USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 37
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The motor department produces small motors in the fractional horse- power sizes, for adaptation to automatic machines, such as musical instruments, office and domestic appliances, farm and dairy machinery, medical appliances, small elevating devices, coffee mills, meat choppers, fans and blowers, small machine tools, and the like.
The product of the company is marketed almost exclusively through branch offices under the management of its own executives, the oldest unit being located in Chicago, where it was established in 1899, being housed in a building owned by the company and equipped with offices, warehouse and repair shops. Branch offices are also maintained in New
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York City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Kansas City.
The concern operates an employee representation plan, maintains a Mutual Benefit Association and a savings club.
A Century and a Quarter of Chocolate Making-The chocolate mill erected on the Neponset River, in the town of Dorchester, in 1765, was the first plant of that kind established in the British provinces of North America. Its birth was due to the representations made by John Hannan, an Irish immigrant, who had learned the business of chocolate making in England. The new industry prospered in a small way, and on the death of Hannan, in 1780, Dr. James Baker established the house which has continued under the name of Baker without interruption from that day to the present.
After the death of Dr. Baker the business fell in the order of suc- cession to his son, Edmund, and his grandson, Walter. On the death of the latter in 1852, Sidney Williams, who had been his partner for some years, continued in charge of the affairs until he died two years later, when Henry L. Pierce, a relative of Walter Baker, assumed the man- agement of the business, first as lessee and later as sole owner. During the forty-two years in which he had control he developed it from a com- paratively small, local concern to the position of the leading industrial enterprise of its kind in the world.
In 1895, the business was organized as a corporation under the general laws of Massachusetts; and three years later a special charter was granted by the General Court.
The plant comprises six mills on the Dorchester and Milton sides of the Neponset River, containing 500,000 square feet of floor space-about eleven and one-half acres.
From the little wooden mill, located on the spot where the industry was first started, more than a century and a quarter ago, the business has grown to its present proportions, with its principal executive offices located at 45 Broad Street, Boston, its business offices and plant at Dor- chester, branch houses in New York and Chicago, and a mill in Canada.
Beginning in 1853 and running up to the present time Walter Baker & Company, Ltd., has been the recipient of fifty-seven highest awards from international and local expositions in Europe and America, includ- ing the Paris, Vienna, Toronto, and Ottawa fairs.
The great success of the corporation has been due in large measure to the fact that during all its more than one hundred and sixty years of existence it has never employed coloring matter, chemical solvents, or adulterants of any kind in the preparation of its cocoa and chocolate
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products. Years of study were given to the skillful preparation of both, and special machinery has been devised, and systems peculiar to the com- pany's methods of treatment of the raw materials have been originated whereby the purity, palatability and highest nutrient characteristics are retained, the resultant preparations having received the highest endorse- ments from the medical practitioner, the nurse, the caterer, and the housekeeper.
Elias Howe's Contribution to the Clothing Industry-Grim war, with all its bloody engagements, its heart-breakings, and its sinister factors, has to its credit at least one favorable attribute, that of being the agency which pointed out the necessity of bringing into existence the cutting and sewing of clothing by machinery, for without the need of ready-to- wear uniforms for the army and navy, inventors, both in the United States and abroad, would never have been spurred on to design mechan- ical contrivances that could sew fabrics together far more quickly than the nimblest of fingers and thus fashion the uniforms, suits, hats and shoes of the millions.
To a Massachusetts man, born in 1819, on a bleak and barren farm in the old Worcester County town of Spencer, who lost his job in 1837 in a Lowell Machine shop where cotton-spinning machinery was manu- factured and repaired, due to the financial panic then obsessing the nation, and who migrated to Boston, to come in contact with Ari Davis, a rough hewer of men's destinies, is due the invention of the sewing machine.
There never was a better illustration of the adage that "there is a divinity which shapes our ends" than is contained in the episode which occurred in Davis' dirty, topsy-turvy shop in Boston, with Elias Howe as a silent eighteen years' old spectator. A Hub capitalist had resorted to Davis' place of business with the inventor of a knitting machine, for the purpose of retaining the services of the proprietor as a consulting expert. "Why are you wasting your time over a knitting machine?" shrieked Davis, who was notoriously the noisiest man in Boston. "Take my advice, try something that will pay. Make a sewing machine." "It can't be done," came the reply. "Can't be done?" Davis ejaculated. "Don't tell me that. Why-I can make a sewing machine myself." "If you do," observed the capitalist, "I can make an independent fortune for you."
Davis was short on performance, and probably never again thought of his braggadocio statement, but the keen-witted native of Spencer who stood at his side at the moment never forgot those words, which rang
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in his ears, "I can make a sewing machine myself." From that moment his career was fixed.
Marrying at twenty, when he was beginning to work on the idea and to produce his first models, his nose was kept on the grindstone trying to eke out a living for his rapidly increasing family until at length, as the legend goes, he dreamed the dream that brought him fame and fortune. In his troubled sleep he witnessed himself captured by a tribe of savages, who took him a prisoner before their leader. "Elias Howe," roared the monarch, "I command you on pain of death to finish this machine at once." Cold sweat was pouring down his forehead, his hands shook with fear, his knees quaked, and try as he would, he could not vision the missing element in the problem over which he had worked so assidu- ously. The dream was all so real that he cried aloud, and in the vision he saw himself surrounded by a group of dark-skinned and painted war- riors, with belligerency written on their faces, who formed a hollow square about him and marched him to the place of his forthcoming execu- tion. Suddenly he observed that near the heads of the spears carried by his guardsmen, there were eye-shaped holes. He had solved in his sleep the secret he had groped for in his waking hours. What he needed to complete his invention was a needle with an eye near the point. He awoke, sprang out of bed and whittled a model, with which he brought his experiments to a finality in the attic of a factory for splitting palm-leaves, which his father had started in Cambridge.
Almost at the point of success, the building was destroyed by fire, and with it went all of Elias Howe's experimental work. For days he wandered in the depths of despair until he thought of his former school- mate, George Fisher, who had received a small inheritance. Willing to apply some of his easily gained resources in backing what he considered a risky venture, Fisher loaned Howe $500 and became a passive partner in one of the strangest adventures in the history of invention, the terms of the agreement being that he should take Howe and his numerous family into his home, feed and lodge them, and give over to the inventor his attic as a workshop.
In building the second machine, Howe spent all the money advanced by his schoolmate, but in May, 1845, it was declared finished but he did not patent it until the following September.
He set it up in the public hall in Boston, and finally induced a local tailor to operate it for about three times the prevailing wage. A gaping crowd came to see it, scoffed and departed and when he tried to induce the larger clothing establishments to use it the howl of the tailors reverberated to Faneuil Hall.
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He found himself temporarily a prophet not without honor save in his own country, as his brother, Amasa B. Howe, marketed a machine in England, but when Elias went over with his family, a quarrel ensued at the end of eight months, and he returned to the United States to take the poor debtors' oath, and to find that his patents had ben pirated dur- ing his absence, and it was not until 1854 that his legal rights were fully established by the courts and his original patent was declared basic. For fourteen years his income often reached $4,000 a week from the $25 royalty on every sewing machine that had been built, which in any way infringed his patent.
Howe held that his rights were worth $150,000,000, and when, in 1860, he petitioned Congress for an extension of that patent period, he asserted that up to that time he had received only $1,185,000.
Today every sewing machine that operates in the hundreds of cloth- ing establishments of Greater Boston carries the basic elements of Howe's wonderful invention.
Many attempts to fashion buttonholes by machinery were made when the clothing business was established on a wholesale plan, as one of the most tedious and expensive operations in clothing manufacture is the putting in of the buttonholes by hand.
The best known of the pioneers was John Reece, of Boston, who, in the early eighties, invented a machine which would cut and work button- holes in one operation. It was many years before he succeeded in making mechanically perfect his device, and he encountered difficulties not unlike those experienced by Elias Howe in marketing the product. But today it sews all kinds of fabrics, from the flimsiest peek-a-boo shirt waist to the heaviest material used in ulsters. Only the long experienced expert can detect the difference between the work of the Reece buttonhole machine and that of the most skillful journeyman tailor. Another type of the Reece machine is employed in sewing on shoe buttons.
The Reece products are manufactured at 502 Harrison Avenue, in Boston, and give employment to some four hundred hands.
The ready-to-wear industry of both men's and women's goods, includ- ing clothing, underwear, millinery and kindred lines, is one of the largest trades in the United States, ranking among the first half dozen industries in the value of its manufactured product.
The manufacture of men's clothing on ready-made lines was started in this country about 1845 by William C. Browning, who brought paper patterns from England, from which he cut cloth and made into regular sizes of men's suits. The business received its impetus in the Civil War period when large quantities of uniforms were desired in a hurry by the
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government and large amounts of blue cloths were made by the mills and manufactured into suits, both for uniform and civilian purposes.
Leopold Morse, the founder of the world-famous Boston clothing house of Leopold Morse Company, was born in Bavaria, in 1831, and came to this country in 1848 establishing himself as a peddler of clothes in the small town of Sandwich, New Hampshire. A year later he removed to Boston and began work in the clothing store of Henry Her- man, who sold out his business and moved to New York in 1852. In that year was established the present business of Leopold Morse Company, which was carried on by Mr. Morse, his brother Jacob, Messrs. Ferdi- nand and Louis Strauss, and which is now being carried on by Julius C. Morse, a nephew of Leopold Morse, Leon Strauss, a son of Ferdinand Strauss, and A. R. Weinberg, a nephew of the Messrs. Strauss.
In 1875 the business was removed to the corner of Washington and Brattle streets, Boston, where it has remained ever since, rounding out over fifty years in one location.
In 1904 the company was incorporated as a Massachusetts corpora- tion. In 1920 the concern leased the building at 217 Friend Street for the purpose of manufacturing and in 1923 it established a branch store on Summer Street, since which time it has become financially interested in locations in other New England cities for the purpose of retailing clothing and men's haberdashery.
The company employs in its model factories about 1,500 workers, who are affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. It has an output of 3,000 garments a week and the brand of clothing, known as Clothes of Refinement, is favorably known all over the country, especially on the Pacific coast, where large quantities are distributed.
Macullar-Parker & Williams, afterwards Macullar-Parker Company, who recently sold out to Rogers-Peet, of New York, were one of the pioneer Boston houses in the manufacture of fine men's clothing. A. Shuman & Company, who a few years ago sold out their business to Jordan Marsh Company, were one of the original clothing manufacturers, specializing in the manufacture of boys' clothing.
Other large concerns who manufactured during the eighties and nineties over $1,000,000 worth of men's clothing were Whitten, Burdett & Young, Miner, Beale & Hackett, Jas. Rothwell & Company, J. Peavey & Brothers, Chamberlin & Currier, now the Talbot Company, and many other concerns. At that time Boston sold a production valued between $30,000,000 and $35,000,000 annually and this at a period when clothing was sold at about one-third the price of today.
Our geographical location, coupled with numerous labor troubles and the influx of the Russian-Jewish element, which established itself in
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New York City in large numbers, resulted in the transfer of a great deal of the business at the close of the last century to the Metropolis and thence to Rochester and Chicago. Yet upwards of $20,000,000 worth of clothing is made in Boston annually and it is a substantial industry, giving employment probably to 10,000 workers.
Boston clothing has always had a reputation for being thoroughly made of the better grade fabrics and by skilled workmen. In fact, a great deal of the clothing made here is the finest produced in this country. Not only the house of Leopold Morse Company, but Scott & Company, and other local concerns are manufacturing a product which is second to none, even in comparison with the best makers of New York, Chicago, and other cities.
As an offshoot to the clothing manufactured in Boston some of the very best custom tailors are located here, one in particular, F. L. Dunne, being probably the largest merchant tailor in the United States, engaged in the manufacture of the finest custom made garments.
Julius C. Morse, the head of the Leopold Morse Company, in fur- nishing the author with this data, paid this tribute to the producer of the textile goods entering into the ready-to-wear clothing industry of the United States, when he said :
"While no doubt the mills in and about Huddersfield, England, and many of the Scotch plants produce wonderful fabrics, it is a great ques- tion if there are any better cloths made than those manufactured right here in the New England States. The Hockanum Company, of Rock- ville, Connecticut, George Mabbett & Sons Company, and the Standish Worsted Company, both of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Mayflower Wor- sted Company, of Kingston, and several plants of the American Woolen Company turn out fabrics which can be favorably compared to those that come from abroad. I have been purchasing woolens, not only in this country, but in England, France, Germany, and Austria, for a great many years and I feel that if the truth were written about the textiles made right here in our own New England States, many of them would not only be the equal of the foreign fabrics, but in many ways far superior. The Englishman adulterates many of his cloths with cotton, and he uses a great many cotton threads in place of silk for decorative purposes, but the good New England mills use no adulteration in any form. The colors on the goods made here are just as fast as those manu- factured abroad, and in fact the blue serge cloths turned out by the American Woolen Company, in Lawrence, or by Metcalf Brothers, in Providence, Rhode Island, run more even as to color than the serges we have seen that come from abroad. The only fault that can be laid at the door of the American mills is that they are constantly looking for
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increased output and manufacture only the type of goods that they can produce in large quantities, and as a result novelties are brought out in better shape by both the English and Scotch mills, which not only supply these novelties to the United States, but to all the countries of the globe as well."
Boston Refineries Sweeten the World-It is an interesting commen- tary that in the data applying to the principal manufacturing industries of the Metropolitan District the value of the manufactured products of sugar refining ranks second and is exceeded in total only by those of boots and shoes, but as this industry has as its component parts only two Boston units-the Revere and American Sugar refineries-the actual value of the yearly products cannot be shown in dollars and cents with- out disclosing the operations of each.
It is all the more interesting perhaps to consider the importance of the trade in the industrial life of Metropolitan Boston when one realizes that the raw materials which go into this all-important business are transported by water hundreds of miles from where they are produced in Cuba to the Hub in order to be made into an article of every-day necessity and convenience.
Seth Adams, one of the most remarkable and successful self-made men of the New England of the last century, builded better than he knew, when, in the summer of 1859, he reclaimed from the ravages of the recurring tides of Boston Harbor more than 90,000 square feet of terrain, at South Boston, by driving 12,000 piles and constructing a sea wall behind which were deposited 5,000 squares of gravel and over which a heavy granite foundation was laid, to hold the original superstructures of the Adams Sugar Refinery. Into the main building, 118 feet long by 80 feet deep, and nine stories in height, went 5,500,000 brick, forty car- goes of sand, 4,500 casks of lime, and 1,500 casks of cement, the floors being supported by 162 large iron columns. The original Adams equip- ment consisted also of a storehouse for raw sugar 250 feet long by 50 feet deep; a storehouse five stories high, for the refined product; a charcoal house, 130x48 feet, with a 120-foot chimney ; a detached boiler house 64x34, as well as smaller buildings.
This main building, now sixty-seven years old, is still in active use in 1926 by the American Sugar Refining Company, which operates the old Adams plant. When the refinery was taken over by other interests from the Adams family, the face of the brownstone slab, bearing the inscription, "Seth Adams 1859," was chiseled off, but under certain atmospheric conditions it is still faintly deciphered.
Nine years after Adams made his entrance into the field of sugar
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refining, operations were started at a plant owned by the Revere Sugar Refinery, located at East Cambridge, and without interruption that unit was continued until late in 1918, a period of exactly half a century, hav- ing a maximum capacity at the time of its being dismantled of melting 400,000 pounds daily.
In 1914 the United Fruit Company, that young corporation giant which today has a capitalization of $100,000,000 actually issued and $150,000,000 authorized, purchased the old Revere Sugar Refinery plant and five years afterwards built on the Mystic River, in the Charlestown district of Boston, a refinery of the most up-to-date construction, equipped with the latest mechanical improvements, and embodying in its opera- tions the highest engineering efficiency in sugar refining operation. Since that time this new unit has been operated as a subsidiary to furnish an outlet in the form of refined sugar for the output of its two raw sugar plantations and mills in Cuba.
This new Charlestown plant has a wharf 645 feet in length, 130 feet in width, with ample berth room for two steamers, and a depth of 30 feet at mean low water. A fireproof storage house, with a capacity of 20,000 tons of raw sugar, is erected on the wharf, equipped with over- head electric cranes for the quick and economical handling of the raw product as it leaves the holds of the steamers.
The plant has a daily output of refined sugar of over 4,000 barrels, and has direct rail connections whereby its product, of unexcelled qual- ity, is distributed throughout the United States and elsewhere.
It also owns and operates a modern cooperage plant, which has a daily output of 5,000 barrels, and 4,500 wooden cases. Its product is sold to the confectionery and other manufacturing trades and to wholesale grocers and jobbers, either directly or through brokers, for domestic use, or through brokers for export.
While the primary area of distribution for the Revere sugars is New England, it is interesting to know that some sections of the United States, whose unlettered critics love to point out that New England is decadent, are today using in greater quantity the refined sugars produced at this plant than those manufactured elsewhere in the United States, this being particularly true of the region about Chicago, where the Revere product is marketed in large volume.
The Hersey Manufacturing Company-In December, 1859, in that portion of the city known as South Boston, there was born a business which has continuously prospered and developed into proportions that make it one of the Hub's noted manufacturing industries.
That month, Walter E. Hawes and Charles H. Hersey formed a part-
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nership, under the name of Hawes and Hersey, and established a machine shop at the corner of E and Second streets, where they carried on a general machine and repair shop until November, 1865, when they asso- ciated with them Francis C. Hersey, brother of Charles. In 1872 Charles Hersey and his brother Francis, purchased the entire interest from Mr. Hawes and continued the business under the name of Hersey Brothers, and from that time devoted their energies to the manufacture of special patented machinery for the sugar and soap industries.
The developing of a machine for finishing the soft sugars, which were in general use in those days, and which were more or less subject to deterioration, gave to the world the sparkling granulated form of sugar which is in such general use today, and of which practically every pound passes through the "Hersey Granulator." In addition to this they also developed a machine for making the familiar "Cube" sugar, which has largely taken the place of the older forms of hard sugar known as cone, lump, broken and cut sugar. These machines are in all refineries throughout the United States and have gone to all parts of the world where refined sugars are made.
They also patented and built various other machines which were used in the soap, salt and malt industries.
In 1880, the Hersey Brothers associated with them James A. Tilden, who devoted his energies to the development of a water meter and later, in 1885, they brought into the firm Henry D. Winton to assist in this development and under the patents of Mr. Tilden this part of the business became very active. In 1885 they incorporated the Hersey Meter Company.
Business developed so advantageously that in 1890 the Hersey Meter Company purchased the entire business from the Hersey Brothers and reorganized under the name of the Hersey Manufacturing Company.
From a comparatively small beginning, occupying for its manufac- tures a building containing approximately 5,000 square feet, of two-story wooden structure, the concern has grown to a group of brick and rein- forced concrete buildings giving floor space of 66,000 square feet, equipped with the latest and most up-to-date machinery, largely of spec- ial character, for the economical handling of their products.
The sugar department under the direction of J. Franklin Charnock, is still turning out machinery of the character above described, which finds its way into all countries where this class of sugar is made.
The meter department has grown to large proportions and in addi- tion to the manufacture of domestic house meters, which are turned out in large quantities and of which there were comparatively few used when the business started, there are produced varied types of meters to meet
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