USA > Ohio > Butler County > Hamilton in Butler County > The centennial anniversary of the city of Hamilton, Ohio, September 17-19, 1891 > Part 19
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THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HAMILTON, O.
THE BESS MACHINE CO.,
Laundry Machinery & Paper Slitters.
I N 1884 Albert Bess finished a three years apprenticeship as a machinist in the shop of Black & Clawson. He was then twenty-one years old. In 1888 while working in the shop of Black & Clawson he invented a slitting cutter to be applied to paper making machines to cut the wide web into nar- rower webs as the paper ran from the machine. Paper slitters of various kinds were quite old but Mr. Bess' contrivance had many points of decided superiority. At this time there was in Boston the Koegel Slitter Co, whose slitters were being quite extensively sold.
Mr. Bess had no money, except his weekly pay as a machinist, but he had a foot-lathe in his kitchen at home, and when he got up his new-fangled slitter nothing would do but he must start a machine shop of his own. He borrowed fifteen dollars of the First National Bank, with Mr. Robert An- drews as security, and then went to the Beckett Paper Company and got their order for four slitters, Bess to take in pay for them an old lathe which was in the paper mill, and he got the lathe in advance. He now had two lathes and he rented a place and started his establishment, entirely without capital. Mr. Black, of Black & Clawson, was good enough to say "If you get too hard up you can come up to our shop and work awhile." Mr. Bess did find himself too hard up, and while he was the proprietor of a machine shop himself he could generally be found at work at Black & Clawson's shop. But while he worked as a journeyman at Black & Clawsons for the sure thing of weekly pay he kept a machinist or two at work in his own institu- tion.
The new-paper-slitter was an admirable arrangement and sold on sight. Mr. Bess got his first hundred dollars from sales of slitters made to the Friend & Forgy Paper Co. at Franklin, Ohio, and he borrowed another hun· dred dollars with Mr. Montgomery of Oxford as security. He was now a manufacturer and a capitalist with debts and went at business with vigor.
But the Koegel Slitter Co., claiming a monopoly in improved paper slitters, notified Mr. Bess to stop infringing on their patent. Mr. Bess took council and was advised to go ahead. The Koegel Slitter Co. then sent agents and finally an attorney to size up Mr. Bess, and every effort was made to bulldoze him. The efforts would have succeeded with ninety-nine men out of one hundred but Mr. Bess was not a man to be bulldozed. He got his patent on his own invention and sold his slitters and told his opponents
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to crack the whip. And the crack of the whip in the United States Court is no small matter for any manufacturer. Mr. Bess managed to save up one hundred and thirty dollars and proposed to take a trip in the far East among the paper mills with his slitter. Mr. Clawson, of Black & Clawson, told him that he did not think it would take him long to "blow in" the one hundred and thirty dollars, but he was mistaken. Mr. Bess was gone thirteen days and the net profits of the trip were six hundred and fifty dollars.
The Koegel Slitter Co. now boiled over and began a patent suit against one of Mr. Bess' customers in Franklin, Ohio, and Mr. Bess gave a thousand dollar bond of indemnity to the Defendant and took upon himself the full defense of the suit, employing Messrs. Parkinson & Parkinson, of Cincinnati, Ohio, as his counsel. The case was fought through the Court and Mr. Bess came out with flying colors, and the decision rendered by the Court was one of the most serious rebukes yet given to a patentee who seeks to squelch independ- ent and superior improvements.
But Mr. Bess desired more extensive fields of manufacturing and con- templated the production of a full line of laundry machinery for steam laundries. Heknew nothing about this kind of machinery and in fact he had seen little of it, but he took the bull by the horns and started a laundry and equipped it with the best modern machinery and operated it for ten months until he knew all about laundry machinery, and then sold it out, coming out without loss. He then got up a full line of steam laundry machinery of the most modern and ingenious construction and is now in full swing under the style of the Bess Machine Co. with an incorporated capital of twenty-five thousand dollars, with himself as President and his brother Arthur as Secre- tary and Treasurer. The establishment has moved into a larger shop with greatly increased facilities and is now in contemplation of much more ex- tensive enlargements, it being found impossible to keep up with the orders on hand, the paper slitters alone making a very respectable manufacturing business. They are now the standard article in this line and are specified for all first-class paper machines and orders are filled for them by the hundreds.
Mr. Bess has now in contemplation the erection of a model laundry for the special purpose of exhibiting to visiting customers a full line of the Bess laundry machinery in practical operation.
It would be impossible for a young manufacturer to have brighter pros- pects.
LONG & ALLSTATTER
CO
POWER PUNCHING & SHEARING MACHINERY.
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THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF HAMILTON, O. .
THE LONG & ALLSTATTER COMPANY. Punching and Shearing Machinery and Agricultural Implements.
IN 1855 56 John M. Long, a machinist, was foreman in the old Owens Lane & Dyer shop. Peter Black owned a shop on Water Street on the north side of present Market Street- He was a blacksmith and did a genera blacksmith business. Robert Allstatter was a file cutter and in 1854 he hadl rented room in Black's shop and the firm of Allstatter & Scheisman cut files and sickles for a living. In 1856 the parties got together and the firm of Long, Black & Allstatter started business in Black's shop. Long & All- statter had a few hundred apiece and Black owned the shop, which had water power. The new concern did a general small jobbing business and made a few broom-handles, lathes and made sickles for manufactures of mowers and reapers. They supplied sickles for reaper-makers in Spring- field and other places, and in some cases, made the finger-bars also.
In 1887 they began studying reapers and in that year built two com- bined mowing and reaping machines, entirely of metal, and known as the "Iron Harvester." There was a big reaper trial at Hamilton and these machines got second premium, missing the first because they had no self rake. There had been iron mowers but these were the first iron reapers built in the country. They sold none the first year, as these machines were built merely for a test. In 1858 they sold sixty-five machines which gave them a good test.
In doing their sickle work they found that all their punching and shear- ing machines made in the country were inefficient and they therefore got up machines of their own, and these punching and shearing machines were so superior that they were called upon to fill orders for them from many manu- facturers of reapers &c. In 1859 the concern sold three hundred harvesters. The reaper men did not much like the idea of their sickle-makers going into the harvester business but still in this year the concern sold about fifteen thousand sickles. In 1860 they sold eight hundred of the iron harvesters at good prices and at good profits. The concern had a splendid opening but were too timid to build in advance of actual sales. The punching- machine business was constantly growing and improved machines were con- stantly being gotten out and sold to various branches of trade, car works, safe makers, and others. In this year the shop took up the manufacture of
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THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HAMILTON, O.
two horse corn drills, seed drills and feed cutters. In 1861-62 business fell off owing to the war and the high price of iron. In 1863 the manufacture of hay rakes was taken up and this year about eight hundred harvesters were sold and a great deal was done in supplying cultivator points and such things to other manufacturers of implements, the experience of the shop in punching and shearing and polishing having put them in a superior position in this direction. About this time property on the south side of the street, across from the water-power canal was bought. It was the old Hamilton and Rossville Female Academy where the City Building now stands and was bought for twenty-five hundred dollars, and the factory now occupied both shops, which were connected by a shaft across the street. About 1871 Mr. Black retired and the firm became Long & Allstatter, with a right to remain in the old shop two years, Mr. Black conducting a blacksmith and machine shop in the northern part of the premises, where he started into the portable engine business. In 1893 Long & Allstatter got into their new shop on the corner of Fourth and High streets and soon dropped the manufacture of harvesters as self-binders were then becoming fashionable and they had not succeeded in getting one that was satisfactory. They took up plows and sulky-plows and cultivators, and pushed the sickle business and the punch- ing and shearing machines. They soon received a severe blow from the panic. In 1874 Mr. Charles McBeth and Mr. Herman Snyder came into the firm and the firm name was changed to Long & Allstatter Co. Mr. Mc- Beth had been in the firm of Bentel & Margedant Co. leaving it after their fire. In 1878 the concern was incorporated as the Long & Allstatter Co. with two hundred thouasnd dollars capital, and a few additional small stock- holders came in. In 1881 the sickle business had grown greatly, the con- cern being the second largest in the business. The other sickle manufac- turers wanted a trust formed but the arrangement did not suit the Long & Allstatter Co. so they sold the business out on highly satisfactory terms. They were then making about fifty thousand sickles per year and lots of complete cutting apparatuses for harvesters. The business has since been pushed in the other branches and with eminent success. The punching and shearing machines have been kept up to the highest notch and the concern is now the acknowledged leader in the world in this line of machines. The establishment now makes about seven thousand cultivators; nine thousand horse rakes ; and two hundred punching and shearing machines a year, be- sides large numbers of straw cutters, cotton planters, plows, &c. The shop has been much enlarged and now covers three acres. Mr. John M. Long is President, Mr. Joe Long Vice President, Mr. McBeth Secretary and Treas- urer, and Mr. John M. W. Long Superintendent. All of these men are thoroughly practical shop men and give personal and constant attention to. the business. A few years ago Mr. Allstatter retired entirely from active business.
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THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HAMILTON, O.
The Albert Fisher Manufacturing Go. Canners and Can Makers.
LBERT FISHER & CO., had been engaged for many years in Cin- cinnati as canners of vegetables, the firm making its own cans by ordinary hand process. In 1885 the concern moved to Hamilton and built a new factory on Third Street near Black, the business at this time be- ing incorporated as The Albert Fisher Manufacturing Co., Albert Fisher President, Charles Fisher Secretary and Treasurer. In Cincinnati the goods to be canned had been purchased in the market, but when the business was installed in Hamilton, preparations were made for raising the vegetables, as far as possible. Farms were accordingly purchased and leased until now this establishment cultivates about one thousand acres of land. The goods packed consist of tomatoes, corn, peas, beans, and vegetables generally. The market for these goods is all over the United States and the well known "Star" brand of canned goods stands high in the estimation of users.
The growing business would no longer permit of the cans being made by hand, and accordingly, the latest modern machinery was put in for their manufacture, and even the most modern machinery was greatly improved upon and original machines were devised and built until finally the can-mak- ing part of the establishment was in a position not only to produce its own cans, but to sell cans largely to other canning factories. The large factory has been very greatly enlarged and now has a capacity of one hundred thousand cans per day. These cans are sold to canning factories all over the West and South and as far East as Buffalo. Iu addition to cans, the automatic machinery is also employed in the manufacture of lard pails and buckets, which are sold largely.
THe Sohngsn and Brown Co. Manufacturers of Maize Malt.
HE old Canal Mill, at the head of Dayton Street on the Canal, had been idle, and in 1888 The Sohngen & Brown Company was incorporated with a capital of twenty thousand dollars, with Charles Sohngen, President William B. Brown, Vice President, and George P. Sohngen, Secretary and Treasurer. The old mill was completely cleaned out and entirely new ma- chinery put in, adapted for the manufacturing of maize malt. The work is done by roller-mills entirely and two thousand bushels of corn per day are ground and the product is sold in New York, Philadelphia, and the East generally. Mr. Brown runs the business at the mill and the office is with the Sohngen Malting Co., corner of C and Franklin streets.
. ........
'O'WWHENID'OJ. 33 3 ;W
0'13
THE HAMIL
10
FOUNDRY & MACH, CO.
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THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HAMILTON, O.
The Hamilton Foundry & Machine Company. General Iron Foundries.
Most OST of the larger machine establishments in Hamilton have their own foundries and large and roomy and well equipped foundries
are they. There are also three concerns doing jobbing foundry business. These latter concerns supply those shops which have not their own foundries and also furnish castings for use abroad. Notwithstanding the extent of Hamilton foundries, the amount of castings used in the various industries is so great that the foundries cannot keep up, and a number of concerns have been obliged to order large quantities of castings from abroad. It is the intention of the Hamilton Foundry & Machine Co. to supply this demand and to see that hereafter the City of Hamilton is a larger seller of castings instead of a buyer. Heavy work is to receive especial attention. The foundry is one hundred by three hundred feet, with a melting capacity of fifteen tons per day, and the equipment for dealing with the heaviest class of machine casting is probably superior to anything in the State. The factory is located on the Panhandle Railroad at Lincoln Avenue.
The Company was incorporated in 1891. Adam Rentschler is Presi- dent : Frederick Thomma, Vice President : J. C. Hooven, Treasurer : and Earl Hooven, Secretary.
The Advance manufacturing Co. Cider Mills, Ice Tools.
T HE NEW MALES Manufacturing Co. had for some time been en- gaged in the manufacture of cider mills and ice harvesting tools. In 1888 The Advance Manufacturing Co. was incorporated, with fifty thousand dollars capital, William Ritchie, President ; F. Doeller, Secretary and Treasurer, and H. Lashorn, Superintendent. The new concern bought out the New Males Manufacturing Co. and bought property and built the new shop on the Panhandle Railroad and the Canal, near High street.
The American cider mill is made in three sizes. An extended variety of ice harvesting tools and implements are made, and the Little Giant Power Converter, for use in connection with wind mills, is also largely manufact- ured. The new concern has gotten along prosperously and the business is growing.
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THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HAMILTON, O.
THE GORDON STEAM PUMP COMPANY.
T wo pattern makers in Cincinnati, Messrs. Cope & Maxwell, devised and patented an improved steam pump and, in a small way, they began its manufacture. The business grew upon them and they took in partners with capital and formed the Cope & Maxwell Manufacturing Company. Their factory in Cincinnati was on the usual city style, heavy work being done in upper stories and no possible chance for extensions. In 1871 the establishment moved to Hamilton and erected a splendid factory with facili- ties for doing the work properly. They still retained the business office in Cincinnati, but the important fact is to be noted that within one year after moving to Hamilton there were more Cope & Maxwell pumps pumping water in Egypt than in Cincinnati, and to-day there is no country in the world in which they are not well known. These steam pumps were made for every possible duty and of a great variety of sizes.
In 1873 the establishment built its first water works pumping-engine for supplying the city with water. This machine was erected at Newport, Ken- tucky, and was followed in 1874 by the pumping-engines for the water-works at Clinton, Iowa, and in 1875 by the water-works engines of Anamosa, Iowa, and the Athens Ayslum, of Ohio, and in 1876 by the engines at Logansport, Indiana, and others.
In 1884 Mr. Cope retired and the entire establishment was purchased by the Gordon & Maxwell Company, a new Company composed of Messrs. Gor- don, Mckinney & Gaff of the Niles Tool Works, and Mr. Maxwell of the former Company. Soon after that Mr. Maxwell retired entirely from active manufacturing business and entered upon the profession of Consulting En- gineer, and in 1890 the name of the concern was changed to the Gordon Steam Pump Co.
The shop has been many times enlarged until now it is very extensive and splendidly equipped and turning out an enormous output of everything in the way of steam pumping machinery, principally duplex steam pumps for general purposes and water-works engines for the supply of municipali- ties.
The first steam pump manufactured by the concern had fixed upon it a small plate bearing the legend "No. I" and ever since that the practice has been followed of consecutively marking the machines sent out. The number of the last plate, at the present time of writing was 8290. The variety of product will be understood from the fact that the number of styles and sizes of steam pumps for which patterns are on hand and for which orders are be- ing constantly filled is nine hundred. The capacity of the establishment, as large as it is, is always over-taxed and night work is constantly being done.
Special attention has been given to water-works engines for cities, and up to the present writing this establishment has furnished two hundred and seven pumping engines for water-works use, and it may be of interest to note that these water-works pumping engines have been distributed as fol- lows, viz: Alabama I, Arkansas I, Colorado 3, Canada 4, Dakota 2, Delaware I, Georgia 3, Illinois 19, Indiana II, Iowa 21, Kansas 4, Kentucky 3, Miss- issippi I, Minnesota 2, Missouri 3, Montana 2, Michigan 18, New York 4, New Jersey 4, Nebraska I, North Carolina I, Ohio 48, Pennsylvania 17, Tennessee 1, Texas 7, Virginia 2, West Virginia 4, Washington 2, Wiscon- sin 6.
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THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HAMILTON. O.
MACNEALE & URBAN
Safe and Lock Company.
N the forties C. Urban was a locksmith in Cincinnati and in 1847 or 1848
he began the manufacture of safes. Safes were at that time merely extra strong treasure boxes or "strong" boxes, and there was nothing that could make any pretensions to being burglar-proof and little more could be said about fire-proof qualities, a fire-proof safe in those earlier days being a thin iron box lined with wood, wood kept from air being recognized as a poor conductor of heat and a material of slow combustion. But Mr. Wilder, of New York, had patented a new system of fire proof safe, an iron box lined with plaster, and it was under the Wilder patent that Mr. Urban began his operations. But as lowly as the safe-makers art was at that time, Mr. Urban was a safe-maker in the fullest sense, making his own safes and locks com- plete on the premises. In 1855 W. B. Dodds, not a mechanic, was taken into the business and the firm became Urban, Dodds & Co. In 1857 Mr. Urban died and his interest was bought by Dodds and the business continued as W. B. Dodds & Co. In 1859 Mr. Neil Macneale, a Civil Engineer, entered the firm, but the name remained unchanged.
Mr. Herman Urban had learned the trade in his father's shop, begin- ning work in 1857 and was, at that time, foreman of the shop. In 1863 he bought a one third interest in the business and the firm became Dodds, Macneale & Urban. In 1870 Dodds retired and the firm became Macneale & Urban.
In 1890 the new and splendid factory was built at Hamilton, occupying ten acres and having a capacity to work six hundred men and turn out fifty to sixty safes per day, in addition to an immense amount of the most modern character of burglar-proof vault work, safe deposit work, etc. etc.
In 1891 the firm was changed to a corporation under the name of The Macneale & Urban Safe & Lock Co.
H. Urban President, Neil Macneale Sec'y and Treas.
The history of this concern is almost the history of the art of safe-mak - ing. About 1855 the important change was made from plaster to cement composition as the fire resisting material for the filling for fire proof safes. The conflict between the Safemaker and the burglar came on. In the earlier years two quarter-inch iron plates with a quarter-inch hard steel plate between them, giving a wall three-fourths of an inch thick was considered the acme of burglar-proof construction. Later the thickness of plates and the number of plates was increased and the material was radi"
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-THE MACNEALE & URBAN SAFE & LOCK CO.
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THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HAMILTON, O.
cally changed. About 1866 the laminated construction came in, each plate being composed of alternate layers of iron and steel welded together. Mac- neale & Urban have at all times been with the advance guard in the march of improvements, and the burglar-proof work constructed by them today with thick walls of "malacent" steel would dumbfound the older safe_ makers and safe-breakers.
The older safes of the best construction were locked with key locks and great was the ingenuity expended in the contrivance of these locks and in the contrivance of means for picking them. The crown jewels of England were guarded by the celebrated Chubbs locks and the great Bramah, he of hydraulic-press fame, had invented the celebrated Bramah lock, and for years there had hung in his window in London one of his locks with an at- tached document offering two hundred guineas for the instrument that would open it. Chubbs locks and Bramah locks were considered unpick- able. At this time the World's Fair in London was in full blast. The American Consul said: "The Americans have about one-eighth of the build- ing in London to exhibit in and there are three barrels of shoe pegs and a bundle of brooms as exhibits. The American exhibit is a failure." Mr. Hobbs, an American lock expert, visited the Exhibition and gave the American side of it a new and sensational character, for he picked the cele- brated Chubbs and Bramah locks. These were key locks. He had picked all key locks which had been presented to him. He picked the dial lock of William Brown, "Lock-maker to Her Majesty. "
About 1860 the combination lock, dispensing entirely with the key, and dispensing entirely with the idea of either fixed o movable wards, came into vogue as the result of the exposures made by Hobbs regarding the weakness of key and ward locks.
The modern combination lock is distinctly recognized as belonging to an unpickable class. Macneale & Urban had always made their own locks, following closely the improvements in the art, and often leading them, and took up earnestly the manufacture of the combination locks which they have continued ever since, all Macneale & Urban safes being guarded by Macneale & Urban combination locks.
The work of this concern goes all over the known world and selling agencies are established in all important cities in the country and also in Honlulu. Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Calcutta, Kingston and SanLuis, Po- tosi. Work has been sold to many of the foreign legations. Work is now under way in the shop for the German legation in Berlin and four big jobs for Stuttgart. Thirteen burglar proof vaults are now in process of con- struction for Eastern cities, Bangor, Maine; Bradford, Connecticut; Wash- ington, D. C .; etc. etc. Last month work was shipped to the Government Treasury of the Sandwich Islands, and Macneale & Urban have been con sulted by the official architect of the National Bank of Spain.
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THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HAMILTON, O.
The Phenix Caster Company,
FURNITURE CASTER.
A LONG in 1874 Alexander Martin, a saw maker of Hamilton, got it into his head that ordinary furniture casters wore out carpets and made too much work for the women folks. The casters rolled hard, and in turning the corner they pivoted on a single point and tended to tear holes in the car- pet. Mr. Martin thereupon began to invent. He rigged up a little shop and put in two solid years in inventing casters and testing them and failing. But finally he struck the right thing and patented the celebrated Martin two wheel caster. It would move with great ease, and in turning a corner, one of the wheels would move one way and the other the other way and there was thus no tendency for it to bore holes in the floor. Mr. Martin would spread a piece of tissue paper on the carpet and then roll and twist a little truck, provided with his casters, around on the paper and show that there was no puckering tendency whatever and that the heavy load moved with the ut- most ease. He showed it to all his friends who would look at it and they all admired it and smiled. He was in rather bad straits financially and finally sold the patent to William Ritchie for five hundred dollars, Ritchie caring nothing whatever for the patent, which he took simply because Martin in- sisted on his taking it as some sort of an exchange for the five hundred dol- lars which Ritchie let him have. But the next day, as hard up as Martin was, he traded back, much to Richie's delight.
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