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.
No comments:
Post a Comment