Millers Falls Company: 1873-1880
George E. Rogers and Langdon
George E. Rogers, a manufacturer of miter boxes from Northampton, Massachusetts,
joined the Millers Falls Company in 1872. Four years later, he became the
company secretary, at the time that the production of the Langdon
miter box moved to the village of Millers Falls. Patented on November
24, 1864, by Leander W. Langdon, of Northampton, the cast iron miter box
with its lockable adjustments was the first tool of its kind to enjoy widespread
acceptance.(1) The Langdon was manufactured by
the Northampton Pegging Machine Company prior to the move and became a
product of the newly-formed Langdon Mitre Box Company at its new home in
Millers Falls. With George Rogers serving as an officer in both the Millers
Falls Company and Langdon, the relationship between the two firms was cozy.
Millers Falls became sales agent for the Langdon products, and George Rogers
eventually became the treasurer, and later, vice-president and general
manager of Millers Falls. Interlocking
corporate hierarchies and directorates were commonplace, and
the arrangement must have been profitable for the principals of the Langdon
Mitre Box Company, for it was not until 1906 that the Millers Falls Company
acquired complete control of the operation. The reputation of Langdon miter
boxes became so well established that Millers Falls Tools was still capitalizing
on the name in 1971 when it featured a Langdon miter box in its hand tools
catalog.(2)
Drills and scroll saws
In 1873, Millers Falls added a breast drill to its offerings; hand drills
followed two years later. Forty years after these events, the company would
boast that it had been the first to add a chuck to a breast drill and that
it had invented the hand drill. The breast drill claim was overblown, based
on little more than being the first to add a Barber-style chuck to this
type of tool. The firm had much to be proud of, however, its breast drills
were very well designed and Millers Falls salesmanship made them the first
to enjoy large scale market penetration. The company's success with its
hand drills was based on Henry Pratt's securing a patent for a two-jaw,
springless chuck that held smaller, round-shanked bits securely. The chuck's
small size made it ideal for use on eggbeater-style hand drills. With many
of its tools geared to the home hobbyist, the firm was ideally positioned
to market smaller drills, and the new tools sold very well. As was the
case with its breast drills, the firm's claim to have invented the eggbeater
drill was an exaggeration. Factory-produced eggbeater drills had been in
use for at least three decades prior to the introduction of the M-F products.
The company would have been on firmer ground had it stated that it had
developed and marketed the first eggbeater drill to enjoy mass market success.
The Millers Falls Company labeled the new two-jawed bit holder as the 'Star'
chuck, and, as it had with the Barber chuck, sold it individually, for
use on lathes.(3)
The mid-1870s were a time of tremendous energy and creativity at Millers
Falls. The firm had added bracket saws to the line in 1873, and sold 50,000 of them in the twelve months between August 1874 and August 1875. Its success in marketing hand-held saws provided inspiration
for the development of the firm's first foot-powered model in 1875. The new saw
was a serious piece of equipment, weighing in at fifty-six pounds, able
to operate at one thousand strokes a minute and capable of cutting through
stock of up to three inches thick. The foot-powered scroll saw did well,
but it was not until light-weight, amateur
models were added to the catalog that the company stumbled onto a gold
mine. Similar in principle to treadle sewing machines, the saws were a
boon to weekend woodworkers, transforming the often tedious task of cutting
decorative scrollwork into a pleasant diversion. The smaller saws were
safe enough for older children to use without supervision, a happy circumstance
that rendered them capable of providing endless hours of entertainment
to an entire family. Originally intended as a 'fill-in' product to keep
workers busy during the traditional fall downturn in sales, the saws were
popular with hobbyists who created handicrafts and delicate scroll work
during the winter, so demand picked up as the weather grew worse.
In 1877, the company introduced the light-weight Lester Saw and sold
thousands of the tools within months. Designed by Edward Lester, the plant superintendent,
the Lester scroll saw also included a diminutive circular blade, an emery wheel,
a drill chuck and a small lathe, all of which could be mounted to its frame
and powered by the treadle. The saw proved so popular that other foot-powered,
gadget-laden tools were added to the catalog. Lester left the company shortly after developing the tool.
In 1881, he joined A. W. Lyman in organizing the Lester & Lyman Manufacturing Company. The
new enterprise set up shop along the Millers Falls canal in the building that once housed Charles
Amidon's baby coach factory. The business manufactured garden tools, household cutlery, and
strangely—harmonicas. The partners relocated to Greenfield in 1884.(4)
The firm's 'New Rogers' fret saw, named after George E. Rogers, deserves special mention in that it
became the most widely sold foot-powered jig saw of the era.(5)
The New Rogers, which lacked the Lester's lathe attachment and circular
saw, was lighter in weight and sold for sixty percent less.
Millers Falls advertised the New Rogers as the 'best cheap saw in the business,'
and then went on to develop an even even cheaper model, the Cricket. The
Cricket was eight pounds lighter than the New Rogers, lacked a dust blower
and sold for two dollars and fifty cents. Designed for the home market,
the Millers Falls Company's lightweight foot-powered saws got little respect
from professional woodworkers and, indeed, were seen by one contemporary
writer as fit only to "sell to boys and ministers of the gospel."(6)
As the years passed, the company would exploit the bracket and scroll
saw market in every manner possible. Starter kits with drills, gouges,
hand-held fret saws and blades were sold for those not wanting a full blown
treadle machine. Project patterns were added to the catalog and soon sold
well enough that separate price lists with upwards of a thousand designs
by firms such as Farrington & Co., Adams & Bishop, and Hope &
Ware were published. Among the miscellaneous items that would eventually
make an appearance in the specialized lists were feeding cups for mounting
on intricately sawn bird cages and statuettes of the crucified Christ destined
for elaborate scroll work crosses.
Views of the plant
This bird's eye view of the Millers Falls plant is taken from an 1879 book entitled The History of the
Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts. It is rich in the amount of detail that rewards the careful observer. The plant is nearly
double the size of that shown in the 1873 view presented earlier in this narrative. A second
floor has been added to part of the main building, substantial additions have been added to the rear and the wing which parallels the
main building has doubled in length. A cupola, retained through several remodelings, has been added to the front of the main building,
and several storage sheds have been built along the river. The mill dam can be seen in the background, and immediately upstream is a
covered bridge that was built in 1872 and connected Bridge Street to Gunn Street. Behind the covered bridge is the railway bed that
enabled the efficient transport of material and finished product from the plant's remote location. (The village of Millers Falls was
a station on the Vermont & Massachusetts and the New London railroads.) The company's canal can be seen running from the dam to the
plant. Directly behind it, and to the left, is the flat-topped hill that was home to Amidon, Gunn and Pratt Streets.
Several interior views of the Millers Falls plant were published on the cover of the popular
journal Scientific American in the same year that the bird's eye view in the Connecticut Valley book.
Together with a few paragraphs of text, they tell us much about conditions inside the factory. To the degree possible, the exterior
walls of the high-ceilinged rooms were pierced for windows in order to take advantage of natural light. An overhead system of belts and
pulleys provided power to the grinders, lathes, drill presses, and milling machines used in manufacturing, and the company's turbines
could deliver up to three hundred horsepower to the network. Wooden floors were the norm, and the storage and use of solvents along with
frequent sparks from the machines meant that fire was always a danger. The conflagrations experienced by the firm in its earliest years
must have weighed heavily on the minds of its officers during construction planning as the main building was divided into six sections,
each separated from the others by a heavy brick wall. A central corridor ran the length of the building and the doors dividing the
sections were made of heavy iron and could be closed to prevent a fire from spreading. The series of arched doorways comprising central
corridor can be seen in the view of the finishing room at right. A close examination of the tools pictured shows braces, breast drills,
wheels for treadle saws and a foot-powered grinder.
The Millers Falls Company employed 150 souls at the time of the article. To have referred to them as 'men' would have been a
misstatement. As can be seen in the illustration at right, women began to take up positions in the plant early on, although
they were doing what was considered light work. The two women are seen putting the final touches on turned wooden handles—most
likely using a scraper or sandpaper. Just behind them can be seen an arched doorway with its fire proof iron doors. Since the ceiling in
this room is flat—it is most likely on the ground floor in the part of the plant to which an upper story had been added.
The officers of the Millers Falls Company did everything they could to make the plant as self-contained as possible. The works
included an iron foundry, a brass foundry, blacksmith shops, a tempering shop, a machine shop, pattern and wood turning shops, a
grinding shop and a polishing shop. There were also inspection rooms, stock rooms, offices and, of course, privies.
The Greenfield Gazette and Courier considered the Millers Falls Company to be "in
the front rank of the women's labor movement" and noted that the women at its lathes proved "themselves equal to their
more muscular brothers." The manufacturer used large quantities of rosewood and lignum vitae in the production of the wooden
parts of its hand tools. Rough logs were purchased in New York and shipped to the plant to be sawn into the small pieces needed
for tool handles. The use of these exotic woods was an expensive proposition. Scrap was not discarded, but was transformed into
such products pen holders, knobs and buttons. One especially productive young woman was reported to have turned out 10,000 such
buttons in a single day.(7)
The latest technology
The company was proud of its machinery and did its best to keep abreast of current developments. The dapper worker in the
illustration at left is pictured using a turret lathe. One of the uses to which the firm's turret machines were put was the production
of external shells for small universal chucks—products destined for eventual placement on hand drills, tool holders or machinist's
lathes. A bar of iron would be put through the hollow mandrel of the lathe and turned, drilled, tapped, chamfered, finished and cut off.
The Millers Falls Company boasted that a worker using such a machine could complete a chuck in the span of five minutes. While, at first
glance, the claim is accurate, it conveniently ignores the time and labor involved in manufacturing, assembling and inserting the
jaws—components necessary to make the shell functional. Be that as it may, the firm was proud of its capability for rapid and
accurate production, touted it whenever possible and understood that growth and survival depended on the ability to remain
competitive.
It is tempting to romanticize the company's nineteenth-century history in terms of Amidon's overshot waterwheel and a handful
of workers turning out eighteen braces a day, but the story of the Millers Falls Company is one of shrewd investment, innovative
products, aggressive marketing and the use of cutting edge technology.
Illustrations:
George E. Rogers portrait: Hardware Dealers Magazine, v. 43, no. 253, January 1915.
New Rogers saw; Catalogue no. 35. Millers Falls, Mass. : Millers Falls Co., 1915.
Birds-eye view of plant: History of the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts with illustrations and
biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. Philadelphia : L. H. Everts, 1879.
Internal views of plant: Scientific American, March 22, 1879.
Linked image of Langdon mitre box: Catalogue 1887. New York : Millers Falls Company, 1887.
