CHAPTER IV.
GREAT OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS.
Starting with a capital of _forty dollars_, and that borrowed from another man, this poor mechanic launched upon the stormy sea of commercial life. Discouragements and disappointments met him at every turn. People had learned to look upon the Sewing Machine very much as we look upon the “Keely Motor.” Every man who pretended to have a working machine was considered an impostor. Thousands had bought machines on the faith of inventors’ statements, which they were obliged to throw aside as useless. Whoever now attempted to introduce the Sewing Machine must face all the consequences of previous failures, and this Mr. Singer quickly learned to his sorrow. Everywhere he found people unwilling to believe that a successful sewing machine had actually been built, and repeatedly he was shown to the door the moment he had stated his business.
Mr. Blodgett advised him to give up manufacturing, and sell territorial rights. He said he was a tailor by trade and knew more about sewing than Singer possibly could; that the Blodgett machine had been the leading machine in the market, and he could rest assured that “sewing machines would never come into use.”
Still the undaunted mechanic struggled on in poverty, bearing up under reverses and disappointments, resolved to _force_ an unwilling public to recognize the fact that a successful sewing machine could and actually had been made. Slowly he gained ground; gradually he obtained access to the public ear; by degrees he induced people to at least give his machines a test. A few hundred dollars borrowed from friends expedited the work of introduction, and just as the skies seemed to brighten, a new and formidable trouble appeared. The news that Singer had made a machine which would actually do continuous stitching brought Elias Howe, Jr., to his door with the patent he had obtained upon another man’s invention (as before stated), who claimed that Singer infringed his patent, and must pay him the modest sum of $25,000 or quit the business. It did not take long for a man who had recently borrowed forty dollars to begin business, to decline paying twenty-five thousand dollars tribute-money, and the consequence was that Singer found himself burdened with litigation that threatened to swamp him.
[Illustration:
YARD OF THE GREAT SINGER FACTORY. ]
At this juncture he called in the aid of Mr. Edward Clark, whose recognized legal and financial skill were taxed to the utmost to prevent the utter ruin of the inventor. Mr. Clark became an equal partner, and business was thenceforward conducted under the firm name of “I. M. Singer & Co.”
Other inventors were stimulated by Singer’s success to vigorous efforts at making machines of practical utility, and the consequence was a series of infringements upon existing patents, resulting in a perfect epidemic of litigation. Principal among the litigants was Elias Howe, Jr., whose patent enabled him to bring all the rest under contribution, and this he did, sueing right and left for several years. The patent of 1846 had made Howe complete master of the situation, and enabled him to dictate the formation of a combination, by the terms of which licenses were issued to manufacturers upon the payment of a heavy royalty for each machine manufactured. From this royalty Howe received the monstrous stipend of over two millions of dollars, not because he had invented anything useful to the world, but simply because he had obtained a patent upon the inventions of another man!
From the outset, Singer & Co. resisted, at great expense, the demands and pretensions of Howe, fighting single-handed the battle of the inventors and the great world which was waiting for cheap machines. Howe was endeavoring to establish a monopoly, strong and compact, which meant dear machines to the weary-fingered women who were still singing the dreary “Song of the Shirt;” Singer & Co. were struggling to throw the business open to fair and honest competition at moderate prices. For three years the unequal contest was continued against the monopoly. All the other manufacturers had yielded to Howe at the first, and were conducting their business without interruption under his licenses. They viewed the contest between Howe and Singer & Co. much as the traditional frontiersman’s wife regarded a terrible struggle between her husband and a grizzly, merely remarking that “it didn’t make much odds to her which won, but she allers loved to see a right lively fight.” If Singer & Co. won, all the others would reap the full benefit of the victory without cost to themselves; if Howe should win, they would be no worse off than they were before, and he would probably cripple their most formidable competitor. Meanwhile the business of Singer & Co. was suffering every possible obstruction, while that of their competitors, now wholly uninterrupted, was making great strides.
[Illustration:
SCREW DEPARTMENT. ]
At last, in May, 1854, self-preservation dictated a withdrawal from such a contest, and an agreement was made by which Singer & Co. were to pay Howe a royalty upon each machine manufactured by them. Thus was taken the last and most important step towards the great Sewing Machine Combination, into which Singer & Co. were the last to enter, and then only when driven into it for self-preservation, after a long and exhaustive drain upon their means. In settlement of this suit, Howe received $15,000 royalty, and the total sum paid to Howe by Mr. Singer and his associates, up to 1877, was over a quarter of a million dollars.
By the year 1863, the annual sales of Singer machines amounted to 21,000, and agencies were established in the principal cities of the United States. In that year the firm was merged into an incorporated company, bearing the title of “The Singer Manufacturing Company,” and both the original partners retired from the active management of the business, though they remained the heaviest stockholders, and had seats in the Board of Directors.
In four years’ time the yearly sale of machines had more than doubled. In two years more even this large figure had been doubled. Two years more and the annual sales had again doubled, the sales of that year (1871), amounting to 181,260 machines. In seven years more even this amount of business was doubled, the number of Singer machines sold in the year 1878 being 356,432. It would seem as if the extreme limit of business must now have been reached. But still the yearly sale increased, and, in the single year, 1879, the world bought the immense number of 431,167 Singer Sewing Machines, and, at the time of writing, it appears as though even this figure might be surpassed for the year 1880. Three-fourths of all the sewing machines sold throughout the world in 1879 were “Singers.”
Perhaps no company ever before was officered as the Singer Manufacturing Company was at its organization in 1863. The business had been originally started by a penniless man upon a borrowed capital of forty dollars, and had brought to him and his partner a golden harvest. Both were now rich, and in stepping out they placed the control of the new Company in the hands of men who had risen to notice solely by their own merits and exertions. The new President, Mr. Inslee A. Hopper, had been an entry clerk with I. M. Singer & Co.; the Vice-President and General Manager was found in the person of Mr. George R. McKenzie, who had been a joiner and cabinet maker for the old firm at eleven and a half dollars a week. He was a hard-working mechanic, whose solid business worth and prodigious ability as an organizer and an executive took him by degrees to the post of General Manager of a business giving employment to forty thousand men, which post he fills to-day with eminent and acknowledged skill. The Secretary was Dr. Alexander F. Sterling, a physician of New York City, who possessed an unusual tact for business; and the Treasurer’s post was assigned to Mr. William F. Proctor, who had spent years at a machinist’s bench, and whose practical judgment and skill in mechanics are important elements to this day in the management of the business.
In 1876 Mr. Hopper resigned, and Mr. Edward Clark was unanimously called to the Presidency of the Company, and the active management of the business to whose early days he had devoted his abilities with such signal success.
Nor are these the only instances where men have risen from the ranks to high position in the Singer Company. Many years ago, when the old firm was battling with poverty, Mr. Singer sent a bright, energetic, but poor young man, to New Haven, Conn., to open an office and try to establish a business in Singer machines, saying to him, “Jim, we will send you all the machines you want, but not a cent of money.” It was the practical application of the polite Southern phrase, “Root, hog, or die.” The young man fought his way to business with desperate energy, and to-day is manager of the Central Office at Chicago, having a district covering several States and Territories, and has, within a single year, sold over two million dollars worth of Singer Sewing Machines.
Another young man, who worked as a clerk at six dollars a week in this same New Haven office, is now manager of the immense office at London, which manages the Company’s business in Great Britain and Ireland, France, Spain, and Western Europe generally, also Africa, Australia, South America and the British Possessions of Asia.
Not many years since, a bright German boy was employed in the factory, carrying water for the men and doing odd jobs. He did his trivial duties well, however; so well that he was rapidly pushed forward. Step by step he was promoted, and now is manager of the great Singer office at Hamburg, Germany, which does a vast business throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and is pushing its way into Western Asia. Like the others, he began without friends or influence, and has won his present proud position by faithful adhesion to duty in the humblest post, by modest energy and strict integrity.
[Illustration:
ASSEMBLING ROOM. ]
The Central Office managers at Cincinnati and St. Louis, each doing a large business and entrusted with great interests and responsibilities, began at the lowest round of the ladder, and have climbed unaided to their present positions. Surely there has been no royal road to position in this remarkable company.
It is doubtful if the history of the entire world can furnish an instance in which any single house, doing a legitimate business, has had a growth so stupendous within an equal length of time. The reader will remember that Arrowsmith, the purchaser of Hunt’s first machine, failed to patent the invention because, among other reasons, it would require “at least three thousand dollars” to begin the business of manufacturing and selling sewing machines. Little did he dream that within thirty years a single company would have millions of dollars invested in the manufacture of one form of sewing machine! Arrowsmith urged for his fatal delay in procuring the patent to which he was then entitled, that the fees were so heavy—some $60! And now one company spends thousands of dollars annually in the various forms of advertising!
Still another reason urged by this enterprising smithy was that he “had other business.” Yet, within thirty years a single company finds itself with over ten thousand employés under regular salaries or wages, and thirty thousand more working the whole or part of the time on commission. And this Company, investing many millions of money in its business, spending thousands every year in advertising, employing some forty thousand persons, eight thousand horses, and having its own locomotive and steamboat busy in transporting its machines and materials between New York and its great factory at Elizabeth, is, as the reader may have surmised, The Singer Manufacturing Company.
[Illustration:
JAPANNING FURNACES. ]
Its system of agencies embraces the entire civilized world, and even pushes its outposts across the boundaries into semi-civilized lands. All of the United States and Canada are covered with this grand network of agencies; Mexico, the West Indies, and South America are familiar with the name “Singer.” Every nook and corner of Europe knows the song of this tireless Singer, too, and so do the colonized portions of Africa, Asia, and Australasia. An immense business is done in Singer machines in Australia; thriving agencies and sub-agencies may be found throughout China, Japan, and the Islands of the Indian Ocean. Calcutta has a large business in Singer machines, and even Cape Town and Transvaal, in South Africa, are giving the Singer agents an increasingly large patronage.
On every sea are floating the Singer Machines; along every road pressed by the foot of civilized man this tireless ally of the world’s great sisterhood is going upon its errand of helpfulness. Its cheering tune is understood no less by the sturdy German matron than by the slender Japanese maiden; it sings as intelligibly to the flaxen-haired Russian peasant-girl as to the dark-eyed Mexican Señorita. It needs no interpreter, whether it sings amid the snows of Canada or upon the pampas of Paraguay; the Hindoo mother and the Chicago maiden are to-night making the self-same stitch; the untiring feet of Ireland’s fair-skinned Nora are driving the same treadle with the tiny understandings of China’s tawny daughter; and thus American machines, American brains, and American money are bringing the women of the whole world into one universal kinship and sisterhood.
[Illustration:
CASTING IN THE FOUNDRY. ]
The Principal Office of the Company is finely located in New York City, overlooking Union Square. From this office the general business of the Company is directed all over the world. The American business is transacted from twenty-five centres, located in the larger cities, such as Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Richmond, Cincinnati, St. Louis, etc. Each Central Office is controlled by a manager, under whose direction Branch Offices are located throughout the territory assigned to his care. Under the Branch Office agent, again, are located subordinate offices in every town or village within his district where business seems to warrant it. The territory controlled by a Central Office often embraces an entire State, and, in some cases, several States. In other instances two or more Central Offices are located within the same State. While the Central Office manager is charged with the general direction of all his Branches, and the Branch Office agent with the care and management of all his subordinate offices, yet the reader should not suppose these superior offices to be nothing but a sort of head-quarters for the officers of higher rank. Every Central Office is equipped with its force of canvassers, collectors, etc., and is expected to accomplish as much of the actual work of canvassing and selling as though it were the only office the Company ever opened. The same is expected of the Branch Office, and woe to that manager who cannot do duty as a private soldier, and make his own office an example in all respects to the smallest “sub!” It were better for him that the General Manager had never been born! The Canadian business is similarly managed from two Central Offices: one at Montreal, the other at Toronto. All these twenty-seven Central Offices report to New York, and receive their instructions direct from the officers of the Company.
The London office has immense interests confided to its care, as before stated. The South American business is managed from London, principally because England enjoys facilities of communication with that continent which even Yankee enterprise has thus far neglected to secure for our own country.
[Illustration:
NEEDLE DEPARTMENT. ]
The business of Middle and Northern Europe and of Western Asia is managed from the Hamburg office, which, like the London office, makes a consolidated report to the principal office in New York. The total number of the Company’s offices throughout the world is over 4,500, of which over one-third are in the United States.
The foregoing are but a few of the interesting details of the organization and management of this remarkable Company. It is doubtful if any public or private corporation in the world can show so complete an organization. No bank is more scrupulously exact in every detail; no army has a more systematic discipline. And while such a complete system is necessary to prevent so enormous a business, covering so much ground, from falling to pieces by its own weight, yet it is also true that the very completeness and compactness of this organization are themselves the best possible guarantees for the permanence and indefinite prosperity of this gigantic corporation.