Search For River Monsters True Stories Of The Ones at Amazon
|
Menominee, Michigan, located far from the world’s financial centers a hundred years ago, much as it is today, notwithstanding placed itself directly in the middle of one of the hottest business booms of the early twentieth century – sugar. The little community that dared to plant a footprint in world commerce occupies a slivered point of land that dips into Lake Michigan at a point so close in proximity to Wisconsin that had a cartographer’s finger twitched at a primary moment, Menominee would be in Wisconsin rather of Michigan. Menominee is bordered on the east by Green Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan, and on the south-west by the Menominee River. In 1903, some investors in the beet sugar industry had a timber background and had thence come to believe that the same rivers that had once delivered logs to sawmills in abundance could also serve the needs of a beet sugar factory where massive volumes of water are employed for fluming beets into the factory, washing them and then diffusing the sugar from them. A sugar factory could effortlessly put three million gallons of water to use each twenty-four hours. Barges may carry sugarbeets from the farm fields and freighters may carry productions to market. The presence of the Menominee River convinced investors that Menominee could compete with the nation’s sugar makers in spite of negative remarks from naysayers who said Menominee was too far north to with great success grow sugarbeets. The naysayers had a point. Menominee, Michigan is an improbable place to fabricate a beet sugar factory. Situated at the western end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the growing season is in regards to forty days shorter than the prime beet growing regions in the state’s Lower Peninsula. The short season may prevent the ripening of beets which will then lessen sugar content of immature beets ill prepared for the stress of the milling process. Severe frosts in early spring are not strange and are almost always fatal to a crop of young beets. Frosts may come early in the fall, too, which may make it inconceivable to harvest a crop. A farmer stood to lose his entire crop either early in the growing season or near the time of harvest after he had invested to a considerable degree in bringing the sugarbeet crop to term. Investors, however, in Menominee, as in numerous of Michigan’s cities, tended to discount input from farmers before building a factory and would many times interpret exaggerated a feeling of excitement from a handful of growers as representing the broader farming community. Quite often, as in Menominee’s case, as it would turn out, the handful did not represent the whole. Official acknowledgement by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1898 of the importance of the sugarbeet industry sparked the construction of beet sugar factories all over the nation. One year earlier the nation could brag only ten beet sugar factories, four of which were in California, one in Utah, two in Nebraska and three in New York. The construction of seven sugarbeet factories in 1898 brought into focus for the basi time the stirrings of a rush not not similar to the dot-com boom that blossomed closely one hundred years later. The idea that sugar developed from sugarbeets could compete with sugar devised from sugarcane expanded into a full-fledged boom by 1900 when the nationwide count of sugarbeet factories stood at thirty-two in eleven states. Nowhere was the blaze hotter than in Michigan where nine factories followed the successful get started up of a factory in Essexville, Michigan, a suburb of Bay City. A burst of cyclonic a lively interest caused a crazy scramble when investors, constructors, bankers, and farmers combined energies and achievements to fetch to life eight factories in a single year! They were in Holland, Kalamazoo, Rochester, Benton Harbor, Alma, West Bay City, Caro, and a second factory in Essexville. Despite the paucity of factory constructors and the engineers to operate them, fourteen further and added factories rose on the outskirts of Michigan towns for the duration of the next six years, one of which appeared in Menominee in 1903. In Menominee, a group of investors undeterred by the natural less favorable advantages and buoyed by encouragement from influential investors and welleducated experts, set a plan in motion to maintain the economic viability of their city after the approaching demise of the lumber industry, which had until then provided the underpinnings of Menominee’s economy. The plan included the design of one of the greatest and most progressed sugarbeet factories to appear in America up to that time. As the lumber era petered out at the beginning of the 20th century, railroads that had come into their own because of timber, sought new origins of revenue. Principal amongst them was the Detroit and Mackinac Railroad whose land agent, Charles M. Garrison, assembled and passed around selective information with regards to the potential of the sugarbeet industry. While Garrison disseminate word amidst Detroit’s financiers regarding potential profits in sugarbeets, communities affected by the decline of lumber looked to area resources for ways of replenishing wealth. They had a great deal to work with. The state was crisscrossed with rail lines and rivers and galore left over cash from the lumber era. With Garrison leading the way, investors perked up. Communities eager to find a quick substitute for lumber hastened to attend meetings sponsored by Garrison and rapidly and without delay yet to fetch their towns into the fold. All that was necessitated was to persuade the farmers to grow the beets. That is where the Michigan Agricultural College (Now Michigan State University) stepped in. Upper Peninsula farmers, encouraged by Michigan Agricultural College to plant sugarbeet test plots, received an even dandier shot in the arm by the visit of Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, in 1902. He expounded the vantages of sugarbeets and discouraged the notion that the Upper Peninsula’s climate wasn’t up to the task of constructing profitable crops. Wilson served in three presidential cabinets, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, serving longer (1897-1913) than any other cabinet official. He encouraged innovative agriculture methods, including transportation and education as they applied to agriculture. His word carried a lot of weight. When he spoke of sugarbeets, a great deal of farmers listened and when his section avowed that the cold northern temperatures would not inhibit the development of the industry in their neighborhood, investors, farmers, and makers lined up to begin the industry in Menominee. Optimism rose to new heights when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) declared favorable results of the sugarbeet plot tests. The Sugar Beet News of December 15, 1903, reported test results from beets delivered by approximately 140 farmers. The test runs revealed 15.6 to 19.9 % sugar, which meant a cash value to the farmers per acre of from $5.70 to $7.13 per ton ($135-$169 inflation adjusted to the current period). At those projected prices, no crop in humane history had held the potential for creating such a high return from so few acres. In the Lower Peninsula, a farmer with above intermediate capacity who placed fifteen acres in sugarbeets could earn more than $800 and if his family provided the bulk of the labor, the net net profit would more than take care of a family’s needs for a year, which, including food, was less than $800. After adding revenue from crops in rotation and revenues from milk, eggs, and poultry, the farm family’s standard of living innovative from a subsistence level to one that equated favorably to those who kept mid-management positions in industry. USDA figures supported faith that Upper Peninsula beets would exceed by two per cent the intermediate for all the other 18 sugar beet factories in the Lower Peninsula. If the tests proved authenti indicators, Menominee region beets were worth up to $10 more an acre than Lower Peninsula beets, assuring an income of almost $1,000 per year just from sugarbeets. Although a lively interest was on the upturn, something more was necessitated to seal the deal. To instill selfassurance in potential investors that technical expertness lay near at hand, Benjamin Boutell, who won fame as both a tugboat captain and as a captain of industry, arrived in Menominee from his Bay City, Michigan headquarters for the single intent of conveying mesmerized investors to Bay County where they could see groomed beet fields and effective factories spinning out white crystalline sugar. Eleven potential investors accompanied Boutell to Bay City where convincing proof lay at hand. Four beet sugar factories, more than in any other city in the United States, had been constructed in that city’s environs. Bay City nearly hummed with economic action because of the presence of sugar factories. Mansions peopled by former lumber barons who had transformed themselves into sugar barons, lined the city’s honored Center Avenue. Boutell declared he would become one of the investors, supplying the other investors had no objection to having a factory designed and installed by Joseph Kilby who was according to Boutell, the finest constructor of beet sugar factories in the United States. Many others consorted with Boutell’s assessment; Kilby built nine of the eventual twenty-four factories built in Michigan. Local investors lined up behind Boutell to coordinate the Menominee River Sugar Company. A half dozen necessary backers came forward, each of whom subscribed to more than $25,000 in stock of the Menominee River Sugar Company. Heading up the list of local stockholders was Samuel M. Stephenson, a former lumber manufacturer and native of New Brunswick, Canada who had made a home for himself, his wife, Jennie and their four daughters and one son, in Menominee. He was then seventy-one years of age but in no mood for retirement. Following a successful career in lumber and banking, he served three successive terms in Congress (Michigan’s 11th District 1889-93 and the 12th District 1893-97). He invested $100,000 ($2 million by modern standards) in the beet sugar factory, taking heart in not only favorable test plot results and the exuberance of his neighbors but likewise interest shown by the American Sugar Refining Corporation, in general known by it is then popular sobriquet, the Sugar Trust. Some years later the Sugar Trust would fall into disfavor as a result of charges of unfair business practices, but in 1903, it had the selfassurance of the usual public and investors similar and controlled the fabricate and sale of 98% of sugar consumed in the United States. Trust Executives, Arthur Donner and Charles R. Heike, invested $300,000 to acquire 36% of Menominee River Sugar Company’s stock. All the members of the board of managers and roster of officers isolated from Bay City resident, Benjamin Boutell, listed Menominee as their home of record. Menominee residents made up 74% of the shareholders. Together, they controlled 53% of the shares. In addition to Stephenson, other major stock holders who also accepted positions as either officers or managing directors were: William O. Carpenter who invested $55,000 and served the sugar company variously as president and vice-president. Gustave A. Blesch invested $15,000 and served as treasurer. John Henes, a brewery owner, invested $25,000 and served as a director. Augustus Spies was the second biggest capitalist after Stephenson and the Sugar Trust. He, too, served as a director. Spies provide an splendid example of the hardy pioneering spirit that prevailed in Menominee. He was a native of the grand duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt, Germany where fertile soils and a mild climate permitted the production of grain and wine. He participated in the founding of the Stephenson National Bank in cooperative relationship with future U.S. Congressman Samuel M. Stephenson and Samuel’s brother, future U.S. Senator, Isaac Stephenson. In addition, he owned the Spies Lumber Company and various huge tracts of forest; he was an capitalist in the First National Bank of Menominee, the Marinette and Menominee Paper Company and president of the Menominee Light, Railroad and Power Company. When the fledgling sugar company got beneath way, he stepped forward with $75,000 ($1.5 million in current dollars). Support from Menominee’s wealthy class, who also shared distinctions of making good business conclusions and rising on their own merit rather than inherited wealth, was so outstanding that there was no need to solicit funds from the public at large. With it is shares over-subscribed by $35,000, the Menominee River Sugar Company was in the enviable position of having adequate capital for it is venture. Not only was it possessed of sufficient capital but also it enjoyed the added gain of the experience of Benjamin Boutell and representatives of the Sugar Trust. Menominee would not want for technical or business expertise. Gustave Blesch, like Augustus Spies, owed his success to the inherited calibers of hard work, honestness and the respect of his peers. He would become the sugar company’s initial treasurer. He was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1859, the son of Francis Blesch, a native of Germany and Antoinette Schneider, a native of Belgium. Gustave became an office boy in the Kellogg National Bank of Green Bay, rising to teller by the age of twenty. Five years later, he moved to Menominee to support establish the First National Bank of Menominee where he started out as cashier before getting the bank’s president. He became president of the Menominee Brick Company, vice-president of the Menominee-Marinette Light & Traction Company, and treasurer of the Peninsula Land Company. In January, 1903, the newly elected board of managers approved an $800,000 (nearly $19 million in current era dollars) construction contract for a Kilby designed and built factory that would slice 1,000 tons of beets per day. Of the 48 beet sugar factories in operation in the United States in 1903, only two were more prominent than Menominee’s new factory, one in Salinas, California and another in Fort Collins, Colorado. The intermediate sugar factory in Michigan in 1903 could slice six hundred tons of beets in a twenty-four hour period. Four thousand acres of beets would without apparent effort supply a season’s factory run. Had the investors surveyed the farmers first, surely they would have been advised to build a littler factory, and perhaps would have been persuaded to build none. Farmers delivered beets from approximately 1,500 acres, well short of the 9,000 acres the investment demanded. The Menominee factory’s introductory factory run (referred to as a “campaign” in the sugar industry) ended quickly, having received only 14,263 tons, sufficient for a production run of fourteen days for a factory the investors planned to operate at least one hundred days. However, the farmers had submitted beets containing the most eminent sugar reported of any company for the duration of it is introductory campaign, 15.04 percent – regarding 20 percent more than intermediate and sufficient to grant for a little net profit from a meager beet supply. Like closely all the factories, records that would inform us of profit, if any, earned for the duration of that firstborn campaign, did not survive the passage of time. However, it would be reasonable to estimate, based on the known cost of furnishes of coal, coke, limestone and the cost of labor, that a earnings of $36,000 was achievable, specially under a management style that salaried close attention to disbursements and exceptionally in light of the very high part of sugar in the beets. The second venture was better with sufficient beets for a full month, still well short of a supply necessitated to generate profits sufficient to warrant the investment. By 1911, the local supply reached a level that permitted steady profits but was insufficient to give hope or courage to expansion, a condition that persisted until 1926 when grower apathy fell to a level that required closing the factory until 1933 when it reopened for a final run of twenty years for the duration of which the factory lagged behind the industry in technology and growth. Year in and year out, because of an highly inadequate supply of beets, largely grown in Wisconsin, the underutilized factory ended it is venture weeks earlier than was necessitated to create healthful profits which then could have been reinvested in the factory. Menominee investors learned, as did a heap of other sugar factory investors, that the mantra, “build it and they will come” fell on deaf ears amongst farmers who often displayed a better understanding of sugar economics than did investors. The passage of time brought neither hurt nor good to the Menominee factory as it was unable to exaggerate or modernize. It settled into the routine of graceful aging. Profits awaiting prospect gradually collected thanks to the company’s penurious management style and a consecrated cadre of farmers. George W. McCormick, the company’s original manager, inaugurated a careful management style that went a long way toward keeping the company profitable in spite of annual shortfalls in the beet supply. He managed the company for the duration of it is initial thirty-two years of operation, beginning when he was twenty-four years of age. He met Benjamin Boutell in Bay City when he moved there to take a occupation as a district manager for Travelers Insurance Company. Boutell thought the young man belonged in the quickly devising sugar industry and encouraged him to aid in the establishment of a sugar factory in Wallaceburg, Ontario. After completing the assignment with success, Boutell commended him for the manager’s occupation in Menominee. Menominee was the most difficult place in the United States to procedure sugarbeets. The low temperatures took a heavy toll on workers, machinery and beets that ordinarily went through the slicing machines like boulders, detrimental instrumentation that robbed the factory of slender resources. It was difficult to find substitute elements because of the distance separating Menominee from suppliers and from Lower Peninsula sugar factories where it was mutual for factory managing directors to lend spare parts to one another. The company’s diligent attention to cost control remunerated off in 1924 when sugar factories located in Green Bay and Menominee Falls, Wisconsin went on the market. Menominee River Sugar Company purchased both and then invested significant sums in restoring the Menominee Falls factory that had been shut for three years without delay preceding it is sale. The renovated Menominee Falls factory combined with the Green Bay and Menominee, Michigan factories invented more capacity than was necessitated for the available acreage. One of the factories would have to close. Menominee won the noose after the accountants counted up the freight costs for hauling beets to each factory. The Menominee factory remained closed until 1933 when Michigan’s farmers relented and accorded to return to sugarbeets, a decision that came too late to save the hides of the sugar company’s owners who had lost the company to defaulted bonds three years earlier. Disruptions in Europe beginning in the early share of the 1930s brought a new name to Michigan’s beet sugar fields and corporate offices – Flegenheimer. Albert Flegenheimer was the son of Samuel Flegenheimer who had immigrated to the United States in either 1864 or 1866 and became a naturalized citizen in 1873. The next year, however, he returned to Germany, settling in Wurttemberg. He lived out his life there, dying in 1929 at the age of 81. His brief sojourn in the United States and his U.S. citizenship status, however, would one day save his descendants from German death camps. In February 1939, Albert Flegenheimer carried his family to the safety of Canada and then to the U.S. claiming nationality as the son of a naturalized citizen. He planned to raise his family and devote his time to the sugar industry in both the United States and Canada. His plans met with substantial success and by 1954, he controlled the sugar factory in Menominee and the one in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Despite Albert Flegenheimer’s efforts, a lack of interest on the percentage of farmers held the factory little and outdated. It was struggling year by year until ultimately in 1955 with it is instrumentation exhausted, it is buildings in tattered fix and it is farmers carrying out or participate in other crops, Menominee River Sugar Company, built on hopes and dreams and operated with fortitude and persistence for more than a half-century, closed it is doors forever. Sources: GUTLEBEN, Dan, The Sugar Tramp-1954- Michigan, Printed by: Bay City Duplicating Co, San Francisco, 1954 1962 TWIN CITY COMMUNITY RESOURCES WORKSHOP, section entitled Famous Leaders Who Helped Build Menominee, prepared by Irene Swain, Dr. Leo J. Alilunas, Director. HENLEY, ROBERT L., Sweet Success . . .The Story of Michigan’s Beet Sugar Industry 1898 – 1974, Michigan Historical Center, Department of History, Arts and Libraries INFLATION ADJUSTMENTS: The pre-1975 info are the Consumer Price Index stats from Historical Statistics of the United States (USGPO, 1975). All selective information since then are from the annual Statistical Abstracts of the United States. Recorded at http://www.westegg.com/inflation MICHIGAN ANNUAL REPORTS, Michigan Archives, Lansing, Michigan About the Author: |
Similar Products To River Monsters True Stories Of The Ones
River Monsters: True Stories of the Ones that Didn’t Get Away
River Monsters: True Stories of the Ones that Didn’t Get Away
River Monsters – True Stories of the ones that Didn’t Get Away
Amazing Animals: Mysteries of Science
Monster: My True Story
I’m No Monster: The Horrifying True Story of Josef Fritzl
Frankenstein – The True Story
Green River Killer: A True Detective Story
Nicky the Swamp Dog: A True Story
The Mad Trapper of Rat River: A True Story of Canada’s Biggest Manhunt