salaried personnel or of accumulating savings to invest profitably. People on salary were not traditionally concerned with labor unions; and the owners of bonds or stocks of course immedi- ately, even if unconsciously, themselves became petty capital- ists. Increasing numbers of supervisory jobs in expanding plants promised to the conscientious and able worker re- current chances of promotion to lift him out of the ranks of ordinary mill hands. And the growth of manufacturing based on laboratory research suggested the possibility of educating the younger generation to a point to give them opportunities unattainable by their fathers working at bench or machine. So long as the social and economic structure in Naugatuck gave signs of flexibility, labor unions had little on which to feed.
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CHAPTER XI
The Growth of the Corporations, 1921-1940
T HE downward swing of the business cycle in 1921 gave Naugatuck manufacturers a temporary setback such as all American industrial communities faced. But its effects were not long-enduring, and after brief retrench- ment companies here resumed full-scale operations. Only the Dunham Hosiery Company failed to survive the twenties. In common with many New England textile concerns, that enterprise was slowly pushed out by southern competition, and after limping along for several years the company passed out of existence in 1927. Concern for the employees stranded by this collapse induced Harris Whittemore, Jr., to pur- chase the property and organize the Naugatuck Mills under the management of the superintendent of the late Dunham Company. Fabrication of cotton net for rubber linings kept the new company functioning down into 1934 when the general debacle of business brought it also to an end.
Otherwise manufacturing in Naugatuck boomed all through the twenties. The foundry added a new building; the Risdon company expanded; the chemical and the rub- ber regenerating plants developed new products. The Cham- ber of Commerce, established in the fall of 1921 to take in hand a planned scheme of community development, soon found its task easier than anticipated when it organized in the day of the post-war recession. Members of the Chamber of Commerce, freed from anxiety about employment in Naugatuck, were able to expend their energies upon pro- moting various improvements in the borough, organization of the Building and Loan Association, formation of the Rec- reation and Playground Association, sponsoring of flower shows for the benefit of the Day Nursery, enactment of build-
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ing ordinances, and the like. Two industrial exhibits of products made in Naugatuck excited much interest within the borough and favorable comment from outside. Tabula- tion of local corporations' employment figures periodically after 1925 gave information on which to appraise the bor- ough's status and probable immediate future. One of the most valuable services the Chamber of Commerce performed in its first year was bringing to Naugatuck Peter Paul, In- corporated.
The story of Peter Paul, candy-makers now known from one end of America to the other, reads like a Horatio Alger or Nick Carter "penny-dreadful." The founder of the com- pany was an Armenian immigrant by the name of Peter Halajian who landed in the United States in 1890. Thrift in time established him as proprietor of a small chain of candy stores in Naugatuck and Torrington, Connecticut, where he sold confectionery and ice cream of his own making. Be- cause his customers found difficulty in pronouncing his Armenian name, he legally adopted the English equivalent, Peter Paul. Since separately owned little candy kitchens in various Connecticut towns had scant chance of ever amount- ing to much, in 1919 Peter Paul, in the face of some ridicule, persuaded five Armenian friends to pool their interests with his to organize a candy-manufacturing firm in New Haven. By 1922 the business had grown to such an extent that more space was needed, but New Haven bankers were not inter- ested in backing the expansion. At this point a Naugatuck bank through the efforts of the local Chamber of Commerce agreed to make a loan, and Peter Paul moved to Naugatuck. On an open hillside on the road toward Bethany the com- pany erected a fine-looking, well-lighted, brick factory and in- stalled modern machinery. Within two years' time the bank loan was repaid with interest.
Through the twenties the company's business grew stead- ily as Peter Paul "Mounds," the company's first product and
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always its best-selling, became better known and more popu- lar. Most of its growing list of employees were also stock- holders. Death of its founder in 1927 failed to halt the company's expansion, for Peter Paul's able brother-in-law, Calvin Kazanjian, took up the reins of management. But the depression brought reverses until company officers took dras- tic action based on their conviction that, out of $200,000,000 candy sales in the United States in 1932, Peter Paul could net a larger share. They discarded the tin-foil wrapping, re- packaged "Mounds" in cellophane, and then set the price of a package of two at a nickel, the former price of one. Within a month sales began to rise. By 1935 when many man- ufacturers were just beginning to recover from the depths of their slump, Peter Paul had doubled its employment over the 1932 figure, doubled its plant capacity by a large addition to the factory, and declared a 100 per cent stock dividend. Emphasis upon good quality ingredients and a skillful use of radio advertising continued to expand the market for these cocoanut-filled, chocolate-coated candy bars. To the astonishment of old residents, Naugatuck in the minds of thousands of Americans came to mean the home of Peter Paul.
No other manufacturing concern in the borough had an equally spectacular career. But for all this gratifying success, because the candy company employed far fewer people than the United States Rubber Company, for most working people developments at the rubber shops mattered more immediately. Of particular importance to Naugatuck were the new lines of manufacture at the chemical plant.
Before 1925 the Naugatuck Chemical's primary products were sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic acids, nitrobenzol and aniline. These heavy chemicals were sold to the brass, copper, and other metal industries of New England, as well as to rubber companies. Large quantities of sulphuric acid went to the rubber regenerating plant in Naugatuck until about
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1925 when the sulphuric process was dropped altogether in favor of the cheaper and more efficient soda process. Then came the discovery of V G B.
For years chemists had been searching for a compound that would retard oxidization of rubber. They reasoned that since science had found chemicals that accelerated the processes of vulcanization, it must be possible to find others that would retard chemical action, particularly the action of oxygen which made rubber brittle. In 1923 Dr. Sidney Cadwell, working in the company's General Laboratories in New Jersey, hit upon the formula of V G B, the first reliable anti- oxidant known. Commerical production of this revolution- izing compound began in the Naugatuck Chemical plant as soon as Cadwell had secured his patent. Today 90 per cent of the rubber consumed contains antioxidant in the finished product; it is essential in all rubber goods where service requirements are severe.
While manufacture of V G B immediately expanded oper- ations at the Naugatuck Chemical, still more significant were the results six years later of the discovery of a new anti- oxidant. Flex-cracking, the breaking that developed in rub- ber products subjected to repeated flexing or bending, was the chief cause of tire failures. Consequently the discovery of a compound that imparted to rubber a great resistance to flex-cracking was of monumental importance. Almost over- night "BLE" became the most widely used antioxidant of the industry. Though the molecular construction of BLE has never been determined, its properties were recognized at once. Large-scale production both for the United States Rubber Company and for manufacturers all over the world gave the Naugatuck Chemical new importance. BLE thence- forward constituted the single most lucrative item made here.
During the thirties, in addition to heavy chemicals, ac- celerators, and antioxidants, the company developed a num- ber of other valuable lines in aromatics and perfumes, plas-
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tics, varnishes, and latices. Aromatics are related to the rub- ber industry only because the manufacture of synthetic aromatics was related chemically to the manufacture of other of the company products. From the production of synthetic deodorants and perfumes it was only a step to com- pound perfumes and perfume bases from natural substances -flowers, leaves, roots, and resins. Experiment with resinous materials in turn produced a new plastic, VICTRON. This synthetic chemical, looking like glass and feeling like cellu- loid, is related chemically both to rubber and to certain aromatics. Its principal use was for high-frequency radio transmitters, because it combined good electrical properties with easy machinability. Most important of all the new lines was latex, basically the milk which exudes from the bark of the rubber tree when cut. Laboratory research after 1925 revealed ways of modifying latex to adapt it to a great variety of uses not only in rubber manufacture but in other in- dustries as well. It could be made to thicken for easy spread- ing or made to penetrate fibers deeply, to be stable enough to resist mechanical manipulation, or quickly sensitive to coag- ulation. Within ten years it was wanted by the thousands of tons by makers of paper boxes, automobiles, upholstery and textiles.
Rapid growth in demand for these diversified products steadily expanded employment at the chemical plant. In 1929 the Rubber Regenerating Company and the Nauga- tuck Chemical Company were combined into a single unit. The following year the long-desired eight-hour shifts of work replaced the eleven- and thirteen-hour shifts at both plants, a change which automatically added to the payroll. In spite of the business depression, between 1930 and 1935 employ- ment increased by 50 per cent. By 1940 there were nearly a thousand employees, including production workers, re- search chemists, laboratory assistants, and the chemical engi- neers responsible for design of special machines and layout of equipment. Almost three hundred scientists and techni-
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cians lent the staff distinction and brought intellectual stimu- lation to the whole community. Available to employees was a fine company library, one of the best industrial libraries in America, equipped with scientific books, periodicals, and copies of about 30,000 patents.
The story of the Footwear Division before 1929 was less reassuring. A new colorful line of rubber bathing shoes was started in 1923 which offset in part the transfer of the manu- facture of Keds from the Naugatuck plant. Enlargement of one of the old glove shops in 1922 brought about more ex- tended operations, and improvements in equipment prom- ised greater efficiency. Installation of self-cutting upper cal- endars, rag calendars, and a hook-up with a machine for cementing together parts of the shoe was followed by intro- duction of the ammonia cure which sped up vulcanization and gave at once a better finish and longer life to the shoe. The Factory Council functioned effectively to keep labor relations serene. Nevertheless, the United States Rubber Company was losing money hand over fist, and in 1928 utter collapse looked not far distant to men who knew the fi- nancial condition of the company. A greater calamity for Naugatuck could scarcely be imagined.
Fortunately in 1928 the DuPont Company became fi- nancially interested in the United States Rubber Company. It was the signal for a revolution within the organization. To salvage the enterprise sweeping measures were essential. The first of these was decision to concentrate all the com- pany's footwear manufacture in one plant instead of having it scattered among seven in New England and Pennsylvania. Because of its favorable geographical location and the ade- quacy of the floor space and facilities here, Naugatuck was the place chosen. Had company directors selected any other one of the possible seven localities the history of Naugatuck in the following years might have been grim indeed. As it was, the consolidation of all footwear manufacture here per- mitted the borough not only to survive the depression with a
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minimum of unemployment but actually to grow somewhat. A good many employees from the plants closed down be- tween the spring of 1929 and the fall of 1932 were trans- ferred to Naugatuck. Their coming added by so much to the general business activity of the borough. From fewer than 2,000 workers in the local shoe shops in 1928 employment rose by 1937 to almost 6,500. House building, elsewhere at a standstill, reached a peak not known since the days imme- diately after World War I, and some of the new arrivals had to find dwellings outside the borough.
Changes within the factory were equally far-reaching. In order to continue manufacture of all the trade-marked lines formerly made in the other company plants drastic revision of production control was necessary. The company could not afford to discard any well-selling item, but, since in rub- ber footwear even seemingly minor alterations of style re- quire different handlings from the first operation onward, fabrication of some five thousand different styles of rubbers and overshoes posed a complicated problem. So management created a new department of Production Control manned by competent engineers to supervise the orderly flow of work day in and day out. In addition to the large variety of rubber- soled and canvas- or rubber-topped shoes, after 1934 the Naugatuck plant made latex bathing suits.
To produce the greater variety of articles and the much greater volume necessary for economical operation, new equipment and short-cuts in methods of manufacture were also called for. Owing to the peculiar properties of rubber, mechanization in the rubber-shoe industry was not far ad- vanced compared to many other American industries. Though the making teams inaugurated in 1917 had sped up production somewhat, they no longer sufficed in a period when mass production was imperative if the company was to hold its own in a highly competitive market. Assembly-line production was the only answer. A first small boot conveyor was set up in 1929, then in 1930 the gum shoe making con-
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veyor, and in 1931 a series of straight line conveyors. In 1934 came the first continuous sponge presses. The effects were immediate: within four years daily production was stepped up to 100,000 pairs of shoes and in 1937 to a peak of 124,397 pairs. In 1936 after purchase of the Firestone Rubber Foot- wear Company another building was put up in Naugatuck to accommodate the expanding operations. The company for the first time in years got out of the red and began to make money.
But in spite of the fact that the conveyors eliminated most of the hard physical work of bootmaking, and in spite of the guarantee they supplied that the company would survive and jobs endure, bootmakers disliked the complete mechaniza- tion of what had been an honored craft. The inroads made upon their special position by the making teams were now so extended as to demote these aristocrats of labor to the role of semi-skilled factory hands. Any remaining vestige of individ- ual workmanship was gone, and rubber shoe production be- came, like leather boots and shoes, a succession of repetitive assembly-line jobs, depending for volume of output upon the speed of the conveyors. Moreover, to the natural reluctance of craftsmen to seeing their special skills set aside was added some discontent arising from workmen's conviction that the conveyors served as a means of relentless periodic speed-ups. A wage-bonus payment for a group of operators who jointly could increase a day's production on their section of the line appeared to justify this view. Persuading the working force of the shops that mechanization was a condition of survival in the industry, not a ruthless exploitation of human beings, was to be a major task of the Industrial Relations department for the next fifteen years.
Workers, however, dared voice no protest over manage- ment's innovations in the early days of the depression when jobs of any kind were at a premium. While conversion of the shops was proceeding, a one-day, later a two-day a week, shut- down occurred; and in the winter of 1930-31 operations
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were further curtailed. Yet every day a line of a hundred to two hundred men and women drew up at the employment office. But the upturn was at hand for Naugatuck. The next year members on the payroll began to mount steadily. In 1933 promulgation of the N.R.A. boosted wage rates until the weekly payroll reached $125,000. Then, after the collapse of the N.R.A., came the Wagner Act. The smoldering dis- satisfactions of the bootmakers now found expression: they organized a Rubber Workers' Union under the American Federation of Labor. If the company officers were loath to see a union appear, they gave no sign.
The series of laws passed after 1935 by the federal Congress in the hey-day of the New Deal must have vouchsafed the rubber workers most of the benefits they hoped for, even had they formed no union. A pension in old age, an eight-hour day and a working week gradually reduced to forty hours, time-and-a-half for overtime, unemployment insurance- all promised the industrial worker security such as previously he could scarcely have imagined. But these safeguards not- withstanding, men in Naugatuck's rubber shops determined to stand by unionization. The AF of L charter was shortly surrendered and the Rubber Workers became a CIO affil- iate. A first consent election was not held in the factories until 1940, and no formal contract with the company was signed until 1941. But from 1936 on it was plain to company officials, to company employees, and to Naugatuck in general that the United Rubber Workers' Local 45 was here to stay. It arose without disorder, it enlisted its members slowly but in growing strength, and by verbal agreements with manage- ment it entrenched itself so solidly that citizens tended to for- get that an industrial workers' union had not always been a part of Naugatuck's industrial scene. Yet in spite of this ob- vious achievement, no other unions arose in the borough until after 1940.
Of the other old established concerns in Naugatuck the Eastern Malleable Iron Company suffered as much as any in
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the early thirties, though no industry had plain sailing. The first years of the depression the foundry survived by introduc- ing work on aluminum castings, and thus, as one of the first companies in that field, netted some much-needed orders. But the force was reduced to 150 men in the winter of 1933, and for a time anxiety ran high in the borough lest company officers close the plant altogether in order to consolidate op- erations in one of the company's foundries elsewhere. This dire contingency providentially did not materialize. Nauga- tuck was after all the birthplace of the Eastern Malleable Iron Company, and Naugatuck directors successfully op- posed suggestions to shut down the plant which for seventy years had been a significant factor in Naugatuck's industrial life. Gradually business revived. Between 1935 and 1940 average employment stood at nearly five hundred, while manufacture was made more efficient by use of powdered coal and, after 1939, installation of electrical annealing furnaces which cut annealing time from nine days to five.
Although employment in the smaller factories dropped less sharply than at the foundry, the Naugatuck Manufactur- ing and the Russell companies together had fewer than thirty employees in the winter of 1933, about a 25 per cent decrease from the average of the 1920's, while the Bristol Company and the Risdon cut their working forces about 35 per cent between 1930 and 1933. Yet Naugatuck in the blackest days of the depression was called "the best town in the valley." After 1933 there was a general upswing. At the Platts Mills shops continuing research developed some new items of man- ufacture. The Risdon Company used the months of slack- ened operation to improve its production processes.
In 1933 the Risdon Company installed "shadowgraph" machines equipped with powerful lenses that made possible visual check of dimensions of components to closer tolerance than ever before. Design of new jigs and fixtures capable of performing a continuous series of intricate operations on the great automatic presses multiplied the number and variety
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of articles the shop could fabricate from sheet metal. Metal- lurgical developments of tool steels produced more durable dies. Whereas twenty years earlier a die had lasted for only a few hundred or thousand stampings, now a million pieces per die became standard performance. So by constant attention to detail the company built up its reputation for precision man- ufacture, was able to lower its prices, and after 1933 gradually expanded its payroll from about two hundred people to nearly double that number by 1940. Aware of the benefit of having specialized personnel, in 1938 the company inaugu- rated a two year training course in which each year three or four young men were schooled in engineering problems of the type the company regularly encountered. Periodic re- ports and studied recommendations from the student ap- prentices gave the shops some workable improvements in techniques and, more important, developed a corps of men educated for exacting supervisory jobs.
Meanwhile three new enterprises had started up in the borough all of which eventually contributed a good deal to Naugatuck's industrial stability. The first of these originated by Harris Whittemore, Jr., in 1925, began in part of the hosiery plant as a small jobbing shop to do machine work for concerns like the Eastern Malleable Iron Company. This soon proved unprofitable and in 1928 the Naugatuck Engi- neering and Machinery Company, with more company direc- tors than employees, sold its equipment but, keeping its incorporation papers, branched out into experimental work on aircraft engines. Contacts with Pratt & Whitney opened the way. The aircraft company was working on powerful new engines in which increased compression built up exces- sive temperatures. Accurate temperature indicators and rede- signed thermal controls were therefore essential. To these problems the Naugatuck company turned its attention, and with help from one of the Bristol Company engineers began manufacture of aircraft thermal controls. Taking the name of the Lewis Engineering Company in 1933, the corporation
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