USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 39
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tions were begun in Chicago-the nucleus of the great plant of the com- pany now located in that city. The same year a branch of the San Francisco warehouse was opened in Portland, Oregon, and two years later one was set up in Los Angeles, while the same year witnessed the establishing of a warehouse in Boston, directly connected with the Gardner plant.
In 1844, nine years after Levi Heywood had turned his mind to the invention of chair-making machines, at Gardner, Cyrus Wakefield, then a partner in the Boston grocery house of Wakefield & Company, sold his interests to his brother and began a jobbing trade in rattan, and ulti- mately, with two crude machines established his first rattan company in the old Wakefield Building, on Canal Street, Boston. His qualities of originality and leadership are clearly shown in his insistence upon the spelling of his specialty as "rattan" instead of "ratan" as the material was then described, and by his persistent use he forced the standard dictionaries of the period to recognize the modern spelling of the word. By 1855 he had become so successful in the development of machines to fabricate rattan that he purchased a few small buildings and two mill ponds in South Reading and employed two hundred hands, his products being several times the value of those manufactured by his chief com- petitor, the American Rattan Company, of Fitchburg. In 1868, several years prior to his death, the citizens of South Reading unanimously voted to change the name of the municipality to Wakefield in his honor, and three years later his gift to the town-a new municipal building, was dedicated. Two weeks before he died in 1888 the Wakefield Rattan Company was incorporated with a capitalization of $1,000,000-a large sum in those days. As early as 1876 a New York warehouse was estab- lished, and later Chicago and San Francisco branches were started, while in 1887 a factory was opened in Chicago. Four years later a plant at Kankakee, Illinois, was bought.
In 1897 came the consolidation of the rival Heywood and Wakefield companies, and four years ago the New Jersey corporation of Heywood Brothers & Wakefield Company was liquidated and the business rein- corporated under Massachusetts laws as the Heywood-Wakefield Company.
The same year Hon. Levi H. Greenwood, of Gardner, was chosen as president and under his able management the corporation has made wonderful strides. It maintains eleven large warehouses in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Baltimore, Portland, Oregon, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Buffalo, St. Louis, and Kansas City.
The factories of the corporation are located at Gardner, Wakefield, and Erving, Massachusetts; Chicago, Menominee, Michigan; Portland,
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Oregon, and Orillia, Canada, with 2,518,937 square feet of floor space, and employing 3,706 hands, while the eleven warehouses have 1,872,530 square feet of floor space, and employ 1,601 men and women, the total of factory, warehouse and executive heads numbering 5,347 persons, while 4,395,903 square feet of floor space are required to carry on the operations of the concern.
Its products of cane and wood seat chairs, baby carriages, cocoa mats and matting, cane and reed products, opera chairs, railway car seats, reed and fibre furniture, school furniture, toy vehicles, and fibre web are known throughout the world.
Boston's Well-Known Beverage-Moxie-One of the most original and unique industrial developments in the United States is the creation by Frank Archer, of the Moxie Company, of "Moxieland," an unex- ampled enterprise fostered by this concern, which, for half a century has built up by improved devices, wide experience, and by the application of modern business ideas, a world-wide distribution of a beverage, whose trade mark, registered in 1885, has become universally known as the hall- mark of quality.
"Moxieland" is bounded by three streets and a city square, in Boston, covering a "flat-iron" space of 85,000 square feet, just a step from the Fenway, and the Boston Art Museum, and is designed to be not only the last word in up-to-date production facilities, but in truth it is a civic center, a place where the people can congregate and enjoy themselves. Although situated in the very heart of Boston, "Moxieland" is graced by a flower-filled park with walks, shaded benches, refreshment booth, a bandstand, and a Moxie welcome for everybody. There is a Toytown for the little folks, to whom every day will be Christmas.
The dancing floor of the "Moxieland" Aerial Garden accommodates half a thousand couples, and it is within the scope of the plans of the founders to provide an Assembly Hall where neighborhood functions and meetings will be held during the winter, with restaurant accommo- dations for the service of luncheons and banquets.
The Department de Cuisine originates and tests new desserts and drinks in which Moxie plays the chief part.
The real show place at "Moxieland" is the white enamel-walled and tile-floored department where bottles are cleansed, sterilized and puri- fied for filling, and filled by special machinery. The assembling tables, automatic carriers, fillers and cappers, labeling machines and delivery runways are the most efficient that the company's fifty years of study and experience can provide.
From the department where every ingredient that goes into Moxie is
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proved to be up to the standard, to the assembling department where the materials are blended in great glass tanks, the processes are visible to the visitor.
Two artesian wells produce an unlimited supply of pure water. The refrigerating and ice system have a greater capacity than that of any Boston ice plant. The main building has shipping facilities for the assembling of ninety carloads of the product at one time. The company maintains an overnight service between "Moxieland" in Boston and its distributing station in New York, which makes immediate delivery cer- tain to all parts of the greater city.
The Vision of a Cape Codder-Gustavus F. Swift-The slaughtering and meat packing industries, which from their very beginning, have con- stituted an important part of the industrial operations of Metropolitan Boston reflect the vision, foresight and business acumen of a typical New Englander-Gustavus F. Swift, the founder of Swift & Company, who was a Cape Cod butcher and livestock dealer, when he conceived the idea of shipping from some central point in the Middle West dressed meat for the market on the Atlantic seaboard.
While it is true that Mr. Swift left the scene of his early business ventures and went to Chicago, where he founded Swift & Company, nevertheless the foundation of his later success was firmly laid in Cape Cod and in Boston. It was at Barnstable, that young Swift learned the butcher business. He bought and sold livestock on the Brighton market. Later, when he had successfully introduced the shipment of western dressed beef in refrigerator cars, the territory surrounding Boston became his first great market and its acceptance of western beef assured the success of his enterprise. The business of Swift & Company has kept pace with the development of Metropolitan Boston, until today its prod- ucts are sold to the people of Massachusetts from thirty-four branch selling houses-four of them located in Boston proper.
The founder of Swift & Company was born for business, and from an early age showed qualities of ambition, energy, and enterprise that brought success. The story is told that as a boy of nine years, Mr. Swift bought chickens from his grandfather which he managed to sell at a profit. When only fourteen, young Swift's school days were brought to an end and he went to work for an elder brother, the village butcher, at a salary of a dollar a week. For two and a half years he worked and learned and then he determined to start in business for himself.
The story of Mr. Swift's first business venture has become a classic of American business. He borrowed twenty dollars from his father and with it bought a heifer which he killed and dressed himself, and peddled
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the meat to people of the community. He made ten dollars on this trans- action, and it may be said that the present business of Swift & Company -which amounted last year to nearly 900 million dollars-has developed from the sale of a single animal.
Every week young Swift bought an animal in the Brighton market and sold the meat from house to house. Slowly he accumulated enough money to open a meat market in Eastham, during the winter of 1859-60. From there he went to Sagamore and from Sagamore to Barnstable, each time establishing a larger market.
It was not long, however, until Swift saw that buying livestock from Cape Cod farmers offered greater opportunities than the retail meat business. Turning over his market to a capable clerk, he at once began to buy and sell cattle in the large stockyards at Brighton and Water- town, just outside of Boston. Cattle buying became his chief occupa- tion, but he continued to expand his business by establishing retail markets at Clinton, Lancaster, Freetown, and Taunton, each in charge of a capable lieutenant.
In 1872 Swift became the partner of James A. Hathaway, an impor- tant Boston meat retailer, and took charge of the firm's buying operations. With that vision which so characterized his career he saw that the center of the livestock industry had moved westward; that the cities of the East must rely on the West for livestock supplies, and he transferred his buying operations from Boston to Albany, from there to Buffalo, and finally, in 1875, from Buffalo to Chicago.
Swift soon saw the possibilities of the refrigerator car, then being experimented with in the latter city. In vain he sought to induce Hath- away to join him in shipping beef East. Failing this, he persuaded Herbert Barnes to handle his beef in Swift's own community on Cape Cod, and in 1877 the first shipment was made and Swift became a packer.
New difficulties arose, only to be overcome. When the railroads refused to build (and some of them to haul) refrigerator cars, Swift built ten of his own and put them into operation on the Grand Trunk, a road that had little livestock traffic, and therefore did not oppose the new business. But other almost insurmountable obstacles existed. Eastern stockyards and eastern butchers opposed him because their business was threatened. People in the east were prejudiced against western beef and believed it to be unwholesome. His beef was often boycotted, and hostile legislation sought to protect the local interests against him.
Mr. Swift employed an effective method for breaking down these bar- riers by entering into partnership with leading butchers in various New England towns, allowing them commissions on the beef sold and divid-
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ing with them the profits. Among these early partners were some of his Cape Cod friends, who had a special interest in the success of the new beef trade. A younger brother, E. C. Swift, with headquarters in Bos- ton, was placed in charge of selling operations in the East. Other pack- ers followed Swift's lead, but it was he who successfully introduced western dressed beef on a commercial basis, and the territory surround- ing Boston was the first market to accept it. Although partnerships formed the entering wedge that enabled Swift to break down prejudice and opposition, after the business was incorporated in 1885, branch sell- ing houses gradually replaced them.
Today there are about seventy-five Swift branch houses in New England, all under the jurisdiction of the Boston office. From the very first, Swift & Company has been particularly interested in the New England market, and special pains are taken to provide the best possible service in this territory. Even the remote seashore and mountain resorts are unfailingly supplied with fresh meats by Swift branches, which in turn receive their supplies in refrigerator cars direct from western plants.
Though perhaps Swift leads other packers in New England sales, com- petition both with large packers and small local packers is keen, and no one company has any degree of control over the New England market.
Few people realize, however, that even the local packers in New Eng- land have to draw upon the West for livestock supplies. It would require more than the entire livestock supply of New England to provide the city of Boston with meat.
The strong position of Swift & Company in this territory may be partly due to the fact that there are more stockholders in Massachusetts than in any State except Illinois. It is also significant that Swift stock is listed on the Boston and not on the New York Exchange.
Six sons of G. F. Swift are associated in the management of the firm he founded. One of them, George H. Swift, makes his home in Boston and supervises the company's business in this territory. When G. F. Swift began, he did a house-to-house business from a meat wagon; he lived to see his business reach around the world. His sons have con- tinued to build upon the solid foundations he provided.
CHAPTER XII. MERCANTILE INTERESTS.
A representative of one of the largest department stores of Boston recently made the statement that the retail trade of the United States was this country's greatest business. He estimated that two dollars a day was spent on an average by every individual in the States. And, taking the round number one hundred million as covering the population, the number of spending days as three hundred of the year, the total of the retail trade would amount to sixty billion dollars for the year. This sum is expended for the necessities and luxuries of life-food, clothing, home, house furnishings, light, heat, transportation, amusements, and the count- less things which go to make life livable. "You see," said this man, "that the retailer must supply all the money to run all the industries and all the commerce of this country. This puts in your mind the vast impor- tance of the retailer-the most important factor in all business. He sup- plies the ideas; he collects the money." The speaker, who was C. F. Bacon, of Chandler and Company, went on to show that the merchant kept the country going. He pays all bills, all taxes, keeps the factories busy, sells the products of the farmer and manufacturer, "practically pays for all transportation, and pays for all public service. In other words, the retailer ultimately pays for all labor, and pays all bills."
The High Place of the Merchant-This is an arresting statement, and one easily backed up by arguments and facts. The stock exchanges of the country make sales whose totals equal that of the mercantile agen- cies; and yet, in war times, it was found possible for business to run along in its accustomed track with the stock exchange closed or inactive. Imagine what would happen if all the retailers and wholesalers were to take a vacation of even one week! The world is so accustomed to hav- ing somebody, or many somebodies, see that it can buy what it wants when it wants it, that the importance of merchandizing and merchants are quite overlooked. The lawyer, teacher, minister or doctor dies, and the papers tell us of what they accomplished in the pursuit of their pro- fessions. When a merchant passes on, the world is interested to know what is to be done with his money, but seldom will stop to read of the man- ner in which he lived and worked to win his wealth. Only in recent years has the public realized the tremendous importance of the mercantile busi- ness, and become interested in the lives of the men who carry its burdens. We are the greatest buying Nation. Says a great merchant, "America has not only the largest number of buyers, but the most intelligent, the
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best informed, having the best judgment, the best ideas and the most refined discriminating taste." Another broad statement, but one which illustrates the difficulties, the risks, the labor which a merchant must undertake when he tries to guess what will sell. Financial reports show that the greatest percentage of failures in business are those in mercantile lines. All hail to the man who knows what to buy and how to sell it! He deserves what he gains ; he takes the risks and his rewards are not great.
Boston Founded by Merchants-Boston from its earliest days has been a great mercantile center; the foundations of its prosperity and strength were laid in commerce. Many of its great men have been mer- chants, although this is often overshadowed by the fact that they have been far more than buyers and sellers of goods. The Massachusetts Bay Company, which settled Massachusetts, was a mercantile concern, licensed to trade, and composed, for the most part, of English merchants, who invested their money in and expected to make money by setting up trad- ing posts. There seems to have been little difficulty in securing financial backing for the scheme; many put their money into it without intending to cross the ocean and take an active part in the venture. The New World had been unexploited, relatively, but such reports as had drifted into England held out the prospect of large gains. The company was schrewd enough to take their charter along with it, and directed its affairs on the ground, being careful to protect their interests from interference by outsiders, either at home or abroad. Napoleon accused the English of being a Nation of "shop-keepers," thereby paying them an unintended compliment. The Puritans, and this in nowise belittles their religious principles, came to Boston and set up shop. They knew little about farming, and, while they loved land and craved broad estates, they were very slow in subduing the land and making it to bring forth. In none of the colonies were the farms so small or so unproductive as in Massachu- setts. Those who settled on the Shawmut Peninsula made little effort to farm except to produce needed food. There were too few acres to it and these were unsuited to agriculture. Boston, the chief settlement of the colony, was established as a trade post, where barter might be carried on with the Indians; a commercial port, to which should come the exports from abroad, and from which the expected imports should be shipped. It was to be the mercantile capital of the company. After the first few years, so many wealthy merchants located in Boston, that it was rich and prosperous from the beginning. For a century it was the trade town of America, and only after the Revolution took a second place in this respect. Even as late as 1800, nearly one-fourth of the population of the United States was dependent upon Boston, for their financial and commercial capital, and for their supplies other than food.
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The Home Trade a Disappointment-The wonderful resources of this country failed to prove up to the expectation of the Puritans. It had been thought that America was rich in gold or other precious metals which the Indians would be glad to barter for trinkets of small value. Then, it was expected, that furs would be plentiful and chiefly bought. Gold failed to materialize, and the fur trade did not last long or prove as profit- able as had been hoped. There were too few Indians left after plagues had ravaged them, and the remnant was antagonized; the Indians were never a source of revenue to the Puritans as they were to the southern settlements. Furs supplied the bulk of some of the early cargoes sent out from Boston, but within a few years they ceased to be an important part of the trade of the port. Not many of the fortunes of the early set- tlers of Boston have their foundations in the fur business, for New York became the fur-trading center of the colonies.
Foreign Commerce Proves Valuable-Boston had from the start an advantage of location upon which it was quick to seize and prompt to develop. This was its location at the head of a splendid bay, with a capacious and secure harbor and deep channels to the front doors of the warehouses. The settlement's future lay upon the seas, a condition evi- dently sensed by our forefathers. Then there were the forests of the Boston Basin, which, if quickly exhausted, gave an initial impulse to ship- building which continued for two hundred years. The products of the woods were among its first exports; hewn timbers, clapboards, pipe staves and hoops being a few of the more valuable commodities sent abroad. Then there was fish, the "sacred cod," which when salted was as good as gold in the trade circles of this country and Europe. Ship- building and the catching of the denizens of the sea are industries rather than mercantile affairs, but must be considered for the effect they had upon the commerce of Boston, and the commercial start which they gave to the town. Before Boston was four years old, the colonists were sending out fish, lumber and furs, and with them buying the necessities and luxuries that were brought back and sold over the counter. Not only was England tapped for supplies, but the West Indies, the Canaries and Southern Europe all came within the scope of Boston ships. In 1636, one vessel brought home "thirty thousand weight of potatoes and scores of oranges and limes" from "Bermuda." A Boston ship, the "Tryal," loaded for Bilboa with fish in 1644, and returned laden with "wine, fruit, oil, iron and wool." This, said the chronicler, was "of great advantage to the country and gave encouragement to trade." In 1645, eleven ships arrived from England bringing "linen, woolens, shoes and stockings and other useful goods." Before the end of the century, Boston was exchang- ing goods not only with all the western ports of Europe, but with the
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islands of this hemisphere, and the settlements along the coasts of our own country.
The Rise of the Captain-Merchant-Such instances might be multi- plied, but are only mentioned here because of the light they shed upon the mercantile transactions of the early days, and the hints they give of the type of the early Boston merchants, a type almost unique to the town for two centuries. A merchant today is usually one who purchases what is brought to him and sells to those who come to his place of business and buy. The Boston merchant of the long period prior to the Civil War, was apt to be a ship-builder and owner, and often the captain or super-cargo of his craft. He was the banker of his own enterprise, a financier, speculator, much traveled, skilled in the art of barter, and ofttimes, of necessity, a smuggler. The story of ship-building in Boston is a tale of merchants who needed vessels in their business. Later, when banks had to be established, factories built and railroads financed, it was the sea-wise merchant of Boston who supplied the money. Very often the merchant of today traces his career back to the day when he became a clerk in a crossroads country store. The Boston merchant of the olden time was more likely to tell how he got his start as a cabinboy in a square-sailed merchant-ship. Boston history has many pages replete with adventure, romance and heroism-just plain accounts of the lives of the captain-merchants who brought commercial eminence to the city.
The Colony and the "Mercantile System"-Before putting aside the matter of ship-building and the early commerce, it may be well to notice some of the effects they made upon the merchants and more particularly the history of this country. New England was founded under the so-called "mercantile system," one of the political policies of which Old England was a principal exponent. In brief this was a method of National expansion, based on the opening up of new countries, the helping of them to make the land productive until the new colony should not only become self-supporting, but one having a surplus to send to the Mother Nation, which in turn would send to the colony what it needed. There was nothing unselfish in this, for the dignity of an European Nation was dependent upon the wealth and size and strength of its colonies. This policy aided greatly, in the beginning, the development of Massachu- setts, commercially, but was a decided drawback later. The weakness of the mercantile system lay in the fact that while it encouraged the pro- duction and shipment of such articles as were needed in England, it was intended to deter the growing or making of anything that the homeland had in abundance. Further, a colony was restrained from sending things which it had to other than English ports, and pressure was brought to make the colony take what Great Britain and its merchants had to send
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them. The colonial market was reserved to the British, and the new land squeezed to the limit for the benefit of the old. In its workings the mer- cantile system first built up Boston's commerce, and then in the attempt to restrain it, scattered it all over the world, and in the attempt at further constraint, so antagonized the town as to make it the leader in the revolt which tore the colonies in this country from their mother.
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