More on the Beatty Brothers factory

Last week’s column on the start of construction of the Beatty Brothers Hill Street factory prompted several read­ers – two of them retired Beatty hands – to contact me. All were unaware of the rocky early years of the company, and its rapid rise and expansion in the early 20th century.

The Beatty firm deserves to have a full-length business his­tory, and as far as I am aware, the subject is waiting for some­one to tackle it. There are some papers of the company at Mc­Master University, and a much larger collection of material at the Wellington County Muse­um & Archives. As well, the Fergus News Record has sur­vived in an almost complete run during the years that the company operated, and there is much material in the Toronto financial press.

As noted last week, the com­pany struggled for its first two decades, which saw the early death of one of the founding partners, Matthew Beatty, and bankruptcy in 1895. Creditors settled for 25 cents on the dollar. The new firm, reorganized that year, was initially dominated and in ef­fect, managed, by the Imperial Bank, the largest loser in the old company.

Some creditors objected to the heavy involve­ment of the Imperial Bank, suspecting that it was favouring itself. The objectors got no­where. Ties between the Im­perial Bank and the Beatty firm remained strong as long as the family dominated the company.

Though a competent mech­anic and machinist, old George Beatty might be described as inept as a businessman. In fact, his wife handled much of the paperwork. All that changed after 1900, when William and Milton, of the second genera­tion, joined the firm.

Beatty Brothers, during the 19th century, had been makers of plows, reapers, and mowers, struggling in an industry of doz­ens of small manufacturers such as themselves. The new generation saw the wisdom of specializing. By 1908, the firm was pushing new designs of hay carriers, barn slings, and manure handling equipment, and setting up a system of national distribution necessary to manufacture in large quan­ti­ties. The strategy was imme­di­ately successful.

That year, old George Beat­ty and the Imperial Bank agreed that Will and Milton should be admitted to the firm as full partners. A year earlier, an addition had expanded the factory on the Grand River. It was soon obvious that a new factory would soon be neces­sary, and one with better access to rail transportation. The result was the first stage of the Hill Street plant, planning for which began in 1910, and which was described in last week’s col­umn.

Small additions to both the Grand River and Hill Street plants followed. A huge ex­pansion came after World War I, expanding the Hill Street plant 192 feet to the east and 144 feet to the west. Con­struction, like the first stage of the plant, combined old-fash­ioned rubble stone walls with a single storey building, poured concrete floor, and a modern saw-tooth roof.

By this time, the Beatty firm was the dominant player in the Fergus economy. In 1919, with an expanding workforce draw­ing people to Fergus and a rush of returning soldiers, the town faced a housing crisis.

Beatty Brothers jumped into the void, setting up the Fergus Housing Company to build resi­dences for its workers. Em­ployees could buy the houses and pay off the mortgage with weekly payroll deductions. In 1919, the company built 12 houses on Kitchener Street, and had plans for a further 25 in the northwest part of Fergus.

There were further plant extensions in 1925, with new wings at Hill Street, and a 52,000-square-foot extension of the Grand River plant to the west. The new wings brought the Hill street plant up to 125,000 square feet, almost three acres. The residences and the plant extensions were all de­signed by H.W. Matthews, who had joined the firm as staff architect and designer. As with earlier construction, the con­tracts went to local firms: con­crete work to Charles Mattaini and Quinn & Wilson, stone work to William Gow, and brick­work to Norman Stafford, of Elora. The firm’s own em­ployees did most of the car­pentry, electrical and heating work.

By that time, the barn mech­anization lines had been sup­plemented by various models of domestic appliances, parti­cularly washing machines. The company boasted that it oper­ated the largest appliance factory in the British Empire. It was quite an achievement for Will and Milton Beatty in the quarter century since they grad­u­ated from college.

In addition to the Fergus expansions, Beatty Brothers had taken over several other firms during the early 1920s, some of them former subsi­diaries of American firms. The list included James Provan & Company, Tolton Brothers of Guelph, and R. Dillon & Sons.

Most of the acquired plants continued in operation. By 1928, there were more than 1,300 employees on the pay­roll, only a third of whom work­ed in Fergus. The com­pany had a chain of distributors and warehouses spanning the country, and a presence in the British and Commonwealth market.

Next week: a big 60th anniversary celebration for Beatty.

 

 

Stephen Thorning

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