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.