After the Iron Works Mayville WI – Part 3

            This is the  last of three posts on Mayville's response to the closing of the Iron Works.  As a former Mayville alderman I'm proud of how the City Council fought to keep the city from an economic wipeout after 1928. 

The Mayville Iron Works blew out its two blast furnaces January 17, 1928, and shut down.  Adding insult to injury,  not long thereafter the Great Depression hit the city.   This is the third of a three-part story on Mayville’s response to the shut-down.    Last week’s Part 2 covered the City Council’s aggressive subsidies of the shoe company, at great taxpayer expense, as the city’s effort to provide jobs during the Great Depression.   This week’s Part 3 describes the city’s purchase in 1934 of former Iron Works real estate, and the dividing up and successful resale of that property to four businesses. 

City Purchase

In 1934 the City of Mayville by vote of the City Council  purchased a portion of the former plant of the Mayville Iron Works for $6,000.00.  The vote was taken after a mass meeting of local citizens.  The legality of this purchase was questioned by some, as improper private activity of a municipality without a public purpose.   The city defended the purchase arguing that it served a public purpose as fire protection and to provide equipment storage.  But the fact is that the purchase was a bold economic development move which help to launch  four successful businesses, and ultimately at no cost to the taxpayers.  And more importantly, taxpayers benefited from jobs created and tax revenues  generated by these new businesses.

Success!

W. D. Knight reported:  “The city eventually realized $20,000 from the sale of  this property to industrial users, disposing of it in parcels to the Mayville Construction Co. [who used the Iron Works slag piles]  in 1937, the Mayville Die & Tool Co.  in 1938, the Rilling Endlich Co. in 1939 and the Purity Cheese Co. in 1941. These companies now [in 1947]  have a combined employment of 175 and an annual payroll of $250,000 or more.”   W.D. Knight, Subsidization of Industry in Forty Selected Cities in Wisconsin, 1930-1946 (Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, October, 1947).   Before selling to Mayville Die & Tool Co. the city in 1937 made improvements to the old roundhouse at that former Iron Works site.   The sale to Rilling-Endlich Co.  was preceded by a lease to that company of the former Iron Works office building and garage in 1934 after which the city spent $2,500 to add a 70 ft by 90 ft addition to the leased property.

 Advertisement - date and publication unknown. Purity Cheese Co.
 was  founded by Kenneth M.  Royer  in 1936.

Results – Employment

Apart from these new businesses which opened on the former Iron Works property,  the city received another boost when in 1937 Maysteel Products, Inc. opened its business at the  former Wisconsin Radiator Furniture Corp. property  on Horicon Street, at the site now owned by Mayville Engineering Company.  Knight  reports the following industrial employment in Mayville in 1945-1946:                                                                             Employment

MaysteelProducts, Inc                                                  200

Purity Cheese Co.                                                         100

Mayville Shoe Corp.                                                     100

Mayville Die and Tool Co.                                             50

Other Industrial Employers                                           100

About 50-75 Mayville workers were employed by  the Van Brunt John Deere plant in Horicon.

Resilient Community

After the closure of the Harsh-Chapline Co. in 1932  the City of Mayville purchased and improved  the shoe plant from the Mayville Improvement Corporation, to bring to Mayville the B&B Shoe Co. of Milwaukee.  That was an expensive venture for the city to deal with the city’s then desperate economic straits, as described in last week’s part 2 of this three-part story on Mayville’s response to the closure of the Iron Works.  The purchase and then resale of portions of former Iron Works property beginning in 1934 kept that property on the tax rolls and  helped to create or develop  four new successful Mayville businesses.

            The aggressive response of the Mayville City Council after the Iron Works closed and during the Great Depression of the 1930’s  is a reflection of the courage and determination  of the community as a whole.  When the going gets tough, the tough get going.   And that’s exactly what happened in Mayville after 1928.

                                                                                   

Sources:  

W.D. Knight, Subsidization of Industry in Forty Selected Cities in Wisconsin, 1930-1946 (Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, October, 1947).

George G. Frederick, When Iron Was King in Dodge County, Wisconsin (Mayville Historical Society, Inc. 1993).

Mayville News (now Dodge County Pionier), various dates.

After the Iron Works Mayville WI - Part 2

This is the second  of a three-part story on Mayville's response to the closing of Mayville’s  Iron Works.   Why this story?  The year 2018 marks the 90-year anniversary of the 1928 closing of the Iron Works.  Last week’s Part 1 covered efforts of local citizens to build a shoe factory in the early 1920’s, and then to keep Harsh Chapline Shoe Company’s Mayville operation  going after the Iron Works closed in 1928.    Harsh Chapline ceased doing business in 1932.  Now Mayville has no Iron Works, no shoe plant jobs, and no significant industry  in a  Depression economy.  Things were looking bleak.   While last week highlighted the efforts of local citizens working to help the Mayville economy apart from government, in this Part 2 the focus shifts to the efforts of local government, the Mayville City Council.

B & B Shoe Co.

In 1932 Morris Bernstein, owner  of B&B shoe company of Milwaukee, approached Mayville about producing shoes at the shoe plant here.  To get B&B to come the Mayville City Council took aggressive promotional action.  The investment by the city to keep the shoe factory going comes across as major sticker shock for a small city in the 1930’s.  The city did this:

1.     Bought the shoe plant from Mayville Improvement Corporation for $28,000 on a 14-year land contract. 

2.     Received (from Mayville Improvement Corporation) a house next to the plant worth $5,149.

3.     Spent $56,000 on improvements.

4.     Spent $15,000 worth of federal relief labor on other improvements.

On top of this, I found it upsetting to hear that shoe plant employees had to chip in $15,000 to pay for B&B’s moving expenses, in the form of payroll deductions over a two-year period.  Demanding factory work, low pay, and then pay for the company’s move?  I’m glad that couldn’t happen today.

1936 postcard -  Mayville Shoe Co - building later razed
Site of present day City Hall and Police Department

Huge Subsidy - Was It Worth It?

B&B  also received a break on the rent. They paid $100 per year for a 20-year lease. The capitalized value of that nominal-rent lease amounts to another $40,000 of assistance.   All in all, the new shoe company received over $155,000 of support from the city and the community.  Today that amount would compute to more than two-million dollars!  

It’s understatement to say that the public subsidy was a major setback for local taxpayers.  The city was already under pressure to provide support  for its out-of-work residents, in the form of what was called city “public aid.” (George Frederick noted from news reports that in December, 1934 100 Mayville families depended on the city for relief.)

           Comparing Mayville’s shoe factory subsidy to similar actions taken in other cities at that time, W.D. Knight says: “Relative to payrolls and tax revenues resulting from the present level of operations, the costs of the Mayville shoe promotion appear among the highest of any of the promotions covered in this [statewide] study.”

High Risk

Looking back,  you might question it all.  Local government should stay out of business and stick to fire protection and public safety, we are taught.   But these were desperate times, with people out of work and many on public aid.     With the Iron Works gone and the Depression bearing down on the city, Mayville had to have those factory jobs, even though it paid a premium to secure them.   This assistance was a risky move by the city.  Even with citizen financial support of  the shoe plant the previous operator had closed shop in 1932.   What made anyone think that B&B could do any better this time around?   

Success

           Thank goodness, city support for the shoe plant did not go to waste.    B&B now  operating as Mayville Shoe Corporation under the direction of J. B. Brindis, president and general manager,  provided 300 jobs during an era when there were few private industry jobs.  The shoe factory in Mayville opened in 1934 operated successfully in the  1930’s and carried on during and  after the war. With its shoe factory subsidy the city made the best of a bad situation, and I give the City Council members and Mayors Dr. W. J. Schmidt (Mayor, 1928-1932) and Walter W.  Schellpfeffer, Sr.  (Mayor 1934-1942) credit for taking action.  

Tough Decisions

How did the city and the community come up with these funds for this public subsidy of a private business,  in the depths of the Depression?  I don't have the answer that question.    The 1930’s  had to have been  a grueling time to sit on the City Council.    Did these shoe plant subsidies keep aldermen awake at night?  From what I  can tell the answer to that question is a surprising  “no.”  The city had excellent leaders who were not crushed by the Depression.

 Certainly constituents were grilling the Mayor and council members with questions and criticism about the shoe plant.   But  I spoke with Walter (“Rags”) Schellpfeffer, son of the Mayor (and his father was also a three-term alderman),  about conversations that he had with his father about what it was like for him to be a Mayor and council member during the Depression.    Mr. Schellpfeffer reported to me that his father was not stressed by his  work for the city.  His impression was that  city officials  at that time saw  the shoe company project as something that had to be done and they did it, without hand-wringing.  “My dad and people he worked with at City Hall were tough individuals,” Mr. Schellpfeffer said.   And W.D. Knight, looking back on the shoe company subsidy after the war when things had improved, also found that people of Mayville were for the most part fine with it.     Knight writing in 1947 says this:  “Commenting on the marked improvement in the pre-war business conditions effected by the shoe company’s employment, one businessman stated that in his opinion, ‘the shoe company did not owe the community a dime.’”   

            Unfortunately, these courageous city officials are faceless to me, other than the picture of Mayor Schellpfeffer that I was able to barely envision gleaning  from the memory of his son (and my friend),  Rags Schellpfeffer.   Rags told me that he remembers going to Milwaukee from time to time with his father and the family to visit the Bernsteins.  If anyone has more details about these city leaders and their experiences during the Depression  I would love to hear about them.

Part 3 Next Week

Part 3 of this series will appear next week. Unlike the city’s gutsy high-cost and high-risk experience with the shoe factory,  next week’s part 3  describing the city’s purchase and resale of former Iron Works property is a powerful success story which the City Council pulled off at no cost to the taxpayers.  

                                                                                                     

Sources:  

W.D. Knight, Subsidization of Industry in Forty Selected Cities in Wisconsin, 1930-1946 (Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, October, 1947).

George G. Frederick, When Iron Was King in Dodge County, Wisconsin (Mayville Historical Society, Inc. 1993).

Mayville News (now Dodge County Pionier), various dates.

After the Iron Works Mayville WI - Part 1

This is the first of a three-part story on Mayville's response to the closing of Mayville’s  Iron Works.   Why this story?  The year 2018 marks the 90-year anniversary of the closing in 1928 of the Iron Works.  The   blast furnaces and the pig iron produced by them, beginning in 1848,  had people calling Mayville the Pittsburgh of the West.  But over time the industry turned away from Dodge County’s iron to iron mined in Minnesota and upper Michigan.  The furnaces here also declined as the market for pig iron dropped after 1922 and as the industry transitioned from iron to steel.  My own view is that the beginning of the end came on January 3,  1921 with the death of company president and shareholder Armin Schlesinger.  After his death the family wanted out, but that’s another story, for another day.

Furnace Talk

Like many local history buffs I'm fascinated by "furnace talk,"  the stories of the Mayville Iron Works.  Actually, that history is a tree with many branches which, to name a few, would include the stories of  mining, the “Cast Iron Stove," the founders of the Iron Works who were also the founders of the city, the coming of the Eastern European immigrants,   the sad stories of workers killed and injured on the job,  the amazing blast furnace process, the Coke Plant, the Schlesingers,  the 12-hour days and 7-day (later 6-day)  weeks at low pay, the bar fights and murders, the "King of the Serbs,"  the company store,    the Iron Works and World War I,  the company houses which still stand, the use of the river, the slag piles, the remnants from the 1933 tear-down (archaeology!), the company owned farms, the horse races, the baseball teams,  and the iron company’s use of the rails.  And for my small “branch,” I offer this brief story about what the 1928 closure left in its wake. 

But first I need to make a pitch for the revival of furnace talk.   Furnace talk has slowed now that the eyewitnesses have died.  In 2013  I spoke with then 95-year-old Dolores Ihde, who died December 30, 2014.   Ms. Ihde  told me that as a child  she and her grandmother would sit out on the front porch at night and look  west from their German Street porch to watch  the tops of the two Mayville blast furnaces lighting up the sky.  I'm sure that's my last encounter with an Iron Works eyewitness.  But there is still a rich history,  thanks to our friends who share stories from their grandparents, and the documented history provided by this newspaper, the Mayville Historical Society, Inc., Mayville Limestone School Museum, Inc. and by the late George Frederick, author of When Iron Was King.  Mayville has its terrific two museums with Iron Works photos, postcards, documents and artifacts.  We have a wealth of information, but someone (not me) should write a book which tells some of the drama beneath the facts.

State Historical Marker North Main Street Mayville 

This post and Parts 2 and 3 which will follow provide a modest  drop in the "furnace talk" bucket.    If any readers have Iron Works-related  stories, give me a call and we will find a way to get them written down in time for Mayville's  175-year anniversary in 2020.  For this story I rely heavily on facts set forth in this publication written by my wife, Katy’s father, Don Knight, who (no car!) took buses and hitchhiked around the state doing research on subsidization of industry for this book:  W.D. Knight, Subsidization of Industry in Forty Selected Cities in Wisconsin, 1930-1946 (Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, October, 1947).

Iron Works Closes – a Story in 3 Parts

The Mayville Iron Works blew out its two blast furnaces January 17, 1928, and shut down.  Adding insult to injury,  not long thereafter the Great Depression hit the city.  To provide work during these dark days concerned Mayville citizens  raised funds to support Mayville’s shoe factory.  That didn’t work.  The shoe plant closed in 1932.  That is the story of this Part 1.  But the city did not give up.  The City Council initiated an aggressive effort of subsidies to put a new shoe business into that plant.   That effort is the story of next week’s Part 2.  The final week’s Part 3 describes the city’s purchase in 1934 of former Iron Works property, and the dividing up and successful resale of that property to four businesses. 

How did the City of Mayville respond to the closure of the Iron Works in 1928? To approach this question we need to have some background.  For years  before the closure city and community leaders had been worried about Mayville having too many eggs in the Iron Works basket. They wanted to see some diversity, some new industry.  After all, the Iron Works had shut down its coke plant in 1921, and prices for pig iron were dropping.   In 1923 they took action.   Concerned citizens at that time formed  the Mayville Improvement Corporation (“M.I.C.”)  as a corporation for profit to build a shoe factory for the Harsh Chapline Shoe Company. Sales of stock generated $37,450, and an additional $9,800 was raised by mortgage making the total capital raised $47,250 to build the factory. That’s a major undertaking, worth well over $500,000 if you are thinking in terms of today’s dollars.

The shoe plant was leased for $4,600 a year and that was supposed to provide a 10% return on the investment over time. In 1927 M.I.C. put  $2,370 into the building and increased the rent to $4,837 per year.

 HC Closes

Harsh Chapline Shoe Company (“HC”)  started its Mayville operations in 1924 and normally employed about 175 people.  For the first four years they paid the full rent.   In 1928  HC  asked for a reduction in rent or other form of local assistance.  Amazingly, a group of local citizens independent of M.I.C. agreed to raise funds to pay part of the shoe company rent.   Over a three-year period these local contributions raised $7,255 or about 1/2 of the total rent.   HC continued to pay the other half of the rent until 1931 when these payments from the public stopped.  Now it’s the Depression and both M.I.C. and the locals who had worked so hard to keep the place afloat were tapped out.   In 1932  HC shut down its operations in Mayville.

            Why did local citizens band together to  pay a part of HC’s rent?  That kind of community financial support for a private business is unheard of today.   The obvious motivator here was that in 1928, the year in which these payments for support of the shoe factory started, the Mayville Iron Works closed.   But these payments from 1928-1931 did not succeed to keep the operations going.  Now in 1932  Mayville has no Iron Works, no shoe plant jobs, and no significant industry in a Depression economy.  Things were looking bleak.   But the city continued its fight for life after 1932,  mainly by approving use of public dollars to attract a new shoe plant operator.  That is  the subject of next week’s Part 2 of this story.

            Reflecting on the events described here, I wish I knew more about M.I.C. and the people involved in it.  They built a beautiful facility for the shoe factory, and brought a new industry to Mayville when it was badly needed.   Then, when times got tough  other locals came forward to help cover HC’s rent.  Who were these amazing people who made financial sacrifices to build this factory and then after the Iron Works closed to  keep these Mayville industrial jobs?   I wish I knew their stories, their work, what motivated them,  and how they found a way to provide this support.   These community efforts to bring in and sustain  the shoe factory show that Mayville had a strong backbone and was not going to roll over with the coming of the Depression.   We will also see that same spirit in next week’s Part 2.

  

Sources:  

W.D. Knight, Subsidization of Industry in Forty Selected Cities in Wisconsin, 1930-1946 (Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, October, 1947).

George G. Frederick, When Iron Was King in Dodge County, Wisconsin (Mayville Historical Society, Inc. 1993).

Mayville News (now Dodge County Pionier), various dates.