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No sooner had Saginaw’s lumber tycoon, Wellington R. Burt, celebrated his seventieth birthday on August 26, 1901 than did he got down to make use of a portion of his lumber wealth within the awakening beet sugar business.
The mantra of actual property brokers all over the place is “location, location, location.” Nevertheless, within the enterprise world typically it needs to be, “timing, timing, timing.” Wellington Burt’s timing as far as his curiosity in sugar was involved, was poor.
Like others who had crammed their days within the as soon as fast-paced however now moribund lumber business, he had time on his fingers and cash within the financial institution. At first, additionally as had others, he devoted some years to politics. He had served a time period within the state senate (1893-1894) then sought a U.S. Congressional seat however had the unwell fortune to run as a Democrat in 1900, the yr the Republican star was rising. Ranked as considered one of America’s wealthiest males, Burt solid about for brand spanking new funding concepts after which homed in on the sugar business. His set his eyes on Owosso, Michigan, a village located some thirty miles southwest of Saginaw the place a number of holdovers from the lumber business resided in mansions arrayed alongside Washington Avenue. Amongst Owosso’s many attributes was the affect of Joseph Kohn, a sugarbeet technologist residing in Bay Metropolis, Michigan. Kohn presided over the Michigan Chemical Firm which had been put in place to buy after which course of molasses generated by that metropolis’s rising variety of sugar beet factories. His success at Michigan Chemical inspired buyers to attract shut when he spoke of investing in beet sugar factories.
For Kohn it was easy, the extra sugar beet factories the extra molasses for Michigan Chemical, which could possibly be distilled into alcohol, a circumstance that constructed enthusiasm for the development of one other manufacturing unit. Fats with earnings, Michigan Chemical and its mum or dad, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, sought to construct a manufacturing unit in Owosso by itself and did not want the interference of one other millionaire with time on his fingers and cash in his pocket. Wellington R. Burt was not invited to affix in a enterprise with Michigan Chemical and his ambitions to go on his personal languished behind a curtain of worldwide occasions
The USA had agreed upon the conclusion of the Spanish-American Warfare to scale back the import responsibility on Philippine sugar 75 % of the overall charge and to permit the importation of sugar from Puerto Rico, a U.S. possession, solely freed from responsibility. The Philippines had the extra benefit of transport as much as 300,000 tons responsibility free and Congress was dithering with proposed laws that if handed, would approve a treaty of reciprocity with Cuba. The settlement would grant that nation a 20 % tariff preferential.
The nation’s newspapers devoted appreciable house to the plan, dampening the spirits of those that had at first proven a lot pleasure about Burt’s proposed manufacturing unit. He might discover few others to affix him in a enterprise in Owosso, though he pledged $200,000 of his private fortune and claimed others had subscribed one other $50,000 in inventory. He had satisfied farmers to enroll to develop sugarbeets on three thousand acres and contracted with the skilled agency of Fuehrman and Hapke to start building when it fell aside as a result of buyers had not come forth with the steadiness of the required funding – about $600,000.
Michigan Chemical Firm waited within the wings whereas further buyers did not materialize. Elsewhere, pleasure for beet sugar factories hardly slowed. Sixteen have been inbuilt the US between 1900 and 1902, eight in Michigan. Burt’s consideration turned to Alma, Michigan the place he met extra success by combining his cash and abilities with these of Aimee Wright, one other Saginaw industrialist.
Owosso, in 1902, was nearly as good a candidate for a beet manufacturing unit as any city in Michigan, maybe higher. It had rail traces, established business, a managerial class and skilled employees along with a wonderful farming area. Burt stepped apart, permitting the venture to die stillborn. Fuehrman and Hapke went on to assemble the Sebewaing manufacturing unit within the subsequent yr, creating one of the crucial profitable beet factories of the period. Michigan Chemical emerged from the shadows and picked up the reins.
Owosso was house to 2 households with notable achievements in American politics. Each would play varied roles within the institution of a beet sugar manufacturing unit in Owosso. The Bentley household, headed by Alvin Bentley, whose grandson, additionally named Alvin, achieved fame at nice private expense in 1954 when as a junior Congressman, he turned probably the most significantly injured of 5 victims of an armed assault on Congress whereas it was in session. 4 Puerto Rican terrorists discharged thirty rounds from the customer’s gallery of the U.S. Home of Representatives to the ground of that chamber whereas the Representatives have been debating an immigration invoice.
The Dewey household had been engaged in Republican politics for the reason that social gathering’s formation in close by Jackson, Michigan in 1854. In Owosso, in accordance with custom, a number one consultant of the political social gathering then in energy held the postmaster’s place. Edmund O. Dewey, uncle to Thomas Edmund Dewey, a future New York governor and twice an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. presidency, held that place starting with the presidency of William McKinley and ending with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. His brother George, the daddy of Thomas Edmund Dewey, secured the appointment in 1921.
Edmund Dewey, in 1902, revived Wellington Burt’s plan for a beet sugar manufacturing unit in Owosso. He organized the acquisition of an acceptable 40-acre website on the west finish of Oliver Road, raised $10,000 and urged the county board of commissioners to go a bond difficulty ample to satisfy the price of the land. The county denied the bond, inflicting the concept to fail for a second time and for a similar motive – an absence of enthusiasm.
Joseph Kohn stepped ahead and in doing so launched into Michigan’s fired up sugar business one the nation’s wealthiest households, the Pitcairn household of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pitcairn household managed the Pittsburg Plate Glass Firm (at this time often known as PPG Industries) headquartered in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The glass firm had all however ended America’s dependence on Europe for giant sheets of glass appropriate for storefronts, show instances and mirrors. In the course of the opening days of the twentieth century, the corporate produced 20-million sq. toes of glass yearly.
In searching for a supply of potash for its glassworks, Pittsburgh Plate Glass turned to Kohn who made an effort to extract it from beet sugar molasses and as a substitute discovered he might earn assured earnings by changing molasses into alcohol. He had additionally served the German-American Sugar Firm (later named Monitor Sugar Firm) as a advisor and earlier than that held the same place with Kilby Manufacturing who was a lot concerned in turnkey beet sugar manufacturing unit building initiatives. Kohn’s Bay Metropolis distillery, owing to the massive quantity of molasses rising from three sugar factories and extra promised from the German-American Sugar Firm’s manufacturing unit then beneath building, was turning over substantial earnings to Pittsburgh Plate Glass.
John Pitcairn noticed America’s shores first as five-year outdated immigrant delivered to America by his mother and father John and Agnes together with two sisters and a brother. Pitcairn gathered a private fortune in railroads, coalmines, oil, and within the founding of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Firm in partnership with John Ford. He was sixty-years outdated when Kohn drew his consideration to the potential in Owosso and the failed effort of first Wellington Burt, then Edmund Dewey to type a beet sugar firm.
Three’s the attraction for Owosso. On October 29, 1902, the Owosso Sugar Firm got here into existence, capitalized at a million {dollars}. Greater than 75 % of the shares have been owned by members of the Pitcairn household and associates. John Pitcairn owned 62,500 of the excellent shares outright. A handful of Owosso residents added their names to the shareholder checklist, together with the aforementioned Alvin Bentley and the brothers Edmund and George Dewey. George Dewey’s son, Tom, the longer term presidential candidate, would someday spend faculty holidays working within the new sugar firm’s packaging room.
The corporate presidency was turned over to Charles W. Brown, the proprietor of newly minted 5,600 shares of inventory. Brown was additionally the president of Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Everyday monetary duties went to 36-year outdated Edward Pitcairn, considered one of John Pitcairn’s many nephews. Edward would, by 1910, grow to be treasurer of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, a place he would maintain for the steadiness of his profession. Carmen Smith, an legal professional with a protracted affiliation with Charles Brown, stemming from a interval when the pair resided in Minneapolis, assumed duty for the overall administration of the brand new agency. As well as, he assumed the title of Secretary-Treasurer. He had not too long ago moved his spouse Isabella and three youngsters, Margaret, Carmen, and Cedric to Bay Metropolis the place he served because the treasurer of Michigan Chemical Firm. Joseph Kohn accepted the position of normal manufacturing unit superintendent.
Educated on the Prague Institute of Know-how, Kohn graduated in 1883 with levels in mechanical and chemical engineering. Following his education, he was employed at Breitfeld-Danek of Prague and later gained expertise at a sugar manufacturing unit in Moravia, a area in what’s now the Czech Republic however was then part of the Austrian-Hungary empire, and likewise labored with the evaporator designer, Hugo Jelenik. In Moravia, he labored with Carl Steffen, the inventor of the molasses desugarization course of that carries his title. Whereas employed by Kilby Manufacturing Firm, Kohn developed the Kilby normal manufacturing unit association.
Kilby Manufacturing received contracts to assemble two 1,000-ton factories in Michigan; one at Owosso and one other at Menominee. The 2 would maintain the file as the biggest beet factories inbuilt Michigan till a 1,200-ton manufacturing unit was constructed at Mount Nice in 1920. Along with the 2 1,000-ton factories, Kilby had an order for the standard 600-ton manufacturing unit for East Tawas. It will be a busy yr for Kilby who had additionally obtained orders for 3 factories in Colorado, one every for Fort Collins, Longmont, and Windsor with Fort Collins gaining the biggest manufacturing unit constructed by Kilby-1,200 tons a day slicing capability. The value for the Owosso manufacturing unit, at $675,000, on a per ton of sugarbeets sliced foundation, was low at $675 in contrast $1,197 at East Tawas and $785 at Menominee. In reality, the Owosso manufacturing unit value much less per ton of slice than any manufacturing unit inbuilt Michigan.
The Owosso manufacturing unit got here to life on December 9, 1903 with out the standard fanfare assigned to new beet sugar factories which often included marching bands, parades, and far merriment adopted by talking alternatives for native luminaries and politicians. In a quieter trend, Charles W. Brown, arrived from Pittsburgh and introduced with him as an honored visitor, James Wilson, the Secretary of Agriculture. He rose to nationwide prominence when President William McKinley appointed him Secretary of Agriculture in 1897. His stature was such that presidents Roosevelt and Taft retained him as secretary, and it was solely when in 1912 in a transfer to comb Republican appointees from workplace, Woodrow Wilson ended his tenure. He had served as Secretary of Agriculture from March 4, 1897 to March 3, 1913, the longest length served by any American cupboard official.
After a quick ceremony, Secretary Wilson pulled the whistle twine that known as forth the beets from the flumes. In contrast to lots of the beet factories inbuilt Michigan, there was no central native determine that had put his cash and repute on the road for the manufacturing unit. The bulk possession was far-off in Pennsylvania, its officers and guiding administration lived elsewhere, Bay Metropolis within the case of Joseph Kohn and Carmen Smith and the environs of Pittsburgh for Brown and Pitcairn. It was commonplace for absentee house owners to miss the plain – enter from farmers. When an absence of farmer curiosity made itself identified, it induced no palpitations within the boardroom of Pittsburgh Plate Glass. In spite of everything, twenty years earlier John Pitcairn had cast a brand new American business out of the rubble of comparable however failed efforts when he wrestled the plate glass market away from the Europeans and developed one of many world’s largest and most trendy factories of its type.
Farmer apathy was a gentle inconvenience, not a crushing blow to somebody who had turned the making of plate glass into a singular American business. The reply lay close to at hand and Carmen Smith, his appointed emissary, had probed the chances even because the manufacturing unit partitions reached towards the sky to the amazement of Owossians who had gathered on weekends all through the summer time of 1903 to soak up the breadth and dimensions of the commercial goliath rising of their midst. Clearly, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass folks thought huge. They thought even greater than the manufacturing unit’s sidewalk superintendents imagined, greater than had any beet manufacturing unit organizer up till that point. Not solely have been they constructing a beet manufacturing unit destined to be twice the scale of almost all of the sugar factories in the US, they have been on the identical time on the verge of creating the biggest sugarbeet farm in the US and the biggest single farm operation east of the Mississippi River.
South and west of Saginaw, Michigan lay an unlimited marsh fashioned over the past ice age. The marsh adjoined the convergence of a number of massive river programs that turned the Saginaw River that then and now flows 22 miles northward to Lake Huron. The eighteen thousand acre marsh served as an necessary stopover level and brooding floor for migrating waterfowl, geese, geese, swans. It was the biggest pure wildlife habitat within the American Midwest. It was protected by traits that made it unappealing to farmers – frequent flooding. However that modified when Harlan B. Smith, a Saginaw buggy producer who additionally speculated in actual property, entered right into a partnership with two attorneys Charles H. Camp and George B. Brooks, to accumulate after which develop roughly 10,000 acres of the marsh. Their efforts, spanning fifteen years, resulted in a big drainage ditch that prolonged almost two miles throughout the prairie, allowing them to convert tons of of acres of marsh into farmland.
When Carmen Smith looked for a big tract during which to put in an indication sugarbeet farm whereas on the identical time assuring the Owosso manufacturing unit would have all of the beets it will need, he shortly focused the Prairie Farm. Smith accomplished the acquisition on February 22, 1903 and shortly, a steam-powered dredge, a monster designed for digging into mucky earth, was quickly barged down the Saginaw River to the prairie. It bit into the earth within the entrance, forming a 20-foot excessive dike and making a canal, which it used to move itself till acre-by acre, it claimed land that had waited a half 1,000,000 years for the arrival of the mechanical behemoth.
Finally, Owosso Sugar Firm created thirty-six miles of dikes, a few of them eighty toes extensive on the backside, forty on the high and twenty toes excessive. Others have been of lesser dimensions however all designed for a similar goal – draining after which protecting the land dry. Roads topped the tops of the dikes and the edges turned to grass to be used as a sheep pasture. Half the land was drained through open ditches and half was drained with the help of massive pumps that despatched their burden to the close by Flint River. As soon as it was dry, the reclaimed land was laid out very similar to a large checkerboard in twelve traces of sixteen forty-acre parcels. Virtually in a single day, for a capital outlay of $400,000, Smith reworked the Prairie Farm from a shedding proposition into the biggest beet sugar property in Michigan, and possibly in the US, if not the world – ten thousand acres. The brand new manufacturing unit might now put aside fear about an satisfactory provide of beets.
Owosso Sugar Firm’s First Marketing campaign
The primary working marketing campaign for the Owosso Sugar Firm, as was customary with Kilby designed turnkey factories, achieved the assured slice charge of 1,000 tons of sliced beets every twenty-four hours. Development contracts sometimes required {that a} new manufacturing unit meet its assured charge for a specified time period, set by negotiation, at between one and ten days and often occurred beneath the supervision of Kilby’s engineers some days after the startup. The identical engineers would withdraw as soon as the brand new proprietor signed the certificates of completion, handing the manufacturing unit over to the corporate’s administration employees. The slice charge at Owosso declined after the manufacturing unit reached the assured charge probably for a similar causes slice charges in most new beet factories declined – inexperienced operators.
As a result of the Prairie Farm was but in its infancy, it produced fewer beets than it will within the following years inflicting the processing interval, known as a “marketing campaign” by the business, to final solely 48 days, ending on January 26, 1904. Throughout its maiden run the brand new manufacturing unit sliced a mean of 542 tons, properly in need of the scheduled 1,000 tons per day. The second marketing campaign was 5 days shorter however the slice charge almost doubled, reaching 930 tons per day for 43 days.
Whereas the Owosso manufacturing unit was beneath building, the Lansing beet manufacturing unit, constructed by Benjamin Boutell, a significant investor in a number of Michigan beet sugar factories, and others two years earlier, suffered from an absence of managerial oversight. Recognized with most cancers early in 1902, Boutell’s spouse, Amelia died on November 27 on the age of 52 regardless of his greatest efforts to find a treatment. Having no coronary heart for his enterprise pursuits, he offered the Lansing manufacturing unit to the Owosso Sugar Firm.
Kohn and Smith now had 4 main operations: two sugar factories, the Prairie Farm, and Bay Metropolis’s Michigan Chemical Firm beneath their management whereas one yr earlier that they had solely the chemical firm to occupy their time and ideas. The Prairie Farm employed 160 employees and 58 groups of draft horses and every of the 2 beet factories employed tons of extra along with employees on the chemical manufacturing unit and within the Bay Metropolis headquarters. The 2 managers, every 45 years outdated, have been in fixed movement, visiting the properties, the company workplace in Pittsburgh, and attending business conventions along with assembly with members of Congress and the Division of Agriculture. In 1910, Joseph Kohn was the primary to reckon the price of such a tempo. He suffered a coronary heart assault and died on the age of 52.
Within the yr previous Kohn’s dying, 8,500 Prairie Farm acres had been diked and outfitted with gravity drainage and pumping programs and for the primary time, grew a sq. mile of sugarbeets. Peppermint supplied further income (35,000 kilos of peppermint oil in 1909) whereas cabbage adopted in significance behind sugarbeets.
For the six years following Kohn’s dying, Carmen Smith continued on as earlier than, shouldering Kohn’s obligations along with his personal, till 1916 when he positioned the 2 sugar factories beneath the supervision of Charles D. Bell who had served because the manufacturing unit supervisor at Alma earlier than becoming a member of the Owosso employees in 1907. Bell remained at Owosso for sixteen years, leaving solely after Michigan Sugar Firm acquired the Owosso and Lansing factories in 1924 whereupon he returned to the household ranch in Los Alamos, California the place he promptly found oil and retired in wealth.
In 1920, at age 62, Carmen Smith, very similar to his good friend and affiliate, Joseph Kohn, succumbed abruptly to a coronary heart assault whereas touring house by prepare from Chicago. With Carmen Smith handed a pioneering period. Joseph Kohn in 1910, Joseph Kilby in 1914, John Pitcairn in 1916, and Carmen Smith in 1920 – those that had lived the dream of constructing one of many world’s largest and most trendy beet sugar factories after which topping it with the nation’s single largest beet farm, had handed from the scene. Sadly, what that they had wrought wouldn’t final.
In line with Daniel Gutleben’s historical past of the Michigan beet sugar business (The Sugar Tramp -1954), Pittsburgh Plate Glass, possible involved that Michigan’s beet factories, constructed too small to compete with main refineries designed to course of uncooked sugar imported in amount, could not compete in opposition to the quantity of duty-free sugar coming into the nation. It opted to promote each the Owosso and Lansing factories to Michigan Sugar Firm at a value reported within the press at $2,000,000 plus most popular inventory. The Prairie Farm remained within the fingers of John Pitcairn’s heirs.
Michigan Sugar Firm operated Owosso for the subsequent 4 years till diminishing curiosity on the a part of farmers mixed with the flood of imported sugar induced the manufacturing unit to shut in 1928. Michigan Sugar lacked the chief benefit as soon as held by the previous house owners – the Prairie Farm thus couldn’t command farmers to develop beets when different crops, corn and soybeans attracted favorable costs for much less funding and fewer work. It re-opened once more for one yr in 1933, then shut down however was saved in hopeful readiness. Hope lastly surrendered to actuality that the farmers wouldn’t return. The manufacturing unit and buildings have been offered in 1948. Proof that the eventual failure of the Owosso Sugar Firm didn’t relaxation upon the shoulders of administration lay within the appointment of Owosso’s secretary, Edward Bostock, to the chairmanship of the board of administrators of Michigan Sugar Firm.
Sources:
DENSLOW, William R, and TRUMAN, Harry S., 10,000 Well-known Freemasons from A to J Half One (in reference to Charles W. Brown profession with Pittsburgh Plate Glass Firm)
MILLER, Ed, and BEACH, Jean R.., The Saginaw Corridor of Fame, Revealed by the Saginaw Corridor of Fame, 2000. (In reference to Wellington R. Burt)
GUTTLEBEN, Daniel, The Sugar Tramp – 1954 printed by Bay Cities Duplicating Firm, San Francisco, California
LE CUREUX, KEITH, Albee Township Historical past, Saginaw, County, Michigan, Chapter V, Prairie Farm.
BETZOLD, Michael, Detroit Free Press Journal, December 26, 1993, Utopia Revisited – an article describing the historical past of the Prairie Farm.
Copyright, 2009, Thomas Mahar – All Rights Reserved
In regards to the Writer: Thomas Mahar served as Government Vice President of Monitor Sugar Firm between 1984 and 1999 and as President of Gala Meals Processing, a sugar packaging firm, from 1993-1998. He retired in 1999 and now devotes his free time to writing in regards to the historical past of the sugar business. He authored, Candy Power, The Story of Monitor Sugar Firm in 2001, and Michigan’s Beet Sugar Historical past (Newsbeet, Fall, 2006).Contact: Thomas Mahar E-mail
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Source by Thomas Mahar