USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Littleton > History of Littleton, New Hampshire, Vol. II > Part 2
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HENRY C. LIBBEY.
9
Manufacturing.
1881 Henry Merrill, who had retired from the lumber firm of Van Dyke & Merrill, became interested in the concern and was for some time its selling agent. Charles Parker in 1887 again owned all the stock, and retained it until the company was con- solidated with the Saranac and other companies. This, like the parent concern, was prosperous, and gave employment to about one hundred persons.
The third firm formed for the purpose of making gloves was the Granite State Glove Company, established in 1880 by Charles L. and Sherared Clay, Thomas Carleton, and Henry C. Libbey. They leased of Willard Hall Kneeland the old scythe-factory property at Apthorp, and there began business. After four years of fairly prosperous business, when the real estate had passed to Dr. Thaddeus E. Sanger, the company was merged in a corpora- tion under the same style and title, with a capital of $25,000. The board of directors was made up as follows : Charles L. Clay, Sherared Clay, Thomas Carleton, Henry C. Libbey, and Charles H. Morrill. Mr. Libbey was its president, Charles L. Clay treas- urer, his brother Sherared superintendent, and Mr. Carleton trav- elling salesman. In 1885 Dr. Sanger became a stockholder, and was made a director. The same officers and directors continued to direct the affairs of the company until it was consolidated with the Saranac Company.
The White Mountain Glove Company, organized in 1880, was the title of a firm that was established by Alonzo Weeks, George L. Whittaker, and Robert Meiner. Its place of business was in the second story of the block at the corner of Main and Mill Streets, now (1904) occupied by Fred H. English. Mr. Weeks had charge of the books and stock, Mr. Whittaker of the sales, and Mr. Meiner, who was a practical glove-maker of much expe- rience, looked after the manufacturing department. This concern employed between thirty and forty persons. It was dependent upon one of the older concerns for its tanned stock, and labored under other disadvantages to which the older companies were not subjected. The trade soon felt the rivalry between the manufac- turers, the competition was sharp, profits decreased and sometimes disappeared altogether. Under these conditions the White Moun- tain Company wound up its affairs in 1886.
The Eureka and Granite State Companies maintained their posi- tion for some years, but the returns were not always satisfactory, and in December, 1889, the three companies then engaged in the glove-making industry were united, taking the name of the original and most important, and were incorporated as the Saranac Buck
10
History of Littleton.
Glove Company, with a capital of $125,000. Each of the old
companies was represented in the new corporation. Its board of directors consisted of Henry C. Libbey, Henry F. Green, Dr. Thaddeus E. Sanger, Charles Parker, Charles L. Clay, George M. Glazier, and Ira Parker. Its officers were George M. Glazier, president; Henry C. Libbey, vice-president; Charles L. Clay, secretary ; Henry F. Green, treasurer, and Ira Parker, general manager. In thirteen years but four changes have occurred in its list of stockholders. In September, 1890, George M. Glazier retired, Ira Parker having bought his stock, and Charles L. Clay disposed of his holdings in 1895 and resumed his profession as an educator, which he had abandoned to engage in business. After the withdrawal of Mr. Glazier the sales department was transferred to the home office, with Charles E. Carter, E. T. Kim- ball, and E. C. Langford as travelling salesmen. Subsequently George R. Armstrong succeeded Mr. Carter. In 1898 Ira Parker disposed of his interest to George M. Glazier, who again took up the work with renewed ardor. The volume of business has been largely increased since the return of Mr. Glazier and Mr. Green to the management.
The consolidation of the glove interests of the town was un- doubtedly for the benefit of the owners of the several properties, but it is doubtful whether the change was in the public interest. Certainly one strong company would be more likely to advance the welfare of the community than several comparatively weak ones. It is equally evident that the absence of competition has resulted in the employment of fewer people by the strong company than were at work for the three out of which it was constructed. The com- petition in this particular branch of business has followed closely the general trend of affairs, and it is due to the public spirit of its stockholders that in this trust-creating age this industry has escaped the exploitation of the promoter. The corporation now employs two hundred and seventy-five persons, of whom one hun- dred and fifty are men and boys and one hundred and twenty-five women and girls. It uses annually in its business three hundred and fifty thousand skins, produces eighty-two thousand dozen pairs of gloves and its monthly pay-roll averages $9,500.1 For- merly the only grade of goods manufactured were heavy gloves for men's wear. The present product includes all kinds for the use of both sexes.
The original combination of partners was to a certain extent accidental, but it possessed the elements, natural and acquired, 1 These statistics are based on the business of 1900.
GEO. M. GLAZIER.
11
Manufacturing.
essential to business success. Charles T. Lincoln was exceptionally well qualified for the position assigned to hiim in the company. He had for several years been a travelling salesman, and to his not inconsiderable business experience and judgment he brought the manners of a genial and cultivated gentleman.
George M. Glazier was at that time a Boston merchant dealing in furnishing goods of all sorts. He was born in Rutland, Mass., about 1842, and as a lad was full of push and go. When seven- teen years of age, tiring of the monotonous life of a hill town, he made his way to New York City, where he found employ- ment in the store of Utely Brothers in Spring Street, as office boy, and for eighteen months was general factotum with the privi- lege of working from twelve to fifteen hours a day and sleeping on the counter. This severe apprenticeship had its reward, and at the end of two years he was superintendent of the business of the house and at the close of another was offered a partnership. He, however, had formed other plans, and came to Boston, where he was employed two years in the silk department of the house of Palmer, Waterman & Hatch; then for two years was with Mason & Tucker, dealers in furnishings. In 1865 he engaged in business on his own account at 81 Summer Street, with Mr. Marean as partner, under the firm name of Glazier & Marean. The firm was enterprising and did a profitable business, employing thirty-three salesmen, sixteen of whom travelled for the house. After a partnership of three years he purchased the business, and not only held the trade, but increased it during the few years intervening between his assuming its responsibilities and the great fire of 1872 which swept his establishment from existence. This disaster and the failure of some of the insurance companies left him largely in debt, but with the assistance of a New York friend he resumed business within a week, and in a few months had the satisfaction of settling the last of the indebtedness caused by the fire at a hundred cents on the dollar. Those were the days of the paper collar, when an investment of a few dol- lars made a brave show of stock in country stores. One of the private brands of these goods was the Elmwood Collar, manu- factured by Mr. Glazier, which was a source of large profit and the principal means of restoring his fortunes after the great fire of 1872.
In Mr. Glazier are combined the Yankee's fondness for and skill in trade with great energy and persistence. He always knows what he wants, and dallies not in his efforts to reach his objective point. His winter home is in Cambridge, Mass., and he owns a
12
History of Littleton.
fine estate in Rutland, in the same State, where he spends the summer months.
Ira Parker was born in Lisbon at Sugar Hill, October 7, 1846. His education was acquired in the common schools in his district and at the high school in Lisbon village. His father removed from Lisbon to Littleton in the autumn of 1865, and Ira followed at the conclusion of his winter term at the high school in the following April. With the passing years he has stored his mind with practical knowledge that is acquired only in the school of experience. In boyhood he had learned the tanner's trade and knew at a glance the quality and value of leather. When he had been for some months making gloves in a small way, he entered a glove shop at Ashland, and for several weeks de- voted his time to acquiring a knowledge of the details of the business in each of its departments. Such was his application and discernment that he returned to his home a master of the art, and the results have been written large in the enterprise he founded and in the advancement and welfare of the town of his adoption. He devoted his energies for more than thirty years to building up the glove-making business at Littleton. He saw the " infant industry " under his management advance through all its various stages, from the time when he was its only employee until it gave regular occupation to two hundred and fifty persons, and its product sold in every State in the Union and in many foreign countries. His connection with the glove industry has been recounted in the preceding pages, but his activities in the business world have by no means been confined to that particular enter- prise. He has been a purchaser of real estate, and until very recently was the largest owner of that class of property in town. He built the extensive greenhouses above High Street, where are grown out-of-season vegetables for the Boston market; aided materially in the establishment of the shoe company of which he was one of the original directors ; has been a director in the National Bank, and a trustee in the Savings Bank ; and in many other ways has been an active working and financial assistant in the promotion of the material interests of the community. After his retirement from the exacting cares of the establishment he was mainly instrumental in founding, he took a well-earned rest for nearly four years, -not a rest of idleness, for he had many interests to supervise, but a surcease of responsibility from the management of large affairs. In company with Maurice C. Taylor in 1902, he purchased the old Arlington Mills at Arlington, Mass. These mills were established nearly two hundred and fifty years
IRA PARKER.
13
Manufacturing.
ago, and at the time the new proprietors assumed charge of the property had apparently outlived their days of usefulness. Now, however, they have assumed an air of prosperity akin to their renown of old.
The town has, fortunately, had her captains of industry at every critical period in her industrial history, - men of keen vision, abounding enthusiasm, unflinching courage, and great power of concentration. Their very limitations served to add force to these essential qualities and enable their possessors to keep the wheels of progress in motion under all conditions, even when promise of eventual success was very obscure. Of these masters of indus- trialism none has made a larger contribution to the material prosperity of the town than Ira Parker.
Our manufacturing industries, with a single exception, that of the shoe company, have been established solely by citizens of the town, and have developed from small, even in some instances insignificant, beginnings. The starting of the stereoscopic-view business of Benjamin W. Kilburn, now the leading house in its line in the world, was of this character. It had its origin in the photographic business of Edward Kilburn, located in the upper rooms of the McCoy block in 1855. Through this medium Ben- jamin W. Kilburn became interested in sun-pictures, and es- pecially in landscape photography. Enthusiasm led him on until he became exceptionally skilled in the use of the camera. Nearly twenty years before, the stereoscope had been invented by Professor Wheatstone, improved by Professor Brewster, but awaited the vitalizing touch of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who invented the hand stereoscope, and published in the pages of the " Atlantic Monthly " two or three papers which called general attention to the beauty and usefulness of this class of pictures. This was just before the outbreak of the great Rebellion, and the efforts of Mr. Kilburn did not pass the experimental stage until about the time of the close of the war.
The business had been so far developed that a partnership had been formed by the brothers, and in 1867 they erected a building on the site of the Chutter Block, which afterwards became the " White Store," recently removed to Pleasant Street and con- verted into tenements. Here Edward continued the general pho- tograpliic business and the firm manufactured stereoscopic views. It was not long before the rapid increase in the demand for their views crowded out the other branch of the business. The camera work was entirely under the charge of Benjamin W., while Edward gave his attention to the manufacturing branch of the business.
14
History of Littleton.
In those early days they confined their work to White Mountain scenes with a few local views and composition or group pieces. Mr. Kilburn with his camera and outfit strapped on his back soon became one of the most familiar figures in the mountain region. He went everywhere; the show places, hotels, coaches, all the scenes known to the traveller received his attention, while many charming bits of scenery by craggy cliff, purling brook, or lake nestling beneath the shadows of frowning heights and wide- extended landscape, seen from well-nigh inaccessible places, that never before disclosed their beauties to men, were caught on the sensitive plates of his camera and preserved to awaken the admiration of countless people at home and in far-distant lands. This work disclosed his adaptability for his chosen profession. While the skill of the photographer is largely mechanical, it re- quires an artistic eye as well as a sense of the beautiful to discern the point of vantage from whence the charms of nature are dis- closed in regal fulness, and these qualities Mr. Kilburn possesses to a degree that would have made him an artist in colors had he devoted himself to that art instead of to the lights and shades which the sun pictures on the photographer's plate. After years devoted to the work of securing and publishing the many scenes of natural beauty at home, there came a period of expansion when he journeyed the world over in search of what was attractive in nature or art, or peculiar in the manners or customs of the people ; and these with countless scenes of historic interest have been trans- ferred to paper to amuse and instruct the people of every clime.
The growth of the business kept pace with Mr. Kilburn's ener- getic pursuit of subjects for his camera. In 1873 a large building was erected on Cottage Street, and this was soon found inade- quate for the business and was enlarged in 1886. It is now one hundred and twenty feet in length, thirty-five in width, and four stories in height, giving ample space for the large business of the company. In 1875 Benjamin W. Kilburn purchased the interest of his brother Edward, and was sole owner and manager until 1890, when the firm of Benjamin W. Kilburn & Co. was established, the members of the company beside Mr. Kilburn being his daughter and son-in-law, Daniel C. Remich. The company now owns about one hundred thousand negatives, nearly all of them exposed, and many developed, by Mr. Kilburn. The present annual capacity of the establishment is five million photographs, and this maximum is often reached. The company gives employment to about one hundred people. Nearly all the civilized countries of the globe are traversed by its agents. The business has brought its owner
15
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MANUFACTORY, KILBURN STEREOSCOPIC VIEW COMPANY.
15
Manufacturing.
an ample fortune, the result of business foresight and untiring energy which would have brought their rewards had their pos- sessor devoted them to any other pursuit. But the business to which he has given all his powers of heart and mind had for him an intellectual and artistic charm that robed its drudgery and labor in poetic beauty and rendered it a work of love.
Mr. Kilburn was educated in the schools in Districts Numbers 7 and 8, and when sixteen years of age went to Fall River, Mass., to learn a trade. Travel and association, however, with bright men have combined to expand the rudiments thus acquired, until knowledge gained in every clime has in many ways cultivated his mind beyond the system pursued in the schools and made him one of the most instructive and delightful companions. He has been interested in the advancement of every work that commands the attention of good citizens, and has been a contributor to the scien- tific work pursued in our schools, as well as the principal financial support of the village reading room before its incorporation with the town library. His political convictions have been intense, but have never been manifested in the pursuit of personal ends. Originally a Whig, he became a Republican when that party was organized, and while doing much in a quiet way to promote the triumph of the principles for which his party has stood, has de- clined rather than sought political honors, and the only public positions he has held are those of Representative to the General Court in 1897 and a member of the Committee on Town History.
Edward Kilburn, who was associated with his brother Benjamin W. in the stereoscopic-view-manufacturing business, was born in 1833 in the house that until recently stood at the northwesterly corner of Maine and Church Streets. After leaving the trade in which he had been educated, that of a machinist, he began the photographic business, as before stated. After disposing of his interest in the business to his brother, he purchased a considerable tract of land lying along the Franconia Road and on Mount Eustis that may well be described as wild land, and engaged in farming on an extensive scale in accordance with modern methods, and soon his land was in a high state of cultivation. He died suddenly in February, 1884, while on a business visit to Boston. The Kil- burn brothers were physically unlike, - Benjamin the elder hav- ing the dark complexion and general characteristics of the Kilburn family, while Edward had the light sandy complexion and nervous temperament of the Bonneys. He married Miss Adaline S. Owell, who was for several years previous to 1857 a school-teacher in the town. Their only child, a daughter, is the widow of Benjamin F.
16
History of Littleton.
Robinson, formerly principal of our high school and afterward editor of the "Courier." She inherited much of her father's artistic ability and was for some time a photographic artist of note in Boston.
The consolidation of the glove companies in 1889 left the con- siderable plant of the Granite State Company idle. For several years efforts were made by our citizens to utilize these shops for manufacturing purposes without success. The Board of Trade took up the project in 1891 with a view of securing a manufacturer of shoes to engage in the business here. A committee was chosen to visit important manufacturing centres in this line for this purpose.1 They went to Lynn, Newburyport, Brockton, and Marlborough in Massachusetts in quest of manufacturers who might be induced by the proffer of capital, release from taxation and rent, to accept their proposition. The industry in that State was at the time unusually prosperous, and all approached declined to embark in the proposed venture. Before their return a member of the committee called upon a relative who was connected with the largest shoe-jobbing house in Boston and who had a wide acquaintance with the New England manufacturers in this branch of business, and to him made a full statement of the advantages the citizens of the town were prepared to offer an experienced manufacturer who would engage in the business in the town. This visit bore fruit within a few months. At the jobbers' sug- gestion William H. Nute visited the town in July, 1895, to confer with citizens interested in the project. The result was that it was soon arranged that the Nute brothers, Alfred D., Albert, and William H., should assume charge of the manufacturing depart- ment of a corporation to be organized as soon as the necessary details could be perfected.
In compliance with the request embodied in a numerously signed petition a special town meeting was called and held on the twenty-seventh day of July, 1895, at which it was voted to pur- chase the property known as the Granite State Glove Company property at Apthorp,2 and to lease the same " to any responsible
1 This committee consisted of D. C. Remich and Charles C. Smith. Mr. Remich, on account of business engagements, declined, and James R. Jackson was substituted.
2 The action of the town in this transaction is memorable as being the first attempt made on the part of a town in this State to invest funds, to be raised by taxation or loan on the credit of the town, in a manufacturing company, and the votes of the town in regard thereto are herewith appended.
" On motion of D. C. Remich it was voted that the selectmen be and hereby are authorized and instructed to purchase at once, for the town, the Granite State Glove Company Property, with the additions thereto made by the Saranac Glove Co. since the property came into their hands, situated at Apthorp, in Littleton, provided the
BENJAMIN W. KILBURN.
17
Manufacturing.
person, firm, or corporation " that would use it for manufacturing purposes for a term of ten years and after the first year give employment to not less than one hundred hands, free of rent and taxes.
In August following articles of incorporation were filed in the office of the Secretary of State at Concord. The capital stock of the corporation was fixed at $32,000. The stockholders were
property can be purchased at a price not exceeding $5000.00, and provided further that the Saranac Glove Co. agrees to invest the purchase money received by them for said property in stock of a shoe, or other company to be organized in said town for the purpose of carrying on a manufacturing business in or upon said prem- ises ; they are further authorized and instructed to put said property in thorough repair and condition for the manufacture of boots and shoes, or for carrying on any other manufacturing business which may be installed therein; for the purpose of paying for said property and the improvements thereon, the selectmen are authorized and instructed to hire such sums of money upon the credit of the town as may be necessary, upon such terms and time as they think for the best interest of the town.
" The selectmen are further authorized to give the use of the whole, or any part of said property, when put in proper shape and fit condition for manufacturing pur- ยท poses, free of rent to any responsible person, firm, or corporation who will establish and carry on a manufacturing business in or upon said premises so long, not exceed- ing ten years, as said person, firm, or corporation shall carry on the business and employ therein, after the first year, not less than one hundred hands; temporary stoppages, shut-downs of business, or reduction of the number of hands employed below one hundred, caused by financial or other business conditions which similarly affect like manufacturers throughout the country shall not forfeit or terminate the rights of parties contracting with the town under this vote.
" All ordinary repairs necessary to be made upon the property during the con- tinuance of the contracts shall be made by the leasees, but all extraordinary repairs, such as those made necessary by fire, flood, or other like casualty shall be made by the town, if they are the owners of the property when such accident occur.
" The selectmen are further authorized to convey a reasonable portion of the land purchased by the Saranac Glove Co. of Mrs. H. C. Redington, since the con- solidation of the Granite State and Saranac companies, which land adjoins the origi- nal Granite State Property, to Frederick G. Chutter, or any other person, firm, or corporation who will purchase the Charles L. Clay property adjoining the premises herein described, put it in proper and workmanlike condition for manufacturing purposes, install therein a reasonable amount of machinery, and commence the manufacture of some article or thing.
"The selectmen are further authorized to give any responsible person, firm, or corporation who will contract to carry on a reasonable manufacturing business in or upon the premises aforesaid the option of purchasing at any time within ten years the whole or any portion of said property at what it has cost the town, not including interest upon the investment, and they are hereby authorized to convey said prop- erty, in the name of the town, by deed.
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