About a decade ago this column featured a piece on the sewing machine factory that set up business in Fergus in the 1870s.
It was a branch plant of the Wilson, Bowman and Company firm of Hamilton.
The proprietors built a large stone structure on land at the corner of St. Andrew and Breadalbane, at what was then the west end of Fergus, just to the south of the recently-abandoned liquor store.
Business was good for a couple of years, but then the factory became the victim of a economic depression and a flooded market. Unsold inventory piled up, as red ink flowed over the books.
By 1880 the sewing machine boom in Canada was over. Fergus had a large building on its hands, and no tenant or prospective purchaser in sight.
When the sewing machine factory closed, much of the equipment remained in the building, which hosted a succession of tenants and businesses over the ensuing 45 years.
Longest lived of them was a dye works, but it too failed to become an industrial mainstay of the village. Beatty Brothers, which after 1900 quickly grew to be the dominant industry in Fergus, made use of the structure during the First World War.
Over time the building, lacking proper and regular maintenance, fell into disrepair. Various tenants had modified or removed some of the equipment and that which remained was hopelessly outdated by the 1920s.
For a time it seemed that the wrecker’s ball would soon be at work on the site.
That all changed in the fall of 1925. The property had come into the hands of Charles J. Mistele, a businessman with various interests in Fergus. Mistele undertook a general cleanup of the property and put a new roof on the structure.
Editor Hugh Templin of the Fergus News Record took a special interest in the property, and visited the site on several occasions, putting his impressions into his editorials.
On one visit in early November 1925, Templin noted the immense progress made in revitalizing the property. On a previous visit, some three weeks earlier, Charlie Mistele had told Templin of his plans to set up a factory to make wooden baskets of various kinds, with women filling a large part of the workforce.
There were rumours at the time that W.J. Beatty of Beatty Brothers was a silent partner in the firm, or was at least an investor in it. There seemed to be something to the stories. In the building Templin encountered Harvey Matthews, whose official title with the Beatty firm was draftsman, but who in fact was a brilliant engineer and architect.
Matthews was pleased to show Templin around the building. He pointed out the water system he had designed, which directed rain water from the roof of the building into vats in the basement for use by the plant.
Matthews had supervised the removal of the old dye equipment and vats. He had installed an up-to-date heating system for the comfort of employees. Three new floors replaced the original ones, which had unsafe areas due to broken boards and water damage caused by the roof that had leaked for years.
At the time of Templin’s visit the factory was in its second week of production, though work on fitting up the building continued. At that point there were 58 employees, the majority of them girls and women.
Production work was entirely by hand, though Matthews said equipment would soon be installed to speed up the process.
Templin noted the manufacturing process resembled a textile mill, using thin strips of wood rather than thread.
Mistele claimed he soon expected to have about 75 people on the payroll, and they would be busy. He said he had a pile of orders on the books that would keep the factor humming for the foreseeable future.
The women worked on a piecework system. Most were, said Mistele, wives and daughters of Beatty employees with extra time on their hands. Working in the basket factory provided extra household income, “ … assisting many Fergus homes,” he said, “to have more than the bare necessities.”
Though Mistele did not say it, the use of piece work rates tied the payroll costs directly with output. Trainees would earn much less than experienced hands. That meant there were fewer costs in training new workers, and that employee turnover, always a danger in a low-pay, low-skill operation such as this one, would not place a cost burden on the operation.
Hugh Templin was impressed with the factory and its potential for the Fergus economy. The village’s main employer, Beatty Brothers, did not then employ many women. The Basket Factory opened opportunities for them that had not previously existed. With proper management, he believed, the operation would soon top 100 employees.
By the spring of 1926 the payroll topped the 80 mark. During the worst years of the depression it levelled off, but the plant continued in operation. There was a constant demand by fruit growers and other agriculturists for wooden baskets for fruit and vegetables.
In addition, and as expected, the Beatty firm ordered various wood parts for its washing machines and other appliances from the Fergus Basket Factory.
War contracts during the Second World War, particularly for ammunition boxes, kept the employees busy. After the war though, the payroll again declined. New equipment eliminated some of the jobs, but the demand for woven wooden boxes declined as corrugated cardboard captured an ever-larger share of the market.
Still, the Fergus Basket Company continued in operation into the 1950s.
In 1955 a new owner, Stan Baranski of Kitchener, took over and made a number of changes in equipment and product lines. Under his ownership the business was known as the Fergus Box Veneer Company.
Under the new ownership the payroll varied, most of the time hovering between a dozen and 20 or so, depending on the state of the order book. Though only about 90 years old, the factory gave something of a Dickensian look to the west end of downtown Fergus, with its stark and plain rubble stone construction and its small, multi-pane windows.
At about 4pm on the afternoon of Aug. 3, 1958, several residents noticed smoke coming from the upper, or fourth floor of the building. That portion of the structure had been used largely for the storage and drying of wood. Flames soon gained headway, fanned by the draft that the stone building provided.
Fergus firefighters were on the scene almost immediately, and Elora’s force was soon there as well after answering a request for mutual aid. It was a tough fight for the men, and ultimately a losing one. Still, they continued their fight into the night. Hundreds of spectators gathered to watch the show, most of them taking seats on the grass on the hill on the north side of St. Andrew Street. Others watched from the south side of the Grand River.
Eventually the tinder-dry roof burned off completely, despite the continuous streams of water, and water drenched everything inside that was not burned. As is usually the case with stone buildings, the fire had weakened the walls of the structure. There was no subsequent talk of rebuilding.
At the time of the fire the payroll was down to 10 men. Still, it was a loss to the Fergus economy.