USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Naugatuck > History of Naugatuck, Connecticut > Part 18
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carried on, constantly revising its product as trial and error rendered one feature after another obsolete. To five men in the shop in 1933 thirty odd were added in the course of the next six years, and the enterprise was still just getting under way. The outbreak of war in Europe gave the impetus to in- mediate acceleration and by 1940 the Lewis Engineering Company was expanding into a position of major importance in the borough.
The second new industry started in 1927 when the Nauga- tuck Glass Company began the fabricating of sheet glass for various purposes. Winfield Scott Witherwax, founder of the company, in 1916 had been a foreman for the Waterbury Clock Company. When American manufacturers were cut off by the war from supplies of European watch crystals the Waterbury company had been obliged to manufacture its own. So Witherwax, assisting with the development of the crystal making, had early first-hand experience. After the war imported crystals again poured into America and the Water- bury company reverted to purchasing instead of making its own. But Witherwax, who meanwhile had served a year and one-half in the army, was eager to pursue the interesting pos- sibilities recognized during the brief but intensive period of war-time effort. He spent the next several years making crys- tals with other associates in Waterbury. In 1927 he arranged for the purchase of a much used and dilapidated silvering table, a small machine for cutting circles and a flat disc for hand beveling small square and rectangular pieces, rented a tiny building from the Megin Construction Company on Elm Street and started operations with three employees.
Hard times struck before the Naugatuck shop was well established, but the enterprise survived and gradually strengthened. After outgrowing the space available in the first location the company purchased the land and building originally erected by the foundry as an employee recreation center, and here operations continued to expand. During the twenty years of its existence the Naugatuck Glass Company
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acquired a reputation for quality and service that resulted in an ever-increasing volume of business. Ten years after its start in Naugatuck there were 110 employees, twenty years after, 300. New and greatly improved equipment of various kinds were added until there had been eight expansions of floor-space since the modest beginning, and the company was supplying component glass parts to many of the country's leading manufacturers. In the post-war period the glass com- pany was to rank among the borough's most promising indus- tries.
The third new venture was the Butterfield Company, manufacturers of bakelite products. T. F. Butterfield, head of the concern, had withdrawn from a firm in Watertown in order to start his own company. Naugatuck was conveniently near, and space in the old woolen mill was available. In 1933 in the darkest days of the depression when Butterfield began operations here, plastics for industrial use were relatively new and finding customers was not easy. The molded plastic insulating fixtures the company made were principally for the electrical industry. But the primary requisite for success in this field of manufacture, expert knowledge of the engi- neering techniques of molding phenolic and thermo-setting plastics, Butterfield possessed from long experience. Starting with one accumulator system and six molding presses, the company built up its business gradually until by 1940 it was running three accumulator systems, forty molding presses, and four injection machines. Butterfield purchased the basic material so that detailed knowledge of chemistry was not necessary. Jobs were not highly skilled, but work was steady and as the company grew the payroll increased.
The acute business recession of the thirties notwithstand- ing, overall employment in Naugatuck factories more than doubled between 1930 and 1940. Yet population of the borough increased only 15 per cent, from 14,315 to 15,388. The explanation of this seeming paradox lies partly in the increased employment of women and young girls at work
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which formerly was men's. Greater mechanization of proc- esses, elimination of much of the hard physical labor, and substitution of automatic machine controls on operations once demanding individual skill and judgment brought women into every plant. Their inexperience was no handi- cap but permitted employers to hire them at wages men could not accept. Family income was greater because in most work- ing families more than one member was now a wage-earner. The other factor that contributed to the situation of many more working people without corresponding growth in the number of families in Naugatuck was the increase in com- muting. Privately owned automobiles and good bus service made it easy to work in Naugatuck but live elsewhere.
House building, nevertheless, was more active in the borough than was general in most American towns after 1926. In 1922 the Chamber of Commerce sponsored a Building and Loan Association through which a good many people financed building their own homes. The less than 2,000 dwellings of the borough in 1920 had grown to 2,315 by 1930. In the next decade when in most communities build- ing was completely paralyzed by the depression, Naugatuck people built 437 more, bringing the total up over 2,750. A number of these new houses were for the employees of the rubber company transferred from the footwear plants in other cities. Yet in spite of this 40 per cent increase in twenty years' time, World War II was still to find the borough short of housing.
Factory building, on the other hand, did not proceed on as big a scale as the acceleration in the borough's industrial life would presuppose. Peter Paul's original plant and its subse- quent addition, an extension of one of the rubber shops in 1922 and one new building for the shoe company in 1936, a new furnace for the foundry, and enlargements of the Risdon plant constituted practically the whole industrial building program for twenty years. Compared to building in
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the preceding decades it was meagre. Most construction work after 1921 was remodeling of existing structures. Renova- tions from time to time were necessary, and particularly sweeping changes when an old building was put to new use. So some changes in layout occurred when the Lewis Engi- neering and the Butterfield companies moved into the old woolen mill, and extensive remodeling of the rubber shops when the rubber company moved most units of its footwear division to Naugatuck. Maintenance of factory buildings also became a large business for some contractors.
Foremost of the concerns engaged in factory maintenance after 1931 was the W. J. Megin Company. Megin in the years following World War I had broadened the scope of his busi- ness by giving close attention to promptness and courtesy of service combined with scrupulous observance of every detail of a contract. Incorporated in 1926, the company built sev- eral fine houses in the valley, but in the next decade found its principal work in maintenance contracts for industrial con- cerns. Maintenance of the United States Rubber Company buildings alone kept a large force of carpenters, roofers, and masons busy. A notable result of these factory maintenance contracts was the disappearance of seasonal employment, that century-old drawback in the building trades. Carpenters and brick-layers every winter had wandered off to other towns or tided over at odd jobs in the borough, to return to building when spring renewed activity. In the winter of 1920-21 Megin himself had had only three men on his pay- roll. But after 1934 he succeeded in keeping some two hun- dred men employed the year round. Of all the builders in the vicinity only Megin had no men on WPA projects all through the depression. In fact, before 1940 dawned, thanks in large part to the vision and capacity of William J. Noble, the superintendent and later owner of the concern, the Megin Company had about three hundred men working so frequently on over-time that a year's work amounted more
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nearly to sixty weeks a year than to fifty or fifty-two. And workmen's appreciation of Megin fairness and high stand- ards of employment became a by-word.
In keeping with industrial developments, some other busi- ness projects also naturally assumed new form. For example, the more general use of oil for heating contributed to the growth of the Naugatuck Fuel Company. The corporation, set up in 1928, bought the property and goodwill of a local coal dealer and of a gasoline supplier and launched on a highly successful career of supplying to Naugatuck coal, cokes, and liquid fuel. Equipped with its own railroad siding and with great oil storage tanks, the Naugatuck Fuel Com- pany quickly became a useful factor in the borough's daily life. In 1931 the company took the agency for Ford motor cars, opened several neighborhood gasoline service stations, and in 1935 built on South Church Street a modern garage and office building. Local building suppliers had a harder time. The Naugatuck Lumber Company, in spite of being the oldest, most securely entrenched lumber dealer in town, and in spite of Naugatuck's extensive home-building pro- gram, suffered rather sharply during the depression because big industrial concerns like the rubber company tended to purchase lumber direct from the producers. And Nauga- tuck's wood lots could no longer furnish more than fire wood. Growing faith in advertising meanwhile gave both the Daily News and the Perry Press new opportunities. Perry's modern presses and competent staff turned out copy that held intact the patronage of local customers and frequently enlisted new outside the borough, while the daily circulation of the News guaranteed the local newspaper ample advertising.
Retailing continued to be affected by the proximity of the larger shops of Waterbury and New Haven. Still by giving close attention to Naugatuck's particular wants a few mer- chants managed to enlarge their clientele. Sweeney's Art and Stationery store founded in 1880 survived all competition, as did Culver and Melbourne, for many years the sole local
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florists. The Kennedy dry-goods store and W. F. Brennan's and C. F. Davis' grocery and meat markets carry on today the tradition of service built up over more than fifty years. Mor- ris Freedman, who in 1893 began peddling wearing apparel and accessories from house to house, in the course of time was able to open a shop on Maple Street and later to move his enlarged business to more elaborate quarters on Church Street where his sons still carry on successfully. Somewhat similarly Joseph Carlson developed a flourishing trade by temptingly offering his teas, coffees, and other groceries to householders on their own doorsteps. He then ingeniously introduced the "premium gift" scheme of presenting pur- chasers of certain amounts of merchandise with a piece of furniture. Thus eventually he converted the tea and coffee shop of 1900 into the Carlson Furniture Company and still later expanded by opening a branch store in Watertown.
One lack, however, the borough felt without being able to meet, namely, a good modern hotel. The hotel on Main Street, built in 1804 to accommodate stage-coach travelers, had preserved some historic associations for old residents but one hundred twenty-five years later bore the marks of its age. Visitors to Naugatuck generally put up at Waterbury hotels or accepted the hospitality of private householders. As the in- flux of transients pursuing business mounted, want of more comfortable quarters than Chauncey Lewis' first tavern could offer in 1940 was a real handicap.
Local banking in the 1920's branched out considerably. Two new units were started in 1922, the Building and Loan Association and the Naugatuck Bank and Trust Company. By 1930 the former had over nine hundred share-holders, had built up assets to more than $600,000, held the mortgages on nearly two hundred homes, and was paying dividends of 6 per cent. Weathering the depression for a mutual com- pany was not easy, but the Association survived. The second, the Naugatuck Bank and Trust Company, was a general pur- pose bank used principally by local merchants during the
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1920's. It closed its doors in 1932, costing its four thousand depositors loss of about two cents on the dollar, its stockhold- ers their investment. The two older banks faced less serious difficulties, as both were strongly entrenched in public confi- dence. The Naugatuck National, after 1930 located in a spa- cious new building, emerged at the upturn of the business cycle with assets of over $2,000,000 and enhanced reputation for stability. And the Savings Bank, whose eagle-eyed trustees guarded its good standing as a pillar upon which rested the well-being of the whole community, could point to a record of no losses to any depositor throughout.
In the 1920's business life in Naugatuck had not been troubled, for while not all enterprises made large profits and not all working people lived in plenty, in those lush years basic economic problems appeared to be few. The American pattern prevailed: everybody expected one day to own a house and a car, take leisurely vacations, buy his wife a fur coat, send his children to college, and eventually retire on Easy Street. When the frightening reverses of 1930 and 1931 came, and the still grimmer situations in 1932 and early 1933, Naugatuck was no better prepared to meet them than any other American city. Yet actually more effectively than most the borough did find ways of lightening the gloom. The Un- employment Fund raised by individual citizens was probably the single most valuable measure, but responsible citizens were constantly on the watch for other constructive moves. In this emergency no other organization was so helpful as the Chamber of Commerce. Besides directing the campaign for raising the Unemployment Fund and supervising its spending, the executive committee bent every effort to keep people fed, business functioning, and faith in the future burning. The secretary maintained an information bureau for all comers, finding jobs in domestic service for scores of women, and keeping an informal roster of needs and oppor- tunities in every part of town. Later, when business revival had gained momentum, this self-imposed service widened
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out to include help to people looking for places to live. In admirable fashion the Naugatuck Chamber of Commerce served as a clearing house for community wants and com- munity planning from which stemmed many of the bor- ough's chief improvements.
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CHAPTER XII The Impact of War: On Naugatuck's Workaday World
T HE recovery of American business in most fields of manufacture was already far advanced when war broke out in Europe in September 1939. Thanks partly to the foresight of a few government officials in high places in this country, some industrial preparations had al- ready begun in America months before Hitler's armies in- vaded Poland. Machine tool-builders were already swamped with orders for the tools of production, an acceleration that in turn had affected producers of machine parts. So in Nauga- tuck the foundry and the Risdon Company by the summer of 1939 were again operating at capacity. In the course of the next year every factory in the borough felt the quickening effects of the war. As production schedules were stepped up, payrolls began to swell both from the increased numbers of employees and from higher wage rates. With the passage of the Selective Service Act in September 1940 and then the Lend Lease Act six months later, everyone began to realize fully that a new era was at hand; for the departure of young men drafted into military service was followed closely by larger orders for Naugatuck manufacturers. Unemployment disappeared. About 7,180 employees in Naugatuck shops in the fall of 1940 grew in a year to a peak of nearly 9,500. In the months before Pearl Harbor the standard of living rose accordingly.
While workers in metals and makers of machine parts bene- fited immediately from the rising tide of manufacturing ac- tivity, the developments at the chemical plant gave the Rub- ber Town its greatest boom. When the United States Rubber
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Company announced its plan to build a synthetic rubber plant here, the future for Naugatuck was bright indeed. It was not of course wholly a surprise. Many citizens knew that in 1939 the United States government had requested leading rubber and chemical companies to collaborate in working out formulae for manufacture of durable synthetic rubber. Though the companies asked to participate in this difficult venture in 1939 and 1940 were not cut off from supplies of natural rubber in the Far East, the possibility was well under- stood, and all groups unhesitatingly pooled their resources and information. For nearly twenty years United States Rubber Company research chemists had been working on problems of synthetic rubber; no organization in the country was better prepared to undertake a development and produc- tion program. "We pioneered," a company publication as- serted in 1943, "in emulsion polymerization of synthetic rubber and much of the synthetic rubber produced today is made following the teachings of United States Rubber Com- pany patents." The distinguished achievements of the Chem- ical Division in evolving new formulae and manufacturing new chemicals over a period of many years made eminently logical the location in Naugatuck of one of the four govern- ment-sponsored synthetic plants.
Designs for the synthetic plant took shape during 1940, in May 1941 the building contract was let, and by September 1942 production was coming off the line. The plant, erected along the river below the chemical and regenerating shops, consisted of solid brick buildings topped by a strange looking superstructure of steel. Nearby stood great spherical storage containers for butadiene and the now famous "burning stack" for the safe dissipation of waste gases. Today the "burn- ing stack" capped with a pilot light that never goes out has become Naugatuck's special landmark. The plant was origi- nally designed as a 2,500 ton unit, but its capacity was in- creased almost at once and within a year it was producing 30,000 tons annually. Three hundred and fifty men were
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employed here each of whom turned out approximately 517,- 000 pounds of synthetic rubber in the course of the war years, over 181,000,000 pounds altogether.
These magnificent results, however, could not have been obtained without the continuing brilliant work of the re- search staff at the chemical plant. At the outset the great trouble lay in making synthetic rubber which could be proc- essed on existing rubber mill machinery. For the first tough, unwieldy substance, the polymers, could not be handled without redesigning mills and calenders to take the addi- tional strains, a time-consuming and expensive task. By sys- tematic investigation Naugatuck chemists overcame the difficulty through utilization of a rare chemical which, added to the polymerization system, produced a soft, easily process- able rubber. Though scientists shortly unearthed an obscure German patent covering O E I, as the chemical was called, they also found that no one had realized its potentialities, that it had never been used commercially, and that nowhere in the world were there facilities for manufacturing it. But again the Naugatuck Chemical saved the day by developing the techniques necessary for its manufacture and then build- ing a first plant to produce O E I in quantity. Exchange of polymerization formulae among all the participants in the government program followed, with unanimous adoption of the United States Rubber Company's method. Later the company designed and built for the Defense Plant Corpora- tion a second O E I unit, which, together with the first, pro- duced enough O E I to keep synthetic rubber in large-scale production. Meanwhile the Naugatuck Chemical engineers developed a finishing line of their own design and readapted equipment to handle synthetic rubber efficiently. Thus in thirty months of intensive work scientists achieved a syn- thetic which rivalled in most respects natural rubber, the best processing of which had taken sixty years to perfect.
All through the war Naugatuck chemists, exemplifying the company motto, "Serving through Science," carried on a
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varied research program. Ninety-eight new varieties of syn- thetic rubber were developed as well as marked improve- ments in the first known types. Non-discoloring synthetics for soles and heels of shoes, for insulated wire, and for extruded mechanical goods, foam rubber, and resin soap rubber were among the significant new developments. A reclaiming proc- ess for the expensive synthetic material called VINYLITE used in Army raincoats and Signal Corps covering materials was another achievement; by this process, using only avail- able equipment, the company salvaged 1,309,000 pounds in eighteen months. Only less important were VIBRIN, a new thermo-setting plastic, and KOTOL, a strippable plastic coating for protecting planes during shipment overseas on decks of freighters and tankers. KOTOL was produced in large volume toward the end of the war.
Output of better-known products meanwhile did not slacken. Indeed sulphuric acid for neighboring metal indus- tries and SPERGON, the agricultural chemical calculated to protect the yield of food crops, were manufactured in greater quantity than ever before. Dispersions, suspensions or emul- sions of rubber and rubber-like materials in water, replaced natural rubber latex in the fabrication of many necessary arti- cles, while LOTOLS, compounded rubber latices, were man- ufactured for insulating assault wire for combat communica- tions. The millions of pounds of rubber chemicals turned out were essential to the processing of about 30,000 different rubber products ranging from mammoth fuel cells for the B-29's that bombed Tokyo to the tiny stoppers on bottles of blood plasma.
Before Pearl Harbor the Chemical Division had been far- sighted enough to build great storage tanks for liquid con- centrated latex so that there was on hand here the largest re- serve supply anywhere in America. But even with this reserve, in the first weeks of the war the rapid dissappearance of stocks of natural rubber in the United States not only urged on the synthetic program; it also pushed rubber reclamation.
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As the months passed, the piles of used tires and other items of old rubber that lined the river bank in the regenerating plant yards mounted higher and higher till the great black chutes and high bricked walls of the factory building resem- bled a towering mediaeval fortress entrenched behind a thick outer wall with the river serving as a moat beyond. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day steam shovels bit into the piles of tires and fed tons of used rubber into the mill to be reprocessed. And daily from the railroad siding and from heavy trucks more lots came rolling in. Within the plant near the first series of hoppers hour after hour women tested by touching to a red-hot electric plate each segment of rubber in order to heat it enough to make its odor indicate whether it were natural, reprocessed, or synthetic rubber. For each kind had to be processed separately: through the crackers, the digesters, the washers and driers, the strainers and the mills, to be slabbed out and shipped to other war industries. With 250 employees the plant reached a production of 36,000 tons a year of this essential war material.
The Footwear Division of the rubber company had a some- what different story. Dwindling supplies of raw rubber after Pearl Harbor soon pointed either to curtailed operations or to manufacture of new lines. But though in the course of the first year of the war employment in the shoe shops dropped 20 per cent-partly accounted for by the drafting of several hundred young men-the company quickly developed vi- tally important articles which the Naugatuck shops were pre- pared to make. Many of these items used no rubber at all. To the manufacture in 1941 of bullet-sealing gas fuel cells for every type of aircraft, and manufacture of the Morner life- saving suits demanded by the Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine, the company added the next year inflatable boats, life rafts, and ten-ton pneumatic pontoons for bridge build- ing. Engineers in Naugatuck also worked out the specifica- tions for building barrage balloons. Making the fuel cells and inflatable boats and life rafts was particularly difficult,
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