USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 19
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Nazi invasion of Norway, April 1940, cut off all shipments of Swed- ish valve spring wire, and the For- estville rolling mill was called upon
to provide most of the fine steel for the Bristol plants, the western fac- tories, for nearly all spring manu- facturing in the country and for special industries needing high quality steel. One hundred new mill employees were added the first six months of 1941. By then they were organized as part of the United Auto Workers.
Pearl Harbor, December, 1941, brought even greater rush demands. The Forestville mill processed mil- lions of pounds of ore and turned out millions of pounds of cold-rolled steel for every type of spring and for link belts on 30 and 50 caliber machine guns and 20 mm cannon. Employment reached a total of 250.
The Wallace Barnes division, spe- cializing in precision mechanical springs, became a clearing house for all related ordnance problems. In collaboration with the Springfield Ordnance District, its engineers evolved specifications for gun and aircraft springs, new bomb sights, directional torpedoes, jet propul- sion, superfortresses, and controlled action war-heads. Better resistance to wear and tear was required of springs used in jeeps, peeps, tanks, marine units, the LCT and LST. One unusual development was a fin and tailpiece for hand grenades so they could be used in an infantry rifle. Thousands of special type springs were engineered and there- after were turned out in quantities
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WALLACE BARNES CO., MAIN AND SOUTH STS. (top)
WALLACE BARNES CO., ROLLING MILL, BROAD ST., FORESTVILLE (bottom) (Permission Wallace Barnes Co.)
THE CHALLENGE OF AGGRESSION
from a few hundred to millions.
At Dunbar Brothers, dating back to 1845, with know-how derived from the needs of five wars, com- plete new units made valve springs and collapsible links for 20 mm air- craft cannon. Production rose to three million a month, and in all, forty million were turned out, each link representing one cannon shot.
The F. N. Manross Division - still the world's largest hairspring enterprise - dovetailed with the new intricate electrical and elec- tronic industries and the fine sensi- tive mechanisms that control auto- matic weapons, airplanes, guided missiles, radar and so on.
When peace came to a grateful nation, the Bristol divisions of Asso- ciated Spring were able to convert to civilian production more easily than some other concerns, for, as one official put it, "our products . . . various kinds of springs . . . are vital parts of our daily life at work, at home and at play." But since the peace for which men hungered soon degenerated into the re-armed cold war, nearly all wartime products also continued in demand, even more so after the Korean struggle began.
By January 1, 1949, even with government restrictions on mate- rials, a big addition to the Forest- ville plant was opened. By that year Associated Spring had more than a million square feet of floor
space. By 1950 the new Forest- ville rolling mill added 2,000 tons production annually, too late for the war, but helpful to a land short of steel. In 1951 the Wallace Barnes division moved into its new office building, containing 11,000 square feet.
From 1923 to 1950 total net Asso- ciated Spring sales, including those of the Canadian Company, were nearly $417,000,000. Over this entire quarter century, about 35 per cent of all springs went into the automotive industry - engines, clutches, generators, pumps, body hardware, window regulators, locks. Fifteen per cent was used by the electrical industry; machinery took 10 per cent; hardware, 7 per cent; aircraft, 2 per cent. Important are various kinds of railroad car springs. Clocks, business machines, household appliances and innumer- able gadgets used large quantities.
Another spring producer made both wartime and peacetime his- tory, the Humason Manufacturing Company of Forestville. Its plant stands on the site of the old 1811 Boardman-Dunbar clock factory. Over the years, various craftsmen made clock parts, brass goods and fine wire there. Spring manufac- turing was begun after the turn of the century by the Peck and Way Manufacturing Company, after 1909 the Peck and Young Manufacturing
229
:
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
Company. It was taken over by Humason in 1914, and the present name adopted in 1919. In 1950 it became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Stanley Works in New Britain.
During World War I 90 mil- lion springs and 100 million other war-purpose parts were made. In World War II, some 250 million fuzes for shells, mines and bombs had one or more Humason parts. One hundred million grenades had four to five Humason parts. The company produced springs for fifty million magazines in pistols, car- bines, Browning automatic rifles and Thompson submachine guns, and for 250 million snap fasteners. Millions of Humason parts went
into radio, radar, telephone, air- plane, signal lights, parachute, life rafts and vests and other equip- ment. Humason springs go into the products of the electric, electronic, textile and automotive industries, into appliances, optical goods, hard- ware, toys, clocks, machine tools.
All these interwoven efforts of in- dustry, churches, clubs, schools, all the special organizations working with neighbors and families of every faith, and with the national, state, and local governments, made a pat- tern of serious, friendly endeavor which is the very essence of Ameri- can democratic life. In no city was that effort more general or more suc- cessful than in Bristol.
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HUMASON MANUFACTURING CO. - ORIGINAL PLANT (top)
HUMASON MANUFACTURING CO. - PRESENT PLANT (bottom) (Permission Humason Mfg. Co.)
HILDRETH PRESS
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industry IN war AND peace
FOR the most part the postwar period has witnessed steady expan- sion of Bristol industry with em- ployment equal to or greater than during hostilities.
There have been some casualties. Veeder-Root Incorporated, which employed about 300 men during the war period, has transferred all its operations to Hartford. The big successful Horton Company was sold to an outside corpora- tion and dismantled, with unhappy effects on its large payroll. The building was purchased in 1953 by the Bristol Machine Tool Company to enlarge its operations.
Part of the loss to Bristol by the removal of the Horton enterprise has been made up for by the steady expansion of the Outdoor Sports Manufacturing Company located at 500 Broad Street, Forestville. This was organized in March 1938 and is operated by three brothers, Arthur, Gunnar and John Ebb. The con-
cern manufactures chiefly archery and ski equipment which has na- tion-wide distribution through its salesmen, jobbers and the better sporting goods and department stores. In 1946 the company opened a new plant, which was designed by Richard Robotham, also of Forest- ville, and employs about 80 people.
Archery has become a popular sport during the last 25 years. In the war period, inability to purchase other sporting goods items made of metal caused many new people to take it up and become permanent enthusiasts. Since then, interest has continued to grow and the de- mand for equipment continues to increase. Nearly all high schools and colleges have it on their pro- grams for it develops physique and accuracy. Tournaments are held between schools as well as among archery clubs. National Archery and Field Archery tournaments are held every year.
233
REINER
REINER
RAYTRIC KNITTING MILL (Meyers Studio, Inc., Hartford, Conn.)
INDUSTRY IN WAR AND PEACE
Hunting with bow and arrow has increased tremendously in the last few years. Many states have a pre- hunting season with the bow and arrow; and Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states have thousands of such sportsmen.
The latest items produced by Outdoor Sports are fiber glass bows and arrows, and already these are in big demand.
The company is now making spe- cial efforts to increase its sale of junior ski equipment.
Another new industry arrived in Bristol early in 1950 when the Hil- dreth Press moved down from Brat- tleboro, Vermont, and took over the big East Bristol Ordnance Plant with its four and a half acres of floor space. In its first three years in Bristol it expanded from 130 em- ployees to over 450, with a com- mensurate increase in equipment, a truly phenomenal growth in the printing industry. Some forty pub- lications, most of them business and technical magazines, are regularly printed and mailed each month, and four of them (American Builder, Modern Industry, Modern Packag- ing and Modern Plastics) won Awards of Merit at the 1952 "Maga- zine Show" in New York. Hildreth, known throughout the country for reliable and up-to-date work, also won special statewide recognition and a formal resolution of commen- dation from the 1953 General As-
sembly "for its unfailingly prompt, courteous and efficient service in the complex task" of producing the leg- islative printing, most of which had to be delivered at the Capitol in Hartford on an overnight schedule each session day.
The loss of the historic Bristol knitting mills in recent years has been, in part, relieved by the new super-modern Raytric Knitting Mill, headed by Herbert Schatzki, which was started here in 1945 at 95 River- side Avenue. The company was founded in Watertown in 1938, with the only high-speed tricot knit- ting machines in New England. Since coming to Bristol, it has stead- ily expanded. Production and em- ployment have tripled in the past six years.
When war broke out, the Clayton Manufacturing Company on Union Street, headed by Charles M. and William R. Bowes, was already making many hundred sizes and patterns of scissors and shears. It turned at once to supplying the armed services, and many new spe- cially designed scissors were made, particularly for medical and chemi- cal warfare kits.
The William L. Barrett Company (1893) increased its facilities during the war and soon added new lines. In 1931 William Barrett retired and turned over his plant and business to his sons, Richard and Robert.
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OUTDOOR SPORTS MANUFACTURING CO.
INDUSTRY IN WAR AND PEACE
They bought a Unionville business making stationers' hardware and added it to their line of glass cutters and glaziers' tools. In 1941 they added the manufacture of stapling machines, and a little later the manufacture of springs and metal parts to customer's specifications. In 1950 they sold out the original glass cutter business and began con- centrating on automatic production of all types of metal parts and forms for other factories.
H. I. Bartholomew, who had pur- chased the steel rule business of William L. Barrett in 1913, made numerous contributions to the war effort. The concern had moved from the Barrett factory in 1924 and rented the former Garrigus Machine plant, now the Technical High School, on Riverside Avenue.
In 1929 E. H. Sparks joined the company as a partner and the busi- ness was moved to the Fitzgerald building on Terryville Road. In 1932 the building at 331 Park Street was purchased.
Their product is a cutting, creas- ing and perforating rule for the folding box trade. This is a knife- edged steel blade that may be bent into any desired shape, held firmly and used as a die on the bed of a press. This is the only method used in the making of such boxes there- fore indispensable. The company has expanded its operations to the blanking of plastics, wood, fiber, felt,
rubber, cloth, leather, thin metals.
During the war, end products that went to the armed forces were such things as food and medicine containers, clothes, shoes, gas masks, felt, leather and metal washers, gas- kets for tanks, cars and planes, fuze caps and many other AAA1 items. The company's outstanding contri- bution to the war effort was the de- velopment of a special edged rule to efficiently cut the airplane's dura- lumin wing sections.
The phenomenal new demands for glass products during the war, for industrial housing, building, the automotive industries, plus the great expansion of the optical indus- try, called for efficient glass-cutting tools. Thus the products of the Fletcher-Terry Company played a vital part in the defense effort.
This company is descended di- rectly and indirectly from one of the two oldest glass cutter companies in the country which started in Bris- tol in 1869, right after the Civil War.
The old sixteen by twenty Ives- Botsford barn near the brick school- house, where Terry and Fletcher started in 1903, is still part of the modern factory that has grown up through a series of expansions, to a steel and brick plant with sixteen thousand square feet of floor space.
The concern has enjoyed uninter- rupted operation for half a century, with pleasant employee relations. A profit-sharing pension trust fund is
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THE FLETCHER TERRY CO
FLETCHER TERRY COMPANY (Meyers Studio, Inc., Hartford, Conn.)
INDUSTRY IN WAR AND PEACE
maintained, and the health, sickness and group insurance plans are in line with those of other Bristol in- dustry.
As Mr. Arthur Fletcher puts it, "In times of peace or during emer- gencies, the Fletcher-Terry Com- pany hopes to have the opportunity to continue as a progressive unit in Bristol's industrial family and to contribute . . . to the progress of the community."
All the machine-tool and screw- machine concerns were busy night and day during the war period. Carl M. Munson worked on screw- machine parts for Army and Navy airplane instruments. The Gerry Tool Company made jigs and gauges for torpedoes, automatic rifles, side arms, and punches and dies to make large calibre shells. The Bristol Machine Tool Com- pany, founded in 1939, the Forest- ville Manufacturing Company (1925) and the Fred A. Day Com- pany on Riverside Avenue turned out millions of additional automatic screw-machine products.
The Fred A. Day Company was organized in 1923 when Fred A. Day leased space in the Root Company building on the corner of Riverside Avenue and Mellon Street. Opera- tions began with six machines.
A new factory was built in 1926 at 300 Riverside Avenue. A multi- plicity of precision screw-machine
products for numerous industries throughout the country were manu- factured. During World War II work was concentrated on machine gun parts, Navy electrical appara- tus, and instruments for the Navy and Air Force.
After the death of Fred A. Day in 1936, the business was operated as a partnership by his five children, Mildred Day Harding, Elmore M. Day, Weston S. Day, Donald E. Day, and Dorothy Day Funk. In 1950 a corporation was formed with Weston Day, president, Elmore Day, vice-president and Donald Day, secretary.
The Bristol Machine Tool Com- pany was doing 100 per cent de- fense work during the war. It was organized in June 1940 as a part- time manufacturer of special cus- tom-built production tooling, ma- chinery and equipment, by two local young men, Leslie Julian and George Lynch. Operations were started in the two-car garage of Ju- lian's father on Jeannette Street, Forestville.
Within six months several full- time men were added and by March 1941, to keep up with the increasing volume of work, a new plant was built across the street and occupied October 1. An engineering depart- ment was added, and by December about thirty men were at work; within a year, eighty. By 1953 the firm had one hundred and ten em-
239
BRISTO CHINE TOOL
BRISTOL MACHINE TOOL COMPANY (Permission Bristol Machine Tool Co.)
INDUSTRY IN WAR AND PEACE
ployees and had become one of the larger of its kind in the East with the latest type toolroom and engi- neering equipment. In February 1953, land and buildings of the for- mer Horton Manufacturing Com- pany on North Main Street were acquired, adding about 80,000 square feet of floor space.
The company chiefly renders de- sign and building service to other manufacturers. Considerable work has been done for the aircraft indus- try; also for firms in automotive, ball-bearing, machine-making in- dustries and for other metal fabri- cators, which have needed help in their tooling programs. Research and development are carried on for the government and others.
The story of the rapid growth of this firm from humble personal part-time beginnings to an impor- tant successful industry is a saga of American opportunity and the re- wards for energy and ability.
The Sessions Foundry Company was hard hit by the death, in 1920, of William E. Sessions, who left no will. Resultant inheritance taxes caused confusion. Then came the depression, preventing moderniza- tion. November 1, 1941, Joseph B. Sessions, who had operated the business during those difficult twenty years, died, bringing further complications. The plant was tem- porarily managed by Arthur N.
Manross, a close friend of Joseph B. Sessions, but on July 15, 1943, Ed- win S. Sessions, grandson of Wil- liam E. Sessions, became president and manager.
In spite of upsets, the plant con- tributed greatly to the war effort, and its machine-tool and hand tool castings had high priority. Repair and maintenance castings kept over- used equipment from breaking down. Its 250 employees turned out component parts for floating dry docks, bomb noses, underwater sound and aircraft equipment, taps and dies, power transmission sprockets, and synthetic rubber ma- chinery, which became so vital when Southwest Asia was cut off.
Secret work was done for the Manhattan Project, and Sessions Foundry parts went in the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan shortly be- fore the two Bristol National Guard units arrived in that country to take it over without further loss of life.
The plant was organized by the CIO steel workers in December 1940, but except for a two-day strike during the making of the first contract, company-labor relations have been amicable. Since the force is not large, friendly contact with the employee and his prob- lems is possible. Fifty-one employ- ees served in the armed forces, seven of whom were Gold Stars.
Replacements and needed new
241
SESSIONS FOUNDRY COMPANY - OLD LAUREL STREET PLANT (top) SESSIONS FOUNDRY COMPANY - FARMINGTON AVENUE (bottom) (Whitney Studio, Bristol, Conn.)
INDUSTRY IN WAR AND PEACE
equipment had been difficult to se- cure due to the depression, then the war, but between 1945 and 1949 several hundred thousand dollars were plowed back into moderniza- tion. A new-type automatic drier and a swing-table airless cleaner have cut costs.
Formerly the company had to maintain enormous storage space for patterns, but these days clients engineer and retain their own pat- terns. This made possible the leas- ing of several buildings for light manufacturing and storage.
Sessions Foundry is still a jobbing factory which does not operate on a continuous pouring schedule, pro- ducing castings from ounces to twenty tons. Though its market is mostly within the New England area, it has done considerable work for oil companies operating in South America. Among its more recent specialities are 'Hy-Precision' cast- ings. It plans soon to manufacture a number of complete products. Sales total about a million dollars a year.
Brass is the oldest of man's alloys, and in World War II Bristol Brass was called on for extraordinary ef- forts. It was able to do so because of its century of technical progress, and in later years because of the Rockwell expansion, the able efforts of Alexander Harper, who pulled it out of bankruptcy, and after 1935
by Albert D. Wilson, who greatly modernized every department.
Wilson had joined the company in 1902 and had soon become the 'indispensable man' in the company, for he made it his business to know every angle of production, finance and sales down to the most minute detail.
In 1938 he brought in Roger E. Gay from the American Brass Com- pany in Waterbury as his assistant.
When the war came along, many added duties fell on the latter's shoulders. In 1943 Wilson became Chairman of the Board and Gay took over as president and manager.
Only by ardent on-the-spot per- sonal persuasion in Washington was Bristol Brass able to get supplies and machinery to fulfill its commit- ments. The labor problem was acute. At one time a hundred im- ported Jamaicans were utilized. They were housed at the Hartford airport barracks.
For the war Bristol Brass pro- vided specialized parts for guns, tanks, planes, ships, instruments, electrical and electronic apparatus. It made thousands of tons of needed brass and millions of discs for 20 mm shells. Extruded brass rods were provided to fuze manufac- turers.
Conversion to peace was not easy. Over night the selling market be- came a fiercely competitive buyer's market. Old markets had to be re-
243
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BRISTOL BRASS CORPORATION - PANORAMA SHOWING KING STREET, THE ORIGINAL KING'S ROAD (Aviation Service Co., Inc., Hartford, Conn.)
INDUSTRY IN WAR AND PEACE
covered, new markets opened up. Brass now had to compete with other metals and new alloys, with aluminum, stainless steel, ti- tanium, plastics, etc. Gay set up new midwestern sales outlets, and in 1953, a sales subsidiary in Los Angeles, California. Previously the company sold chiefly to a few large buyers; today smaller buyers are catered to in a way bigger brass companies cannot afford, a more flexible and well-balanced distribu- tion, with less danger of sudden fluctuations.
Gay also improved production methods. New machinery was in- stalled, inner-plant distribution made more efficient. A continuous casting machine effected big econo- mies. New furnaces, a new wire- drawing machine, a rod-turning ma- chine, and better equipment for drawing, cutting, straightening and polishing brass rod were introduced. By 1949 mill production was greatly improved.
In 1952 $300,000 was spent on further modernizing operations. Of this, $140,000 went for a new 2-high tandem mill, reducing roll- ing operations to one 'pass,' and a large share for new wire mill instal- lations, completed in 1953 at a total cost of $280,000.
In the casting shop the correct proportions of copper, zinc and other alloying metals are melted to- gether in electric furnaces and cast
into heavy bars and billets for proc- essing into plates, sheets, strips, flat wire rods, bars, wire of all shapes and with eight different temperings which provide different grains or micro structure. Half a dozen fin- ishes from 'pickled' to cold drawn or rolled are provided. The most modern machinery does the casting, rolling, drawing, extruding and an- nealing. High quality and uni- formity are insured by rigid mill supervision and technical and lab- oratory controls at every stage. But even with the finest scientific con- trols, many touch-and-go operations require veteran mill men, able to tell by touch, sight, smell, even taste, when brass is at its best. A hot rod coming through the extru- sion machine takes smart handling. The saying is, 'a real Bristol Brass mill man has copper and spelter in his veins.'
The first labor trouble occurred when the plant was organized by the CIO in 1940. In 1949 a four- week strike occurred. The four- month 1952 strike was settled with- out the customary bitterness, and management feels that its employ- ees are better identified with the prosperity and efficiency of the business, basic essential for contin- ued improved working conditions and wages. In spite of the strike, and increased tax costs, which are double net income, 1952 profits were very good, totalling $413,047,
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BRISTOL BRASS CORPORATION - OPERATIONS (Russell C. Aikins, Forest Hills, N. Y.)
INDUSTRY IN WAR AND PEACE
or $1.65 per share of common stock.
February 27, 1953 the company set up an educational and philan- thropic non-profit foundation, with Charles T. Treadway as president, to help the children of its employees and other Bristol citizens. In May it donated the Albert D. Wilson athletic park to the city.
In announcing the foundation, President Roger E. Gay declared, "We have always taken seriously our responsibility as the good em- ployer and the good neighbor in the community. . . Approximately 600 people earn their livelihood at Bristol Brass. . . Our lives and the lives of our children are closely connected with our company."
As Gay puts it, "Earning a profit comes first, but if a business cannot justify its existence by serving a public need, it does not continue long to earn a profit. It is my job, personally, to seek and hold the good opinion of my associates, the men of the plant, our neighbors in Bristol, our competitors, and our customers."
Another Bristol Brass man adds: "We in Bristol Brass are proud of the important part the corporation has played in the building of a na- tion. Like the product it makes, in- its more than a hundred years of existence, Bristol Brass has never grown rusty."
During the war, J. H. Sessions
and Son of Riverside Avenue, under the management of Paul B. Sessions, son of Albert Sessions, a company famous as makers of trunk hardware since 1870, added many new lines. New-type wartime containers called for hardware that would resist great wear and tear. It went to all armed branches, some for secret purposes, such as range-finding and gun-sight units. Sessions hardware also went on chests for radio and radar equip- ment, medicines, folding surgical instruments, cameras and photo- graphic materials. Special design- ing was required for hardware for chests of food and arms to be para- chuted and for folding field desks. Their items go into goods that span human life - from baby carriages to caskets.
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