USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 35
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In 1916 the Cambridge concern, with seven others of the largest pumping machinery manufactories in the United States, which had for some years been affiliated and were collectively known as the Interna- tional Steam Pump Company, were organized under the name of the Worthington Pump and Machinery Corporation.
The output of the Cambridge plant has comprised a vast amount and variety of pumping and allied machinery, covering the requirements of almost every industrial activity and extending over a world-wide area.
With the coming of the World War most of the commercial lines of product had to be discontinued temporarily and the whole area and energy of the plant were given over to the needs of the Government in building pumps for the hundreds of destroyers, submarine chasers, mine sweepers, ships for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, etc., that were being rushed to completion. The works capacity was practically doubled,
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new buildings were erected, equipment was installed and the productive force increased-all in an incredibly short time.
The huge demands made for war requirements were successfully met inside of contract time.
One of the most notable additions to the lines of the company's products in recent years is the Worthington two-cycle, solid-injection Diesel engine, for stationary and marine service, which has lately been placed on the market.
The Worthington Locomotive Boiler Feed Pump and Feed Water Heater, a locomotive auxiliary that makes possible a saving of from ten to twenty per cent. in coal consumption, which has been in process of development at the East Cambridge plant for several years, has also become an important item of manufacture, with a future of great possibilities.
Boston-The Home of the Stillson Wrench-Walworth Company, one of the largest producers of pipe fittings, valves and tools in the world, is an old institution as age is measured in America. It had its beginnings in 1842, when the firm of Walworth & Nason was formed for the purpose of marketing pipe. It is a tradition in the Walworth organization that the first shipload of wrought iron pipe ever carried from England to America was consigned to Walworth & Nason and it arrived with Mr. Nason, the junior member of the firm, in personal charge of the shipment, from the time it left Liverpool until it reached New York.
Walworth & Nason eventually moved to Boston and established in what was then the little village of Cambridgeport, a small factory for making pipe fittings and valves. It. was the first establishment of its kind in the United States and its patterns were crude affairs, which today are relics of a past age in steam engineering. The firm eventually became the Walworth Manufacturing Company and during the years from 1842 until 1872 expanded along with the growth of steam power in the United States.
In the latter year, the firm had moved its offices to Boston and had a store in that section of the city, which was destroyed in the great fire of 1872. Practically the only assets saved were funds in the offices at the time and a few samples of the Stillson wrench, which had been invented three years previously by Daniel Stillson, a machinist in the Walworth shops. Stillson had sold his wrench to the Walworth Manufacturing Company, on a royalty basis, and the company's records show that he was paid between $80,000 and $100,000 for his invention before he died in the early eighties. The same wrench, with only slight changes, is
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being manufactured by Walworth Company today and is used by mechanics in all civilized countries.
From 1872 until 1913 the Walworth Manufacturing Company struggled with the vicissitudes of changing times in America. Fre-' quently it was almost wiped out by the recurrent panics, but it held on and, in 1913, when Howard Coonley, a young Chicago business man, came to the company as president, the name of "Walworth" was fairly well known to the trade. It had originated and developed the steam heating industry in America, which now has an invested capital running into many millions. It was a by-word of the trade that if any steam- fitter or plumber "were scratched deep enough," somewhere under his skin would be found "Walworth." That truism arose because of the fact that a great number of American craftsmen had received their initial training in the Walworth shops.
An interesting historical fact in connection with Walworth Company is that Alexander Graham Bell, when he was developing the telephone, once asked permission to use the telegraph line between the Walworth offices in Boston, and the shops in Cambridgeport, for an experiment. A friend was at the Cambridgeport end of the line and he and a night watchman were the only persons who witnessed the momentous occur- rence when, for the first time in history, a reciprocal conversation was carried on over a single line of wire.
From 1913 until the present the Walworth Company has had a tre- mendous growth. Up to the former year its business was virtually con- fined to New England and as far south as the city of Baltimore, Mary- land. Only an occasional order went out to the western States, beyond Albany, New York. By 1925, the company had developed, besides a big foreign business, carried on by the Walworth International Company, a group of branch houses, reaching from coast to coast in the United States, and also had purchased and was operating its own branch store in London-Walworth-Munzing, Ltd. In 1925, the largest step in its development was taken with the purchase of the assets of The Kelly & Jones Company, the third largest manufacturer of pipe fittings and valves in the United States. Walworth was already second in the field. The name of the company was changed at the time that the Kelly & Jones transaction was completed and it is now "Walworth Company" instead of "Walworth Manufacturing Company." It operates four plants-one in South Boston, which was built in 1886; another at Kewanee, Illinois, which was acquired by Walworth in 1917, and which is said to be one of the largest factories of its kind in the world; a third at Attalla, Ala- bama, where soil pipe and cast iron fittings only are made, and a fourth at Greensburg, Pennsylvania, which was the chief manufacturing plant
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of The Kelly & Jones Company. The company makes steel, malleable iron, cast iron and brass fittings and valves and is one of the few manu- facturers of the complete line, that is, all standard sizes and shapes. It has branches now in eighteen of the most important cities in the United States, each being served by adequate warehouse facilities, while resi- dent agents of the Walworth International Company are stationed in every important country where pipe fittings and valves are used.
Cabot, Jackson and Moody Build the Boston Manufacturing Company -Although the coming to that part of the town of Lancaster, in Wor- cester County, now embraced within the geographical limits of the town of Clinton, of David Poignand, a French gentleman of aristocratic birth, and the occupancy by him of the old John Prescott water privilege, which is still in use, and the erection by him on the site, in 1809, of the brick mill where raw cotton was first turned into finished fabric in America under the factory system, antedates by some four years the oft-repeated assertion that it was at Waltham, in February, 1813, that the first plant in the world in which the whole process of cotton manufacturing, from spinning to weaving, was carried on by power, it is true that the latter unit, first and now known as the Boston Manufacturing Company, and later as the Waltham Company, is undoubtedly entitled to claim that it is the oldest cotton textile establishment in the United States that has been uninterruptedly operated for a period of a hundred and thirteen years.
The Clinton factory has gone through frequent years of idleness during the intervening decades and has operated under many corporate and individual names, while producing many types of products entirely foreign to the cotton textile field.
While it may be true, in harmony with the well-known Boston aphor- ism that "the Cabots speak only to the Lowells and the Lowells speak only to God," it is certain that a century and a quarter ago one of the early representatives of the distinguished Lowell family was actively identified with so prosaic and plebeian an enterprise as a cotton textile factory, for it was Francis Cabot Lowell, who, in company with Patrick Tracy Jackson (shades of the immortals that two persons bearing such cognomens could enjoy anything in common), founded the Boston Man- ufacturing Company.
In 1811, Lowell, following his graduation from Harvard, visited Scotland, and, apparently disregarding the popularly accepted view that literature, philosophy and education are the only realms of mundane affairs in which a descendant of this distinguished family has a license to revel, became intensely interested in overseas textile activities. He
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BOSTON COMMON
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not only succeeded in obtaining entree to closely guarded textile machin- ery, but he acquired a sufficiently clear idea of the intricacies of these English processes to enable him upon his return to yield to his inventive penchant of actually producing something utilitarian and serviceable.
He assiduously devoted himself to his models, and he had apparently absorbed sufficient economics to lead him to believe that shrewd and careful management, ample capital, and cheap labor, were just as plen- tiful in Boston and its environs, as in England, while he was absolutely certain that superior water power and less expensive raw materials were more readily obtained here than in England. Both Lowell and Jackson believed there existed no logical reason why the British monopoly in the production of cotton textiles should continue indefinitely.
Assisted by Paul Moody, an Amesbury mechanic, Lowell began his experiments in a vacant store, on Broad Street, in Boston, and before the end of 1814 they had a loom ready to install in the new mill, at Waltham. It differed materially from those he had observed abroad, and it necessi- tated certain changes in the spinning process and in the sizing of the warp. Moody invented a new warper, and together they devised the double speeder, an innovation which required the most precise mathe- matical calculations. But Lowell's innate inventive ingenuity was equal to this task, and in subsequent patent litigation, when he called upon an expert to testify, the latter expressed surprise that any one in America could have worked out so intricate a problem.
Later, Moody overcame the waste and expense of winding thread for filling, from the bobbin to the shuttle quills, by inventing what is known as the filling-throstle. It was he who conceived the idea of spinning directly upon the bobbins, and of making the rollers of his dressing- frame of soapstone, rather than of wood, as he had originally provided.
The Boston Manufacturing Company, capitalized at $2,100,000, main- tains a modern and mammoth plant at Waltham, where it employs 1,000 hands in the production of cotton ginghams and chambrays, and it is the largest textile concern located within the limits of Greater Boston. Its president, Robert Amory, is the head of the internationally known firm of Amory, Browne & Company, of 48 Franklin Street, Boston, dis- tributors of many types of textile products made in New England mills.
The limits of this work, covering only Greater Boston, do not permit the devotion of space to the signal contributions made to textile develop- ment in Massachusetts by such men as Colonel Joseph Durfee, of Fall River; William Crompton and Lucius J. Knowles, of Worcester; Ira Draper and his lineal descendants, and James H. Northrup, of Hope- dale; Erastus Brigham Bigelow, of Clinton, the inventor of the carpet loom, and scores of others.
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A Progressive Textile and Engineering Concern-While Boston has never been exclusively a textile center, here are located many of the headquarters of the leading cotton, woolen and worsted concerns, whose plants are situated in the leading textile cities and towns of New Eng- land. To attempt to enumerate them by name would require a space greater than allowed for this chapter. There are, however, certain out- standing industrial organizations regarded as leaders in their line of activity, deserving of brief mention, among the number being Lockwood, Greene & Company, managers of plants in Massachusetts and other parts of New England, normally employing close to 20,000 operatives.
Early in 1890, a firm of industrial engineers previously located in Providence, Rhode Island, opened its office in the Rialto Building, on Devonshire Street, Boston, on the site now occupied by the New England Trust Company. It carried on a business which had been in continuous existence since 1832, when David Whitman began as a pioneer in mill engineering. Amos D. Lockwood succeeded him in 1858, and, in 1882, Stephen Greene became a partner with Mr. Lockwood and the business thereafter has been carried on under the name of Lockwood, Greene & Company. Continuing from 1890, an engineering organization was developed which has served clients in all parts of the country and, while specializing in the textile field, its prestige has been carried far into other industries also.
The first partners in the business were themselves cotton manufac- turers and established a reputation in mill management. Later partners coming into the concern also brought ability of the same kind from their previous connections with textile concerns so that a natural development of the business included textile management as well as industrial engineering.
The president of Lockwood, Greene & Company, Edwin Farnham Greene, became treasurer of the Dwight Manufacturing Company in 1905, and treasurer of the Pacific Mills, in 1907. S. Harold Greene became treasurer of the Lawton Mills Corporation in 1908. In 1913 the Lan- caster Mills of Clinton, long an engineering client, retained Lockwood, Greene & Company, as managers and in the same year the organization accepted the management of the International Cotton Mills, changed, in 1923, to the New England Southern Mills. Winnsboro Mills followed in 1916 and in 1919 the Roxbury Carpet Company, of Saxonville, entered into an agreement for management along with the others. By this time the mills under Lockwood, Greene & Company's leadership produced a great variety of textiles all the way from the lightest weight fine goods to carpets, including also sheetings, ginghams, cotton dress goods, crash, duck, paper felts and tire fabrics. Approximately half of the spindles
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under the direction of this management organization are located in the Southern States and the remainder in New England and Canada. At the present time 120,000 bales of cotton are bought annually in the Boston office for the mills which produce 50,000,000 pounds of goods and the gross sales total $37,000,000.
The Story of the William Carter Company-The romantic story of the William Carter Company is the biography of William Carter, the son of poor, but industrious and thrifty parents. At the age of ten years he is found combining the study of rudimentary subjects under a local teacher at Alfreton, England, with the manufacture of knitting machines, designed by his grandfather, whose shop was a part of the latter's house. Voyaging for fifty-two days to America when twenty-five years of age, he finally saved enough money from his work as a knitter in New York to carry him to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but the job there did not last long, owing to a strike. By mending pots and pans along the way he first reached Ipswich, Massachusetts, and later Roxbury, where he obtained work at his regular trade of knitting, and after three years of service there and at Brookline, he removed to what was then Highland- ville, now Needham Heights, where he was able to purchase a small piece of land and, for $175 build a house, a part of the kitchen becoming his workshop, and there he produced cardigan jackets at $45 per dozen. He was able to employ one or two assistants, and here it was that he estab- lished himself in the knit goods business, and became known to the trade.
Subsequently Messrs. John and Mark Lee became co-partners, but in the panic of 1872-1873 the firm was compelled to close its business and dissolve because of lack of capital.
Out of the wreck, a new company was formed, and at tender ages, Horace A. and William H. Carter, sons of William Carter, entered the business, and worked with the latter in establishing the existing enviable reputation now enjoyed by the company. It was in 1898 that the policy of breaking away from the jobbing trade, and of marketing its own products through its salesmen was established. Then began the rapid and real progress of the company.
Since that year the growth has been little short of phenomenal. Not only has a new mill been taken over at Needham Heights, but a plant at Springfield was purchased and has been operated for the past sixteen years. Recently mills have been acquired at Reidsville, North Carolina, Barnesville, Georgia, and Macon, Georgia, until the total production approximates one-half million dozen garments per year.
Many and varied have been the products of the concern. Starting with cardigan jackets, the line was increased to include fancy outer knit
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wear for infants, infants' shirts, infants' bands, and eventually to include a comprehensive choice of knit and woven underwear for all the family.
Modern methods are used in all departments of the organization. Central control of all mills is maintained at the home office and this is so arranged that the various units work harmoniously and promptly with the management. The most recent change made in the work of admin- istration has involved a complete tabulating system for the handling of all orders received, including the gathering of figures for the use of the statistical department. Style changes and the introduction of many new fabrics during the past year or so have all combined to increase to a very large degree the number of stock items which the company is com- pelled to handle. This fact alone accounts for a necessary increase in orders, in the planning of production, in the ordering of materials, in the work of shipping and following accounts. The company, serving as it does, some 10,000 customers, early recognized the importance of the style factor in the production of knit underwear, and some time ago created a designing department, headed by a women who is said to enjoy the distinction of being the first of her sex to design knit underwear.
The seven branch offices of the William Carter Company are located at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Chicago, Cleveland, and San Francisco, and five carry comprehensive seasonal stocks of goods for the filling of orders received from the immediate vicinity. All advance business is handled at the main office at Needham Heights. Selling is done through the company's own salesmen, dealing direct with the retailer, the territory covered including the whole of the United States and to a small extent, the Central American States.
The officers of the company are William H. Carter, president; Horace A. Carter, vice-president, treasurer and secretary ; and Roscoe A. Carter, assistant treasurer.
Solving the Problem of the Economical Production and Distribution of Shoes-In the year 1866, in a building located at 30 Hanover Street, in the city of Boston, at a period when helpful invention was in its infancy ; when Morse's telegraph was but recently placed in operation ; when Bell had not perfected the telephone; when Edison was an adol- escent youth; when Marshall Field had just migrated west to establish the greatest retail business in the United States; when the application of steam to industry was in the bud; when railroad travel was slow and transatlantic voyages were time consumers, and at the period the Atlantic cable was being laid, William Ball Rice, the son of a shoemaker, and his friend, Horatio H. Hutchins, a Hudson, Massachusetts, clothier, joined in partnership, and established the firm of Rice & Hutchins.
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Such times hardly seemed propitious for success in a new enterprise such as these men visioned. Processes were crude and following the Civil War conditions were chaotic. Shoe production was slow, efficient machinery was lacking, and the itinerant shoemaker was omnipresent. The methods of distribution were inadequate, the middleman, or jobber, being the dominant figure in what limited shop production was in vogue. The few manufacturers made shoes for the jobber and stamped them as the latter's own product. He controlled the retail market to such an extent that the manufacturer hesitated to sell direct to the trade for fear of offending the jobbers, with the attendant loss on the latter's business. It was an instance of the sinking of the identity and the individuality of the manufacturer with his tacit consent.
But William B. Rice was an opportunist, and a keen analyst, and he possessed an idea which he was determined to try out. With borrowed capital of $500, and after patient, toilsome, heart-breaking years of struggle, sometimes of hardship, but never of despair, he and his partner worked out the problem of efficient and economical direct distribution of the products of the concern, which ultimately was to be borne to all quarters of the globe. Financial panics and tremendous losses by fire deterred them not, and from the little Felton & Chipman factory, located in Feltonville, now Hudson, which they purchased within ten years after they began business has grown the great organization of Rice & Hutch- ins, Inc.
Mr. Rice conceived the plan of manufacturing each grade of shoe in a given community where the workers had been trained to specialize in that particular type of product. High-priced, medium, priced or low- priced shoes were never made in the same factory, and men's, women's, and children's shoes were likewise fabricated in localities which were centers of production of these various kinds of footwear.
There were three important factors in Mr. Rice's program-to mar- ket Rice & Hutchins shoes under their trade marks throughout the world; to give the retailers maximum service through a chain of dis- tributing houses, which he built up in the principal market centers, and to assist retailers in creating and maintaining a permanent market for the Rice & Hutchins products through judicious advertising.
He may be said to have been a pioneer in standardizing footwear on world-known brands-a practical and real plan to him, but one of im- possibilities in the view of many of his contemporaries.
The branch distributing houses in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta are always completely stocked with the products of the company, and it has been found that the close contact thus established with the
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retailer naturally facilitated matters of credit and collection of accounts to the advantage of both retailer and manufacturer.
Development of world markets was a cardinal feature of the program of the corporation, which maintains retail stores in Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Rome, Milan, a distributing house in Copenhagen, and one in London, with retail stores in that city, and in Manchester, England. At Buenos Aires are wholesale and retail stores, and offices in Manila, while the branded lines are distributed widely in South Africa, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Alaska, Central America, Panama, and the West Indies.
Mr. Rice lived to see the fulfillment of his dream-world shoemakers for the whole family, and this spirit of internationalism, of world-wide- ness in the distribution of his product, of which he was the living embod- iment, animates the business of the company which is today the living expression of his wonderful personality.
The central organization of Rice & Hutchins, Inc., controlling all the world-wide ramifications of the business, is housed in the magnificent new Rice Building, located on High Street, in Boston, from which center run the arteries that encircle the globe. Seven factories, three devoted to men's, and two each to women's and children's shoes, dot the land- scapes of several Massachusetts towns.
Manufacturing Quality Shoes-Quality products have ever been the watchword of many of the progressive shoe manufacturers of Greater Boston, and it has been noticeable in the development of the industrial life of New England that all concerns which have steadfastly adhered to this factor have never met with difficulties in finding ever-increasing markets for their wares. In the early sixties, Joseph E. French, of Rock- land, began to manufacture a type of extra quality fine shoes, and in 1893 associated himself with Charles J. Shriner and S. P. Urner, under the corporate name of French, Shriner & Urner, in which town they continued to operate until 1905, when the factory was removed to Boston.
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