USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 36
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Four years later they removed to a modern and up-to-date factory at 63 Melcher Street, at which location they have continued to specialize in extra quality-welt shoes for men.
They opened their first retail store in New York City thirty years ago, and now have a chain of seventeen such shops in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Paul, Kansas City, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Boston, and in addition have dealer-agents in nearly all the larger cities and towns in the United States.
The present officers of the corporation are: President, Blanchard U. Shriner ; vice-president and treasurer, Ivis B. Shriner; and secretary, William P. Burnham.
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The Company That Built the Roof of the World-The origin of many of the trade marks which so distinguish Massachusetts products is often an interesting story, and especially is this true in the case of the design employed by Bird & Son, Inc., manufacturers of the Neponset products. A custom grew up among the workmen at the Walpole plant of using a sheet of Neponset waterproof paper in lieu of an umbrella, when return- ing to the homes from their work in a storm-a typical and practical illustration of the value of the waterproof qualities of what they were engaged in manufacturing.
The facts became known to Miss Lulu Gibson, an artist of ability, and an aunt of America's famous illustrator, Charles Dana Gibson, who promptly drew a fanciful picture of a pretty girl holding a sheet of roofing material over her head as protection from the elements.
Thus came the original trade mark of the concern, adopted in the early eighties, the design, with some variations now being embodied in the present all-embracing trade mark of Bird Neponset Products.
The history of the evolution of Bird & Son, Inc., is another of those entrancing and romantic transformations wrought in Massachusetts industry beginning on a little water power in the towns of Needham and Dover, Massachusetts, in 1795, and transplanted, in 1812, to the banks of the Neponset River, in Walpole, where it is still carried on at the same location upon which it was centered almost a century and a quarter ago. From its inception the concern has remained in the control and under the management of George Bird, the founder, and his lineal descendants.
Up to 1838, the flow of the Neponset River and a small waterwheel furnished all the power required by the four beaters then in service, and even as late as 1853, three crude machines, operated by water power, provided the daily output of a few tons of paper. A day's production of seventy-three years ago was equal to what is now manufactured at the plant in an hour.
It was not until the two decades between 1880 and 1900 that the greater part of today's standard Bird products were perfected. New machinery was designed to manufacture new products; and old equip- ment was improved to handle additional raw materials more speedily, until the constant experiments made by able inventors produced revolu- tionary results. Neither disastrous fires in 1867 and 1880, nor in the latter year a spring flood, never before or since equalled in intensity, when the mill yards were under fourteen inches of water, discouraged the promoters.
In 1880 the concern was the pioneer in the manufacture of boxes for tacks, nails and screws, and it was in that same year that the company
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began the production of paper specialties-paper boxes, fibre cases for packing purposes, floor coverings and roofing products.
Five years later Bird & Son, Inc., was the first concern in the United States to manufacture waterproof papers containing no tar. As the business expanded, the company built at Phillipsdale, Rhode Island, one of the largest felt mills in the country, and the only paper mill in that State, and in 1905 it erected at Hamilton, Ontario, a plant to manufacture roofings, while the same year it purchased a paper plant at Pont Rouge, Quebec, in which felt is produced for the Ontario factory. In 1913 a floor covering plant was built at Norwood, Massachusetts, and four years later it was found necessary to set up a branch roofing factory at Chicago.
Twenty thousand tons of rags are annually fed, with raw materials, to the felt machines at Phillipsdale and Pont Rouge, about ninety tons of dry felt being turned out daily at these plants.
Although the company buys everything possible in the United States it is compelled to draw upon five continents for its raw materials, the coolies of the Far East, the South American Indians, the denizens of India, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, and Mexico, all contributing their part in providing cer- tain essential articles that enter into the Neponset products.
The demands of Continental United States have been so great that Bird & Son, Inc., have not as yet found it necessary to seek a large export business, but some of its salesmen in the foreign fields have carried the products of the youngest civilization to Egypt-the land of the oldest.
Closely associated with Bird & Son, Inc., is the Bird Machine Com- pany, which was organized in 1915 to take over various activities in special machinery which had been carried on by the parent concern. Its chief business is the engineering, manufacturing and selling in this country and abroad of specialties in paper-mill machinery. The plants of the older company provide a practical laboratory for experiments of the machine company in new equipment and methods.
From its inception the value of the human element in industry has been indelibly impressed upon the character of the company. Charles Sumner Bird, its present head, holds but little sympathy with the factory- built machine-made world. He has kept far away from the ruts of mis- understanding, and he is quite certain that the secret of growth and success of Bird & Son, Inc., which has progressed even in forty years from a small factory to seven large plants is attributable to the fact that he and his associates have seen the importance of recognizing the part played by the employee in a successful business.
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The Bird plant was the first paper mill in Massachusetts to put into operation the three-tour system, which provides three eight-hour shifts in lieu of two shifts of twelve and thirteen hours each, the making of paper being a continuing operation.
Very fortunately the development of Bird & Son, Inc., has not been an instance of the familiar case of three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves, but rather three generations in shirt sleeves, as the execu- tives, being workers themselves, have a common interest in the problems of the other workers. One employee, at the time of retirement, in 1910, held the record of continuous service in the plant for sixty-seven years, while many others have been with the firm from forty to fifty years.
Within the organization are many groups, educational or recreative in purpose, including an Employers' Mutual Benefit Association, a Credit Union to stimulate thrift, Savings Bank Life Insurance, a Labor Bureau equipped for real service, athletic organizations, emergency hospitals, with trained nurses, safety committees, rest rooms, a lunch room, a well- equipped library and a magnificent club house and gymnasium.
The executives of the company have devoted great attention in recent years to improvements and increased efficiency, all of which have made for largely enhanced production. A notable example is in connection with one roofing machine, representing an investment of perhaps $100,000, whose production has been doubled in five or six years, due almost entirely to increased efficiency rather than to the expenditure of money, thus showing an advance in industry that cannot wholly be measured in terms of invested capital.
Making Ink to Make Millions Think-On the wall of Richard B. Carter's office at the Carter's Ink Company, in Cambridge, there hangs a page from a hand-written book in monkish Latin. The writing is as clear, black and legible as on the day it was penned. The page is dated 1445, and the ink used was iron-gall. Had our Declaration of Independ- ence been written with an iron-gall ink it would not be necessary today to keep it hidden from the eyes of man in order to preserve it.
Ink is known to have been used by the Egyptians as early as 2500 B. C., but there are no records existing to tell us how the ancients made their inks. The evidence of manuscripts in museums today shows that some of the inks were of a permanent nature, while some have faded and the writing is no longer legible.
The same holds true of our present-day product. All inks are not just ink. Of little avail for us to carefully protect our written records by using the best paper, the strongest steel containers and the stoutest fire-proof vaults, unless the best of permanent inks have been used. The
I
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iron-gall, blue-black inks manufactured by the Carter's Ink Company are permanent and will last throughout the ages.
William Carter, who was engaged in the wholesale paper business on Water Street, Boston, began manufacturing inks as a side line, in 1858. He first became a factor in the business when he invented and put on the market a combined writing and copying ink of the gall and iron type. The ink in general use for office work at that time was not adapted to copying. For that purpose a special copying ink had to be used, so that the introduction of Carter's Combined filled a long felt want. It not only gave satisfactory copies but flowed almost as easily as a writing ink and marked an innovation in the history of American ink making. At the close of the war, John W. Carter, who had served three years in the Union army, entered the business and at once devoted his entire attention to the inks. With him came J. P. Dinsmore, the pioneer sales- man of Carter's Inks, who for the next twenty-five years traveled from Maine to California representing this line. The products quickly attained more than a local reputation, and to meet the demand it became necessary to occupy a separate building on Broad and Congress streets.
After the Boston fire, which destroyed everything but the trade marks and good will, the business was reestablished in a new factory on Battery- march Street, under the name of Carter, Dinsmore & Company. This factory was soon outgrown, and a new plant was erected on Columbus Avenue.
John W. Carter lost his life by accidental drowning in 1895, after which the business was incorporated under the present name, the direc- tors consisting of the three trustees of Mr. Carter's estate-Francis A. Dewson, who served as president, until his death, in 1901; James R. Carter, who served as treasurer till his death in 1923, and Edward C. Burrage, the present secretary. In 1900, Charles B. Gordon, who had been connected with the company since his graduation from Dartmouth in 1893, was appointed general manager, which position he is still filling as well as that of treasurer since the death of J. R. Carter. Richard B. Carter, the eldest son of the founder, entered the business after gradu- ating from Harvard, became president upon the death of Mr. Dewson, and has since been the chief executive of the company.
When the business outgrew the Columbus Avenue factory, a modern plant was erected in the Kendall Square section of Cambridge, on First Street. The present home of the company, which has been materially enlarged by additions and store houses since it was occupied in 1910, is one of the first buildings seen in Cambridge on crossing the Cambridge Bridge, and is marked by a huge electric sign, surmounted by the second largest electric clock in New England.
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The company early turned its attention to products closely related to inks. Its photolibrary paste, introduced in the nineties, when amateur photography first became popular, has become a standard throughout the world. About the same time lines of typewriter ribbons and carbon papers were placed on the market. Its Cico Paste, mucilage, stamp pads, ink eradicator and showcard colors, are as well known as the famous writing fluids, fountain pen inks, and other inks. Altogether, over a thousand separate formulas are used in the complete list of products, and the company is today the largest manfacturer of these lines in the world.
The Canadian factory in Montreal occupies an entire six story build- ing and the products of the two factories are distributed to all quarters of the globe, from Spain to China and from Iceland to the Fiji Islands.
The dominant factor in the company's policy and the chief reason for its success is found in the long-standing slogan of its laboratories (the heart of the business) : "Nothing so good that it can't be better." Similar factors affecting the human element are the maintenance of a clinic with a regular physician and surgeon and a full-time nurse, a recreation room, with a factory organization for lunch facilities and indoor and outdoor recreation, and a liberal provision for the sale of stock to employees.
No small share of the company's success is due to its constant and progressive use of advertising. The Carter Inx trade mark, the Inky Racer, the Call Boy and the Carter Pens and Pencils are displayed in the leading magazines and newspapers and in every stationer's window until they are known in almost every household. But advertising can only create a market-it is the quality of Carter Inx Products that fills the demand of that market to the satisfaction of each individual user.
The Debt of the Hunt-Spiller Manufacturing Corporation to Cyrus and Francis Alger-Boston has its due share of manufacturing estab- lishments that can truthfully be classed as remarkable, but there are few more deservedly celebrated or of greater national importance than the works of the old South Boston Iron Company, later known as Alger's Foundries, which were conceived by Cyrus Alger, in 1809, himself the descendant of a family of iron founders, which for several generations had been carrying on business in the vicinity of Bridgewater. During the War of 1812, Alger supplied the Government with large quantities of cannon balls, and about that period he purchased a considerable tract of marsh land, called the Flats, reaching to the channel, which at the time was considered of little value, but which today, a century later, is dotted with streets, dwellings, and extensive manufactories. It was in 1813 that Mr. Alger's original South Boston foundry, located near the junction of the present Second and Dorchester streets, was removed to Foundry
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Street, where it remained until 1892, at which time it was located at 383 Dorchester Avenue, where it operates under the name of the Hunt-Spiller Manufacturing Corporation.
Mr. Alger was one of the most practical metallurgists of his day, and discovered a method of purifying cast-iron which gave it more than triple strength over ordinary castings, and which proved to be of the greatest value in the manufacture of ordnance, in which for years he engaged. The mortar-gun "Columbiad," of 12-inch calibre, with a range exceeding three miles, the largest cannon that had then been cast in America, was made under his personal supervision.
He introduced and patented the method of making cast-iron chilled rolls, by which the part subject to wear became hard, while the neck remained unchanged as to hardness and strength, the body being cast in a chill or iron cylinder, and the remainder in sand. Until his process was perfected, all the reverberatory furnaces for melting iron were manu- factured with hearths, inclining from the fire, the metal thus running from the heat. He changed the method so as to permit the iron to flow toward the flame, where the heat was most intense.
In 1834, the first gun ever rifled in America was produced at his works, and two years later he manufactured the first malleable iron guns made in this country, and supplied the Government with a quantity. He made many improvements in the construction of time fuses for bomb- shells and grenades, and manufactured the first perfect bronze cannon for the United States Ordnance Department and for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
His plant ultimately became one of the four principal foundries of the United States engaged in the manufacture of ordnance.
Alger is said to have been the first manfacturer in this country to introduce the ten-hour day. He made it his universal practice never to part with a good workman if he could possibly retain him, and he fre- quently kept a large force of hands at half-pay when their services were not required.
Francis Alger, son of Cyrus, succeeded to the management following the latter's death, in 1856, and materially developed the plant during Civil War times, when he patented many important processes. He was the author of "Alger's Philips' Mineralogy."
The business has been through many changes of name and the officers of these succeeding companies have naturally changed with the years. Among the most active successors of Cyrus Alger were William H. Howard and William P. Hunt.
By 1904 the changing conditions of the business had brought the for- tunes of the company to a low ebb, and about that time it was entirely
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reorganized and Walter B. Leach, who had been master mechanic of the Boston & Albany Railroad, at Springfield, was elected treasurer and general manager of the new Hunt-Spiller Manufacturing Corporation, succeeding later to the office of the president upon the death of William P. Hunt. The new company commenced actively to develop the use of Hunt-Spiller gun iron for many of the wearing parts of steam locomo- tives, for which purpose its product had previously been used to a limited extent.
In the first year of operation the new company melted at a rate which produced approximately three tons per day. This has been increased in the twenty-two years of the operation of the business by the organization which Mr. Leach developed, to several times that size. In 1912 and in 1918, and again in 1923, the plant was extensively developed. The modern factory, which exists today on the land to which Mr. Hunt moved his modest little foundry in 1892, has a melting capacity of more than one hundred fifty tons per day. Up to 1921, the product had been entirely rough castings. In that year, at the insistence of its customers, the rail- roads, the company began to finish some of these castings. This depart- ment of the business has rapidly expanded and the company is furnishing much finished material. In addition its product enters into many parts of marine engines and also is used for brake drums for trucks and buses.
Developing the Art of Electricity-The manufacture of electrical apparatus is a very important industry in New England, and in Metro- politan Boston there are located extensive plants of the General Electric Company.
At Lynn, Everett, Pittsfield, Taunton, North Easton, and Windsor in this State the company manufactures electric machines and appliances, employing normally over 20,000 persons at these Massachusetts plants.
It was in 1883 that the Thomson-Houston Electric Company moved to Lynn from New Britain, Connecticut. The employees then numbered sixty-four and were headed by Prof. Elihu Thomson, who is today recog- nized as one of the leading inventors and authorities on electricity.
From that small beginning the industry grew rapidly until 1893, when the consolidation with the Edison Company at Schenctady was formed and the corporation became known as the General Electric Company.
At the two plants in Lynn-one known as the River Works and the other as the West Lynn Works-the former occupies an area of one hundred and one acres with 2,430,000 square feet of floor space. Here are manufactured many different classes of electrical apparatus including turbine-generators, motors, street lamps, traffic signals, gears, and in- numerable other articles
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At the West Lynn plant meters, transformers and instruments are manufactured besides other appliances. This plant has an area of fifteen acres and 750,000 square feet of floor space.
At Everett, where are located the steel and iron foundries, there is a floor space area of 278,000 square feet.
The Holtzer-Cabot Electrical Company, of Boston, is the outgrowth of the activities of Holtzer & Newell, who, in 1874, began the manu- facture of simple electrical devices, which increased until the needs imperatively demanded, in 1913, the erection of its present home, a six story main building of reinforced concrete, with an annex of seven floors, containing the service department and certain of the manufacturing departments, the whole structure providing 150,000 square feet of floor space, located in the Roxbury district of Boston.
The history of the company reaches back to the time when the fun- damental discoveries of experimenters in electrical science were first being put to work in a commercial way. In 1875 the only extended use to which electricity was being employed was in the field of telegraphy, although electric current to some extent operated door bells, burglar alarms, simple annunciators and the ignition of illuminating gas. To this line there were added during the earlier years of the company's existence electric magneto ringers, telephones, time clocks, hospital signaling, fire alarms and the like.
Two electric carriages driven by motors and storage batteries were built by the company, the first, in 1891, which had a seating capacity of two persons, and the second, two years later. The latter weighed 5,100 pounds, seated eight people and was capable of sixteen miles an hour on the level. So far as is known, these were the first electric carriages ever built.
In 1878 a dynamo, designed by William Stanley, had been built and successfully used by E. S. Ritchie & Sons, of Brookline, for charging compass needles; yet it was not until fifteen years later that the com- pany began to engage seriously in the manufacture of electric motors and generators. Lines of direct current motors up to thirty horsepower, generators on corresponding frames, electroplating dynamos, fan motors, etc., were designed; and although the days of the motor driven adding machine, vacuum cleaner and washing machine were yet to come, a few sizes of small single-phase alternating current motors were finding a receptive market. Even in these early electrical times there was some use of motor-generators, required to convert the available power or light current to current of other sorts, to charge batteries, ring bells and for other purposes.
About twenty-five years ago the company became interested in an
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outlet for its products in the departments of the army and navy and since that time a very large amount of Holtzer-Cabot apparatus has been installed in the fortifications of the War Department, on the ships of the navy, on the submarines and the airplanes. In 1906, when President Roosevelt sent the battleship fleet on its memorable cruise around the world, it was equipped with Holtzer-Cabot telephones, then used for the first time in directing gun fire. Since that date, substantially all the battle ships of the navy have been similarly equipped and during the World War, the submarines of the United States and allied nations were to a very large extent provided with its motor generators for use in underwater communication and wireless motor generators were installed on many of the naval vessels as well as the merchant ships used in transporting troops and supplies abroad. In 1912 a Holtzer-Cabot spec- ially constructed generator was installed on an airplane by the War Department and wireless communication between the plane and the earth was for the first time successfully accomplished.
In 1897 the company designed a line of special noiseless telephone charging generators of special construction for charging batteries while the latter were still connected with the switchboard and upon occasion to disconnect the batteries and supply the board direct from the gener- ators-a most notable engineering achievement. These machines are today installed not only throughout the United States, but in England, Europe, Australia, South America, and in many other places and are being built in large quantities.
Coincident with this was the development by the company of central energy ringing units, giving alternating current for ringing bells, for selective ringing on party lines and for supplying the various special signals, such as the "busy," "don't answer," and also the automatic ringers which, when turned on, signal periodically until such time as they are cut off ; thus, greatly increasing the capacity of 'phone operators in handling calls.
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