USA > Pennsylvania > A biographical album of prominent Pennsylvanians, v. 3 > Part 23
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During the war Mr. Sheppard's business, unlike many others of like nature, did not suffer to any great extent from the general depression of the financial world. He had an abiding faith in the triumph of the government and the suppression of the Rebellion, and his perceptive faculties enabled him to keep his business always in a healthy condition, and at the termination of the war he prepared for an increased trade with the South, which soon increased beyond the ability of their works in Philadelphia to supply; and in 1866 his firm established the "Excelsior Stove Works" in Baltimore, which was principally operated to supply their Southern trade. The business continued to increase so rapidly that in 1871 they purchased of the Frankford and Southwark Passenger Railway Company the entire square of two and a half acres, with capacious buildings thereon, bounded by Third street, Berks street, Fourth street and Montgomery avenue. In their works they employ from 400 to 500 men and boys, and produce from 40,000 to 50,000 stoves, heaters and ranges and a large quantity of other castings annually. In 1870 Mr. Sheppard, with others, established the National Security Bank, of which he is Vice-President. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity and a Past Master. He is also a Past Grand Master of the I. O. of Odd Fellows, and has represented the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in the Sovereign Grand Lodge of the order for many years, and is now the Grand Treasurer of the Sovereign Grand Lodge. He has been for many years, by the election of the City Councils, a Trustee of the Northern Liberties Gas Company. In 1879 he was appointed by the Board of Judges of the Court of Common Pleas a member of the Board of Education of the First School District of Pennsylvania, and on January 7, 1889, he was elected President of that body. Mr. Sheppard is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and for many years has been a delegate to the Diocesan Convention.
On February 5, 1850, he married Caroline M. Holmes, whose ancestors came from Devonshire, England. They have had five children, three of whom are now living.
F GUTEKUNST
PHILA.
JOHN B. STETSON.
JOHN BALLERSON STETSON.
TT is so seldom that the heart of a manufacturer is shown in his manufactory that when an exception occurs it is worthy of specially honorable mention. Too often men who may be kind and charitable outside of their own workshops are unfeeling, if not tyrannical, within them. Employés are regarded simply as tools or machines out of which money may be made, and their moral or social welfare is no concern of their employers.
JOHN B. STETSON, whose hat manufactory in Philadelphia is the largest in Pennsylvania and probably in the world, is a notable exception to the rule stated. Beginning at the bottom of the scale his rise has been phenomenally rapid, but he never lost his sympathies with his less fortunate fellow-craftsmen. He was born in Orange, New Jersey, May 5, 1830, and is the son of Stephen and Susan (Ballerson) Stetson. His father was a hatter and he learned that trade in his father's workshop at a time when hat-making shops were small and plentiful. In 1865, before the war of the Rebellion had closed, he came to Philadelphia to better his fortunes. He had no other capital than a thorough knowledge of his trade, established habits of industry and morality, and a determination to do good work at fair prices. He commenced business on January 17, 1865, the anniver- sary of Benjamin Franklin's birthday, in one small room at the north-east corner of Seventh and Callowhill streets, doing the greater portion of the labor with his own hands, and delivering his own work. He began with repairing, but soon gaining a reputation for taste in trimming and for general trustworthiness in the execution of the little orders given him by the people of the neighborhood, he began the manufacture of new work, rigidly adhering to the policy of turning out none but that of sterling quality. In the spring of 1866 he moved to Fourth street above Chestnut, and progressed so well that his goods were on sale in nearly every retail store in the city. Every year the business grew and various improvements had to be made to accommodate it; among others a story was added to the building. In 1869 his business, which so far had been purely local, was augmented and made more general by the employment of travelling salesmen. About the same time he started a " plank " shop for the manufacturing of hat "bodies " at Marshall and Poplar streets.
In 1872, such had been the increase in trade that a bold new departure was decided upon, viz., the removal of the office and salesroom, with the other departments, from the business centre of the city, to the location in the block bounded by North Fourth and Cadwallader streets and Montgomery avenue. The whole of this keystone-shaped body of ground, including twelve city lots, has since, by various stages, been covered by buildings which are five and six stories high, substantially built of brick, thoroughly fireproof, and forming,
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perhaps, the best equipped hat-factory in the world. Notwithstanding the fire- proof construction of the factory, automatic sprinklers, consisting of iron pipes with perforations closed by an easily melted substance, extending along the ceil- ings of each story, and Babcock Extinguishers, roof-tanks and other safety apparatus, give an additional security to life and property. The machinery of the several departments, all of the best and most approved character, is run by an engine of one hundred and twenty-five horse-power, and six boilers (one of a capacity of sixty, one of eighty, and four of one hundred horse-power each) supply the requisite force and heat the water for manufacturing purposes. The elevators, two in number, are operated by special machinery located in the base- ment. All of the manufacturing departments are lighted by electricity. The number of operatives averages about eight hundred and fifty, of whom one hun- dred and fifty are females. Owing largely to the staple character of a great part of the product, and to the policy resolutely adhered to by Mr. Stetson to make none but the very best goods, these employés have constant and regular employ- ment throughout the year. The factory has a capacity for producing upwards of one hundred and fifty dozen of felt and fur hats per day, and the value of the annual output is not far from two millions of dollars, while about four hundred thousand dollars are annually paid to the operatives. Interesting as is the proc- ess of manufacture and the details of the tributary branches of the business, such as the procuring of the various furs in South America, England, Scotland and Germany, we must confine ourselves more closely to the peculiar adjuncts of this great industrial establishment which illustrate the nature of the proprietor and belong more properly to the outline of his personal history and character.
Mr. Stetson's benevolence and his keen interest in the welfare of his operatives have found exercise in the establishment and maintenance of a number of institu- tions which are as unique as they are useful. To begin with, he long ago formed a liberal apprenticeship, which has since been very successfully followed. Appren- tices are taken for the customary four years at a fixed wage, but the rate is con- stantly and largely exceeded, and when the apprenticeship ends the young men are always employed as journeymen at equitable wages. Nine hours constitute a day's work, and the week ends at Saturday noon. At one end of the great pile of buildings which comprise the factory there are large rooms devoted to the various associations-religious, social and beneficial-which Mr. Stetson has founded. There is a handsome hall or room two stories in height, and capable of seating about two thousand persons, in which the Sunday-school meets. This was started especially for employés, but is really a mission school, and includes many persons of the neighborhood not connected with the factory. Class-rooms, divided by movable glass partitions, open from the main gallery and under it. There are also side galleries, and the hall is furnished with a fine organ and piano. The seats can be removed and the large apartment be made available for mill purposes or social gatherings. Underneath there is a spacious library and reading-room, supplied with three thousand choice volumes and
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numerous periodicals and newspapers. There is also an elegantly appointed parlor for evening socials, and every week-day prayer-meetings are held there at noon. There is a study for those in charge of the Sunday-school, and an armory, where are kept the guns and equipments belonging to a military company com- posed entirely of young men employed in the factory. An organizattion of the employés, known as the John B. Stetson Union, was effected in December, 1885, which is practically the same as a Young Mens' Christian Association. Formerly the Union had charge of the socials and gatherings given at Stet- son Hall, but that responsibility is now divided with the Mysterious Twelve, a charitable organization, the Guard of Honor, and other societies. The Guard of Honor is an organization composed of boys from twelve to nineteen years of age, in the North Fourth Street Union Mission. The members are instructed in literary exercises, and are under military instruction, being united under the following pledge : "Fides et Justitia-Desiring to make the grandest success of human life, I pledge myself to abstain from all use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco, and will strive to shun all vices." The organization consists of about one hundred and sixty-five members, divided into four companies, all equipped, and possessing the new regulation uniform of the National Guard. Entertainments for the operatives and their friends are given every Saturday evening. The best talent is engaged, and a full orchestra is employed, Mr. Stetson making up deficiencies in the expenses, if any occur. Monday evenings the rooms are thrown open for social purposes. Tuesday evenings the young men of the Guard of Honor have their drill. Wednesday evenings are reserved for the study of the Sunday-school lesson, Friday evenings for singing school, and other evenings as a rule are filled by special meetings of some of the organi- zations.
One of the most useful of the institutions connected with the establishment is the Medical Department, which grew out of the free dispensary founded by the proprietor several years ago, and through which a vast amount of good has been accomplished. The Medical Department was organized about the Ist of January, 1887, and was opened to the public on the 15th of February following. It aimed to meet the wants of those needing medical treatment in the neighbor- hood of the mission rooms, especially the employés of John B. Stetson & Co. and members of the several departments of the North Fourth Street Union Mission. Rooms admirably adapted to the clinics and dispensary were fitted up, and supplied with medicines and many of the most approved instruments known in medical practice, Dr. Carl Seiler being physician-in-chief. The staff com- prised men eminent in the medical profession and specialists in their several · departments of practice. A charge of one dollar was made, payable in advance, to all those who wished treatment. The payment of this sum entitled a patient to treatment at the medical rooms for three months from the date of receipt of card. Patients who sought the aid of the department, unable to pay for treatment, had their cases investigated, and received attention accordingly.
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The Medical Department proved a great success; but it was found that the accommodations were inadequate to accomplish all the good possible, and Mr. Stetson decided to increase the facilities in this direction by establishing a free hospital. This he has undertaken in his usual thorough manner, and is having erected a building for the purpose on Fourth street below Montgomery avenue, adjoining the factory. It will be five stories in height, built of brick, and will have a tower extending two stories above the main building. No expense will be spared to make it a model institution. A thoroughly competent staff of phy- sicians will be engaged, presumably those who have so successfully conducted the Medical Department, above referred to, and the Dispensary, which was the beginning of the plan ; while every modern invention of medical science will be introduced, and patients will be received free.
A great many of those employed in the factory have been enabled to secure houses of their own through the workings of the John B. Stetson Building Asso- ciation. Five shares of the stock of this organization frequently constitute a Christmas gift to some of the employés. There is also a beneficial association contributed to by all, and the funds of which are often augmented by donations from Mr. Stetson.
Mr. Stetson's kindness and generosity to his employés have been attended with the most satisfactory results, and their effects have been clearly seen in the knitting together of the interests of the employer and his operatives, and an increase of sympathy for each other. He has not entirely escaped, however, from the bad effects of labor dictation. Some years since his men were ordered on a strike and his goods "boycotted "-a result brought about largely through a misapprehension of facts. It was certainly incongruous that the factory pro- ducing the finest grade of goods in America should be "boycotted " for employ- ing unskilled labor, and some of the strikers, soon recognizing the absurdity and indefensibility of their position, applied for reinstatement. Those who did so were taken back without discrimination, for the establishment was open to union and non-union men alike.
While Mr. Stetson's benevolence has been chiefly directed towards his employés and the residents of the neighborhood of his factory, and his thoughts largely taken up in establishing institutions and devising projects for the better- ment of their condition, he has by no means limited his charity to his own people, or confined his benefits to them. Only a short time since he gave the sum of fifty thousand dollars to the Young Men's Christian Association of Phila- delphia, of which organization he is a Trustee, and made liberal contributions to the University of DeLand, Florida, where he has a magnificent winter residence, and a large and productive orange grove. He is a member of the Fifth Baptist Church, at Eighteenth and Spring Garden streets, and one of its most liberal supporters ; and is also a Director of the Sunday Breakfast Association and of the Norris Street Women's Hospital at Kensington, and these and many other charitable institutions in the city have received evidences of his interest. D.
F. GUTEKUNST
PHILA.
ARTEMAS WILHELM.
ARTEMAS WILHELM.
A MONG the men who have contributed to the material resources of Pennsyl- vania and her manufacturing interests there is no one whose memory is more worthy of being perpetuated than the late ARTEMAS WILHELM. He was born in Baltimore county, Maryland, December 29, 1822, and, although residing within fifty miles of that city until past his majority, it seems that his opportuni- ties for school education were so limited that he spent altogether less than one hundred days under prescribed tutelage; but with a rare ardor for knowledge, and a determination to acquire it at whatever cost of personal self-denial, before he had reached middle-age everything pertaining to his business and social life indicated that he had obtained well-matured information on all the various sub- jects entering into his active and daily duties and numerous attainments acquired by few even in the highest institutions of learning. Up to the day of his decease his correspondence on all subjects was couched in the choicest of courteous lan- guage, extracts of which have been known to have been adopted by those more highly favored in educational advantages than he had been, while his personal bearing was ever that of a gentleman.
When but six years of age he accompanied his parents to a farm purchased by them in York county, Pennsylvania, where he resided until his seventeenth year, aiding in agricultural labors and devoting his leisure hours to study, the poor apology of a school in the neighborhood enabling him to have only the number of days' schooling referred to. It was about this time that, in addition to helping his father on the farm, he secured employment at driving a cart during the construction of the Northern Central Railway, of which corporation he afterwards became a well-known member.
About 1840 he went to Shrewsbury to learn the trade of stonemason and bricklayer, but subsequently returned home to help his father. Arriving at the age of manhood we find him, in 1844, in Baltimore pursuing his vocation, where in about a year he had saved sufficient to invest seventy-five dollars in a lot in Shrewsbury-a property which he held and improved up to the time of his death.
In 1845, upon returning home to help his father, he was engaged to assist him in the erection of the first furnace of the Ashland Iron Company, the initial step to that proud eminence he afterwards attained as a furnace builder and iron manufacturer. "The divinity that shapes our ends" directed the life of Mr. Wilhelm, in this instance, by taking from him his honored father while the work of building this furnace was under way. Deprived, in 1847, of parental counsel and advice, he notwithstanding continued on with the work in hand the best that he could, and so satisfactorily that it secured him the contract to construct the second furnace for the Ashland Company. Before his death, however, the father, John S. Wilhelm, went abroad to gather information relative to furnace
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construction, and with such success that after his return he built the first hot- blast furnace in America ; the son, Artemas, building the first hot-blast furnace used with anthracite coal, located at Ashland, Schuylkill county. As a son often inherits some of the leading traits of the father, so here in precision, punc- tuality and goodness of heart from father to son descended these admirable qualities. It is said that the decease of the father in 1847 was due to a cold taken one night while relieving a sick neighbor, and the cortege of carriages at the funeral of this old soldier of the war of 1812 was the largest that had ever been known in the vicinity of Shrewsbury.
The prompt and thorough manner in which Artemas Wilhelm did his work attracted the attention of Robert W. Coleman, a noted iron-master, while casu- ally visiting the Ashland works, and the character of all that had been done impressed Mr. Coleman so favorably that an engagement was made with him to erect No. I Furnace on the great Cornwall estate. This was in 1849, when he had already made the building of furnaces and the manufacture of iron his especial study, being determined to erect such structures only after the most approved designs ; but he had not yet undertaken contracts to such an extent as to feel above going to Cornwall with his trowel and hammer in his hands. Having concluded his engagement near Cornwall he returned to Ashland, where he remodelled the furnaces and set up additional boilers. About this time, and for some time afterwards, he was constantly occupied in different parts of the State in the same line of operations, supervising various improvements and gaining considerable reputation as a furnace builder; thus finding it necessary to employ quite a force of assistants to enable him to fulfil his various contracts. The failure to successfully operate the furnace at Cornwall led Mr. Coleman, in 1853, to send down to Shrewsbury for the builder. In a comparatively short time after his reaching the furnace it was successfully blown in, and so pleased was the proprietor with what Mr. Wilhelm had done that he offered him employment at a stated salary of six hundred dollars per annum. This was accepted, and he remained at that salary for several years. Mr. Coleman soon found that he had not only employed one who attended to all his own duties properly, but was ready and willing to help elsewhere whenever and wherever he could. In illustration : One day there was something wrong with the water- supply for the railroad, and he turned in and worked so effectively that the difficulty was removed. At the end of the first year Mr. Robert W. Coleman was so delighted with his services that, in addition to his salary, he made him a present of one thousand dollars, and this additional amount was continually added at the end of each twelfth month for a number of years thereafter.
Being thus clothed with the office of superintendent of the work connected with the furnace, in 1854 he designed and supervised the erection of Furnace No. 2 without assistance-all the brick for the construction being made under his oversight, and all the articles purchased by him personally to the minutest details. All the plans and designs for this, as well as other structures which he
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ever built for any one, were the work of his own hands as a self-taught draughts- man. Having thus successfully erected and blown in this furnace, he continued as supervisor in and out of the office until 1856, when the manager, Benjamin Mooney, died, and the supervision required more from him than before. But soon after the decease of the manager the position was offered to Mr. Wilhelm, and two weeks given him to consider the matter. The modesty of the employé, so characteristic of the man, was clearly manifested when he told his employer that he had little or no education, and it would be presumptuous to occupy such a responsible place. But the employer would not be denied, and said that what Mr. Wilhelm lacked in education he made up in energy, skill and devotion to his employer's interests. Mr. Wilhelm thereupon accepted the position, and continued therein acceptably until called upon to fill even higher and more important offices.
From that time forward his duties were excessive and arduous. In 1857 he made the estimate for, and advised the purchase of, the "Dudley," now known as the " Donaghmore Furnace," at Lebanon, thus placing another great concern under his care and management. In 1860 still other duties were added to the responsibilities of his position. One day Mr. Robert W. Coleman came into the office, drew from his pockets his pocket-book, keys and everything else that they contained, laid them down on the desk, and exclaimed : "I am going out of this ; I am in debt, and don't know how I stand; I want you to take hold of everything !" The astounded manager replied, "I don't want to do this, and it would be impossible for me to give the large amount of security that would be required." But his confiding employer was persistent, and he yielded and accepted the position. Thereupon Mr. Coleman gave him a general power of attorney to execute and sign all papers, and to take charge of all the finances of the estate-a power seldom conferred upon any person by anybody, and perhaps never before given in this country by the owner of so vast an estate. The writ- ten document is still in the possession of his family, and highly cherished as a mark of the entire confidence placed in him by the owners of that property of colossal value. No bond was required, although Mr. Wilhelm became the general manager and attorney-in-fact for Robert W. and William Coleman. At that time these two brothers had a great deal of paper floating around through- out the country, and little or no record was kept when the notes would fall due and be presented, and they would be handed in at the most unexpected times and on the most inopportune occasions. Mr. William Coleman's death, which occurred in 1862, added to the perplexity of affairs. Col. William G. Freeman, his brother-in-law, was appointed administrator, who immediately set about set- tling up the estate by taking refunding receipts, not expecting it to be able to meet the claims of creditors. About this time Samuel Small, of York, was appointed the guardian of Robert H. and Annie C. Coleman, the guardian giving Mr. Wilhelm power of attorney to act for them. To such an extremity had the estate been reduced that he could not go to any of the banks of Lebanon or
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Lancaster and borrow one dollar on the firm's paper without his personal indorsement. Protesting against this that he was a man of little or no means, and could not pay any of those large amounts, the bankers would say, "We know that when your name is on the paper it is going to be paid;" and in that way he secured the money necessary. With this extraordinary burden upon him he soon managed so that the notes would not fall due upon the same time, and by part payments they were renewed until liquidated ; and during the last eigh- teen years of his management there was not a single note out on account of the estate. Furthermore, a handsome surplus was accumulated, which continued to increase, and so rapidly, that when Robert H. Coleman reached his majority $1,250,000 in cash was handed to him by his guardian, and his sister, Annie C., received $1,500,000 in a like manner in a year afterward. So well was every- thing managed and the books kept that, on his retirement at the end of thirty- two years, he could leave all his books, papers and vouchers open not only to the inspection of the heirs, but to the public, without the fear of a single charge of the misappropriation of even one cent of the vast amount placed in his keep- ing. The books further showed that at no time was he ever indebted to the estate to the extent of a single dollar, even his personal account showing a balance of more or less due him at all times for personal services. So thoroughly and systematically was everything done that the expert accountants, who went over the books and papers when he resigned as manager, declared that they had never seen accounts more accurately and faithfully kept. Of everything that had transpired he left a complete and correct record of his stewardship.
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