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.