USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Detroit > The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Vol. I > Part 57
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CITY OF DETROIT
The officers in 1921 are: F. W. Davis, Jr., president; T. R. Wyles, vice presi- dent ; and W. F. Monroc, secretary and treasurer. The company was the first to use graphite as a material in paint manufacture and the process is now covered by a patent.
THE BURROUGHS ADDING MACHINE
There is no story in American industrial history more absorbing, more replete with human interest, than the story of the inventor of the adding machine and his years of disheartening labor to perfect his creation. The immense manufactory known as the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, with its 12,000 employes, its vast organization, and its yearly output of over 125,000 calculating machines, is built upon the dreams, the ambitions, the creative genius and the struggles of one man, whose name is now perpetuated in the title of the company.
William Seward Burroughs was the son of a mechanic and was born in Rochester, N. Y., January 28, 1857. While he was still a small lad, his parents moved to Auburn, N. Y., where he and his brothers were educated in the public schools. According to the father's desire that his youngest son should choose a "gentleman's" vocation, young Burroughs, after his graduation from high school, entered the Cayuga County National Bank of Auburn as a clerk. This was not in accordance with the young man's wishes, for he had a natural love and talent for mechanics and the boredom and monotony of clerical life weighed heavily upon him. Seven years in the bank caused his health to break and he was forced to resign.
During the time he was employed in the bank, Burroughs had recognized the need of some system or device to relieve the tiresome duties of a bank clerk. A mechanism for this purpose did not at first assume form in his mind, but the germ of the idea was created. In 1882, when he was in his twenty-fifth year, Burroughs went to St. Louis, Mo., where he obtained a job in a machine shop. These new surroundings, which appealed to him more, hastened the develop- ment of the idea he had in mind and the tools of his new craft gave him the opportunity to put into tangible form the first conception of the adding machine. Accuracy was the foundation of his work. No ordinary materials were good enough for his creation. His drawings were made on metal plates which could not stretch or shrink by the smallest fraction of an inch. He worked with har- dened tools, sharpened to finest points, and when he struek a center or drew a line, it was done under a microscope. His drawings are today a marvel of accuracy.
Burroughs gave up his regular employment and looked around for a small, well-equipped shop where he could rent bench space and obtain an assistant to carry on his work. He finally located the shop of Joseph Boyer, at 244 Dickson Street, where he set up his tools and started out to make the adding machine commercially practical. His funds soon disappeared, but the develop- ment of the idea did not lag, the chief reason being that Burroughs had met Joseph Boyer, who, next to the inventor himself, was the greatest factor in making the present industry a possibility.
Seldom has an inventor with a great idea been compelled to struggle under such conditions as faced Burroughs during the time he was developing his ideas for the first practical adding machine. With every penny of his own money and all he could borrow spent, he still fought on. He set out himself to raise
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CITY OF DETROIT
money by the sale of stock in the projected enterprise. With this money he would then begin his experiments again, but about the time he was well under way, the bottom would drop out of the treasury. However, at the Boyer shop, activities continued unabated in spite of these obstacles. A small organiza- tion was built up, which made in brass the adding machine parts which the inventor desired. Finally, in the latter part of 1884, the first model of the machine was displayed and was the basis for the Burroughs patents, which were secured in 1885.
There now came a protracted period of new discouragements. The first machines proved unsatisfactory, principally because the human equation had not been taken into account. One person would operate with a heavier touch than another, consequently the results obtained on the machine varied. The stockholders complained and the general opinion was formed that the new machine was a failure. But the setback was only a whip to Burrough's deter- mination. He began work again notwithstanding the fact that he was upon the verge of a physical breakdown. In fact, he did all of his earlier work under the handicap of gradually declining health. He knew himself and his endurance as well as he knew the ultimate value of his brain-child, so in feverish despera- tion he set about to remedy the defect in his first model. At his bench he toiled for hours, without food or sleep, and on the morning of the third day he had eliminated the one great defect by an automatic controller, or dashpot, substantially the same as is used today on all adding machines. With this addition, the machine became practical, in that it could be operated by even a novice.
Then came the problem of manufacturing and selling the machines. In January, 1SS8, there was organized at St. Louis the American Arithmometer Company, which was incorporated with a capital stock of $100,000. The original officers were: Thomas Metcalfe, president; William S. Burroughs, vice president ; Richard M. Scruggs, treasurer; and A. H. B. Oliver, secretary. William R. Pye was also one of the original stockholders. A contract was entered into with the Boyer Machine Company for the manufacture of the device, the selling operations were established and from time to time different models were put out, the beginning of the long line of models now manufactured. Twice, while in St. Louis, the company was compelled to enlarge its floor space, in order to fill the increasing number of orders for the machines.
In 1904 conditions seemed to favor the removal of the plant from St. Louis. Trade union domination in that city was a restriction upon the proper develop- ment of the concern, also Joseph Boyer used his influence to accomplish this removal to a more advantageous location. Special trains brought the machinery, together with 253 families, to Detroit, arriving here in the afternoon. By means of arrangements made through the real estate committee of the board of commerce, most of the people were comfortably housed the same night, many of them in places which they afterwards bought. This was one of the most remarkable "hegiras" in manufacturing history.
The Burroughs Adding Machine Company, organized in Detroit, was incor- porated in January, 1905, and succeeded the American Arithmometer Com- pany. The first buildings in Detroit, located at Second Avenue and Amster- dam Street, contained 70,304 square feet of floor space, but the increase in pro- duction and sales has been such that these quarters have been enlarged from time to time until now there are 894,895 square feet of floor space in the Detroit
MICHIGAN STOVE COMPANY
H
IN
BURROUGHS ADDING MACHINE COMPANY
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CITY OF DETROIT
factory alone. The first officers of the new company were: Joseph Boyer, President ; Henry Wood, of St. Louis, Vice President; Benjamin G. Chapman, Secretary and Treasurer; Alvan Macauley, General Manager. New models were continually added. Conspicuous among these were the electric drive, developed in 1905; the Duplex machine, put on the market in 1910; automatic carriages, introduced to meet the demand for cross tabulating of numbers and amounts, and a long line of subtracting, bookkeeping and calculating machines.
Burroughs himself did not live to see the wonderful development of his invention and its tremendous popularity, but he did live to see hundreds of practical machines of the early model used in the banks of the country, and to reap a substantial reward from his original holdings in the company. His death occurred September 14, 1898.
Joseph Boyer became president of the old company in 1902 and of the new company upon its organization, and so continued until 1920. Alvan Macauley became general manager of the business in 1902 and was actively in charge of it until 1910 when he became associated with the Packard Motor Car Company, of which he is now President and General Manager. He was succeeded by Andrew J. Lauver. Benjamin G. Chapman, also in 1902, became a director and was elected Secretary and Treasurer, serving the old and the new companies successively in that capacity until his retirement from business in 1920. In 1913 Claiborne W. Gooch, formerly European Manager, became a director and the active Vice President, in which capacity he was in charge of the business until 1920. In January, 1920, Standish Backus, a prominent attorney of Detroit, who had for several years been a Vice President and a member of the Board, was elected President and became active in the business, while Joseph Boyer became Chairman of the Board, retaining, however, his active interest in the business.
The Company now has an issued capital stock amounting to $24,750,000 par value, and an authorized capital stock of $30,000,000. It controls the fol- lowing subsidiary companies: Burroughs Adding Machine Limited, a British Corporation which conducts the manufacturing and selling activities of the Company in Great Britain and under whose supervision its European opera- tions are directed; Burroughs Machines Limited and Burroughs Adding Machine of Canada Limited, two Canadian Corporations which supply the Canadian and part of the foreign demand; Societe Anonyme Burroughs which operates with headquarters at Paris, France; Societa Italiana Addizionatrice Burroughs, with headquarters at Milan, Italy; Sociedad Anonima Burroughs with head- quarters at Barcelona, Spain; the General Adding Machine Exchange, Inc., and the Moon-Hopkins Company. The business of the Moon-Hopkins Billing Machine Company, of St. Louis, Mo., was acquired in 1921 and its product added to the long line of Burroughs models.
Besides its Detroit factory the Company owns and operates manufacturing plants in Windsor, Ontario, and Nottingham, England. In normal times the Company affords employment to upwards of 10,000 persons. The selling organization reaches into nearly all civilized countries with agencies in some 400 important business centers of the world, of which more than half are in the United States.
At the January meeting in 1921 the following officers were elected: Joseph Boyer, Chairman of the Board of Directors; Standish Backus, President; C. W. Vol. 1-36
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CITY OF DETROIT
Gooch, First Vice President ; B. G. Chapman, Vice President ; F. H. Dodge, Vice President and General Manager: A. J. Lauver, Treasurer; G. W. Evans, Sec- retary, and L. A. Farquhar, Comptroller.
THE STORY OF DETROIT'S GREATEST INDUSTRY
A motion picture of any business street in the world would reveal a Detroit- made car. Although not the birthplace of the first automobile, Detroit was the foster-mother of the infant industry and nurtured it through the first months of tribulation. However, this same infant was a husky one, a prodigy, and quickly grew to maturity. The rise of the automobile industry is one of the romances of modern business and in Detroit it found its best expression.
The first gasoline auto driven on the streets of Detroit was by Charles B. King in 1894. The car had four cylinders and a speed of about twenty miles per hour. Henry Ford came out with his car about a year later. He was at this time an engineer in the Edison Company and lived in an humble cottage on Bagley Avenue. In a shed at the rear of his home his first car was put together, some of the parts for which were donated by King. The last-named did not follow up his invention for some years; eventually he organized the King Motor Company, which put out the pioneer eight-cylinder car.
A number of cities have laid claim to the honor of having been the home of the first horseless carriage and many of them have advanced facts which have seemed convincing, but upon analysis of the early days of the industry, if it might have been so called, it appears that the first commercially practical car had its origin at Lansing, Mich., and was built by Ransom E. Olds, whose popular, curved-dash, $650 Oldsmobile is well remembered. However, this odd little car was not Mr. Olds' first.
Ransom E. Olds was a native of Geneva, Ohio, where he was born June 3, 1864. He received a common school and business education and in 1SS5 purchased an interest in his father's shop, a small affair, but which was the home of the first practical automobile. In this shop be built a vehicle which would run under its own power supplied by steam generated by gasoline. This was in September, 1886. Mr. Olds usually chose the early hours of the morning for experimentation in the open, for then he had the street to himself and there were fewer horses to scare, also fewer people to give vocal expression to their sense of humor. Mr. Thurlow Pope, in a paper prepared at the request of. and read before the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society and later pub- lished in the Michigan Manufacturer and Financial Record, states in part:
"In 1886 Ransom E. Olds built a car at Lansing, and the record bears out the statement that this car was bought, sold and used for practical purposes, which is the true beginning of the automobile for commercial purposes in the world. * In a comparatively brief sketch it is well, in order to avoid * misleading ideas, to keep in mind the difference between the automobile as an experiment, a toy for the rich only, and the automobile in its relation to trade and commerce. Michigan's claim is not to the birthplace of the auto- mobile idea, but to the birthplace of the automobile as a practical element in progress-in short, the place of origin of a vehicle which could be built within the limits of trade prices. The inventive genius of Ransom E. Olds brought forth through years of obscurity, poverty and hard work a machine which
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CITY OF DETROIT
moved without the help of an animal and in which gasoline was used as a means of power, in September, 1886.
"H. L. Barber, in his book 'The Story of the Automobile,' makes the state- ment that the first commercial transaction in automobiles was the sale of a car by Alexander Winton to Robert Allison, of Port Carbon, Pa., in 1898. The data for automobile history is very scarce and Mr. Barber's statement should be corrected while proof is still extant, for the immense industry will some day demand its historian. The above error, which is unintentional, should of course be excused, but at the same time the facts should be supplied to show where Mr. Barber is mistaken.
"Mr. Olds strengthened and improved his invention very much in the succeeding six years, and proved his success to such an extent that the 'Scien- tific American,' which was probably our foremost mechanical journal of that day, sent a representative to Lansing, who after due trial and testing wrote an extended article for his magazine describing the machine in detail. The car was used for practical purposes during the years it was being improved and in 1893 was sold by Mr. Olds to the Frances Times Company, of London. The transaction took place in New York City, completing the first automobile transaction as an act of commerce. The car was afterward shipped to one of the Times company's branches at Bombay, where it saw service for a number of years. This, then, we may pass to history's record as the first commercial dealing in an industry which, during the generation which created it and within the lifetime of the man who invented and built the car, was to pass from a business of $500 to a business involving thousands of millions."
Olds continued his experimentation until 1894, when he evolved a gasoline- driven car instead of his old steam-powered machine. In 1896, E. W. Sparrow, of Lansing, became interested in the new invention of Olds and persuaded S. L. Smith and Henry Russel to invest some money in the new proposition. The result was the organization in 1896 of the Olds Motor Vehicle Company, with a capital stock of $5,000.
During this time other experiments were being made in different parts of the country. The Selden machine was being perfected in the East. Charles E. Duryea was tinkering with a gasoline machine in Springfield, Massachusetts, and he, with his brother Frank, organized the Duryea Motor Wagon Company, which was the first automobile company in America. Elwood Haynes' first car had been built in the shop of the Apperson Brothers in Kokomo, Indiana, and Alexander Winton, Cleveland manufacturer of bicycles had made a motor- bicycle in 1893 and his first motor car in 1895. Following the example of Duryea, who put his car on exhibition with Barnum & Bailey's circus, Olds placed his car on view at county fairs in 1898 and 1899.
Then came the construction of the first automobile factory in Detroit. Mr. Olds journeyed to New York City and Newark, New Jersey, to interest eastern capital in the manufacture of his car. He was received with hospitality and invited to look over proposed sites in Newark but when it came to the actual putting up of cash, the easterners were a bit reluctant, and Olds returned west. En route to Lansing, he stopped in Detroit, where he met S. L. Smith, wealthy copper mine owner. The latter let it be known that he had money to invest in the business, also wished to start his two sons, Frederick L. and Angus S., into business life. The result was that Mr. Olds consented to remain
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CITY OF DETROIT
in Detroit, and the Olds Motor Works was incorporated as a reorganization of the Olds Motor Vehicle Company and the Olds Gas Engine Works of Lansing, with a capital stock of $350,000, of which $150,000 was paid in. S. L. Smith and Henry Russel supplied most of the capital, and Frederick L. and Angus S. Smith became officials in the new company. The first Detroit factory of this company was located on Jefferson Avenue on the site of the present Morgan & Wright Building. This was the first automobile factory in the city.
Mr. Olds, Mr. Smith and others went to New York City to arrange for the distribution of their cars in the eastern markets. At the same time Roy D. Chapin drove one through under its own power to prove the durability of the car, also the driver. Space for exhibiting the car was secured in Madison Square Garden. A. G. Spalding & Company had previously agreed to operate the New York agency for the car, but at the last moment failed to do so, and R. M. Owen and Roy Rainey secured the agency for both New York and Ohio. The first year they sold 750 cars in New York alone. This first car manufactured by the Detroit company was designed to sell for $1,250, but despite the fact that it embodied many new mechanical features it was not a success, but was the forerunner of the popular-priced, "curved-dash" car which Mr. Olds designed and placed on the market for $650. In 1900 about 400 of these novel cars were manufactured and in 1901, so fast had the demand grown, that 4,000 of them were built. At this time other manufacturers in the country such as Winton, the Pierce-Arrow, E. R. Thomas, Haynes, the Locomobile, Colonel Packard, F. B. Stearns, Clark Brothers and Nordyke & Marmon, were pro- ducing cars, but in numbers very small compared to the Olds production. This little runabout hit the popular fancy and the promotors reaped a bountiful reward. It was not long until the capital stock had been increased by stock dividends from $350,000 to $2,000,000.
This phenomenal success of the Olds Motor Works brought immediate fame to Detroit and gave the city a flying start toward the goal of being the foremost automobile manufacturing city on the globe. Not only that, but it developed a group of men who were destined to be leaders in the motor industry, many of them to be founders of gigantie manufactories of their own. Among these men we recognize such names as Henry M. Leland, Horace E. and John F. Dodge, Roy D. Chapin, Howard E. Coffin, B. F. Everitt, William E. Metzger, Benjamin Briscoe, J. D. Maxwell, R. B. Jackson, J. J. Brady, Charles B. Wilson, H. T. Thomas, Frederick O. Bezner, Charles D. Hastings and Charles B. King. The Olds plant on Jefferson Avenue was not a manufac- turing institution in the sense that we now recognize the term. It was simply an assembling plant. The Leland & Faulconer machine shop, for instance, contracted to supply the motors for the runabout ; the Dodges made the trans- missions, the Briscoe Manufacturing Company made the radiators. William E. Metzger was the first sales agent for the company.
A frequent and interested visitor to the Olds works in those days was Henry Ford, who was building a machine of his own. In 1901 the Henry Ford Auto- mobile Company was formed, but Ford soon dropped out, and in 1903 the present Ford Motor Company was organized. Ford's first company lost money. However, William H. Murphy, A. E. F. White, Lem W. Bowen, and Clarence Black were enthusiastic and, with Henry M. Leland, organized the Cadillac Automobile Company, using an improved engine that A. L. Brush, a young
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CITY OF DETROIT
meehanie, had designed while making motors for the Olds ear. When two Cadillaes had been manufactured, William E. Metzger, the first general sales manager, took them to the New York show, and returned with orders for 2,200 cars, only three of which were actually built at that time. The rise of the Cadillac from this time until its absorption by the General Motors Company in 1909 was the second remarkable event of the automobile industry as developed in Detroit.
In 1904, through differing opinions with the directors, Mr. Olds resigned from the company which he had started. The company then started to build a high-prieed car, but it could not take the place of the little curved-dash machine. In 1907 the company was combined by William C. Durant with the Buiek company to form the General Motors Company.
After his retirement, Mr. Olds again became interested in an automobile venture with his friends and eastern capitalists and in 1905 the Reo Motor Car Company was organized and the ear they made became one of the most successful in the country.
From the Olds organization of 1903 ean be traced the genesis of several other companies. J. D. Maxwell went out to organize the Northern Automobile Company with G. B. Gunderson, W. T. Barbour, and William E. Metzger. This company was later merged with the Wayne Auto Company, which had been organized by B. F. Everitt, to make the E. M. F (Everitt-Metzger- Flanders) ear. The E. M. F. ear was one of the first successful medium-priced, full-sized automobiles and won an excellent reputation. After this car had been sold to the Studebakers, Everitt, with William Kelley and William E. Metzger, organized the Metzger Motor Car Company. Later the Flanders company was organized with Everitt as president but afterward sold out to the Maxwell. Roy D. Chapin graduated from the Olds factory and in 1906 with E. R. Thomas of Buffalo began to make the Thomas-Detroit ear, later called the Chalmers- Detroit. An off-shoot of the Chalmers enterprise was the Hudson Motor Car Company, later taken over by Chapin, Coffin, Jackson and Bezner. The Detroit Eleetrie Car made by W. C. Anderson, was the pioneer electric car of the city. The Lozier was also brought here early.
This, in brief, is the history of the beginning of automobile manufacture in the City of Detroit. Intelligent, far-seeing men these pioneers of the industry were, but in their most optimistie moments they could not have prophesied the extent the business would grow. The success of the Olds company eneour- aged others. In 1901 there came the incorporation of the Cadillac company, and in December, 1903, the Paekard began operations. In June, 1903, the Ford Motor Company was incorporated with an authorized capital of $150,000, but only $28,000 paid in, and the company was located in a small plant at the crossing of the inner belt line at Maek avenue. These were the small begin- nings of an industry that in the course of thirteen years from 1903 enormously enhanced the prosperity of four Michigan cities, and in Detroit alone had increased its produet to 960,000 ears valued at $610,000,000, and employing in their making 130,000 persons in shop and office.
Automobile making did not appear in the census tables as a separate industry till 1904. In view of the proportions to which it has sinee attained it is worth while to reproduce here the modest tabulation which officially appeared at that time.
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CITY OF DETROIT
Bodies and Parts Automobiles
Number of establishments
12
Total 19
Capital
7 $464,027
$2,982,949
$3,446,976
Wage earners
470
1,564
2,034
Total wages.
226,021
733,012
959,033
Miscellaneous expense .
39,883
1,287,160
1,327,043
Cost of materials
431,232
2,199,277
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