Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1899-07-19
SEEN IN BELOIT, WIS.,.
A Little City with Some Ire.
mendous Industries.
MACHINE WEIGHING FIFTEEN TONS.

Dresses IA Log on Four Sides at Once-Con-
cern Employing o Peoplc--A Retired
Rail- Dad President, Formerly a Teie-
graph Operator-Where Matt CARPENTER
Praeticed Law-Tiie Puritan Impress on
BelOit-A Eeauiifal City.
Madison, Ms, July 18.-When one
wanders upon the hillside where Be
lott college is pitched, he might i'm
agine himself in cultured Athens cent
uries ago, for al is peace and culture,
and men wall to and fro in earnest
converse and thought is king.
But when he stands at the close of
day on the Upper Bridge" that spans
the Rock ant notes the hurrying
homeward of the 900 employees of the
Fairbanks-Morse concern he realizes
that it is & city of action as well
as OF thought. Here they come, hum
dreds o, men, in pairs and groups,
chatting and laughing, or perhaps
alone, more earnest, but all bent in a
hurry TO supper and home. Nearly
all are young men. Their faces and
hands are begrimed with honest hand
AANo ~ 1NACb5 hAStiAos 4 ~ ny
past-scores of them; in all, hundreds.
Every bicycle seemed shining and
oiled; for to these hosts who make
gas and gasoline engines, and wind
mills, and heavens knows what not,
in this giant concern, whose plant
looms up like a castle city, the skill
full care of a bicycle is child's play.
Some of the workmen drove home,
for Beloit has no pictures of industrial
serfdom; and tasteful, p~rettily cos
tuned wife or daughter, or the happy,
neat children, who come to drive
papa" home, was a lesson in Ameri-
can life that gladdened the heart.
a City of Busy Factories.
PelOit is thus u city of contrasts. Fa-
nous as an educational center, it's in
dustries are remarkable in their ex-
tent, and must eventually eclipse its
prestige as a college town" merely.
1t has perhaps 1000 people only, and
it owes little to the beautiful Rock riv-
or as a source of power. Why these
manufacturing interests should be
there and multiply no n knows, un-
less it be in the interest, enterprise
and ingenuity of the people.
The big plants" are growths. /.
Thompson vas making plows by hand
over an anvil in the early days. But
now, with his sons, he employees 200
hands in the manufacture of agricul-
tural implements, gas engines, etc,
and he is reported II of the wealth
lest men in town.
The Berlin machine works were
moved from that city a dozen years
ago, and the city gave a subsidy of
$12, Geo to help the concern buy some
property. Municipal subsidies work
badly as a rule. But this plant, then
employing ninety hands, now gives
work to 400, and Messrs. Yates and
Forbes, brothers-in-law, the moving
spirits, have decorated Beliot with
homes side by side that cost some
$25, 900 each. The concern makes heavy
Woodworking machinery, some OF
them, for instance. eighteen feet long
They make a 'timber-sizer" which
dresses a log four sides at once, 24x3C
inches; and will do it fifty lineal feet
a moment! Such a machine costs
about $2,S00 and weighs fifteen tons
There is no heavier wood-cutting ma
chinery made.
Young Men Who Won Success.
The great Beloit Iron works is an
other story of pluck. Some fifteen
years ago a manufacturing concern
failed and four or five young men
bought at an auction for a small price
what represented a fortune invested,
They could not have paid much, as
they did not have it. But r. J.
Burdge, a retired farmer, well-known
as assemblyman and senator, believed
in them and in BelOits destiny, and
with his aid and others help they went
ahead.
They operated one winter with sew
en- men. One of them acted as super
intendent at So a day to keep down ex-
penses. They, too, have expanded.
They now employ 1875. They make ma
chinery used in making paper. At the
worlds fair they had a $25 900 machine
turning out the white fabric. This
shop is a wonderful place. The
main shaft that one usually finds in
n machine shop is absent. Electric mo-
tors do the business. There are some
fifteen of them (made at the Northern
Electrical works in Madison, in which
ex-senator Villas is interested). Orig
inally each tool had it's own motor.
This was the plan of the Baldwin Lo-
connective works in Philadelphia. But
it meant waste of current. So the Be
lott Iron works profited by the expe-
rience. and group their tools for a mo-
tors power.
One sees colossal cranes moving
enormous weights, each crane carry
ing it's W motor on its journey about
the great room. No machine in the
world is so big as a paper machine,
Nh. -. E--- OEn - OEA 4-x-
When they ship one from sixteen to
eighteen cars are required. Yet the
crane picked up the parts and moved
them about as a carpenter lifts and
points and rests a joist. We saw a
taper speeding cone" a huge steel
construction eleven feet long. with a
diameter of sixty inches. tapering down
to forty-eight. With this the desired
quality and weight of paper can be Sc
cured.
Shoes That Please Even Boston.
The west makes most everything.
But naturally manufacture begins with
the cheaper grades. But the John
Foster Shoe Co. is famous as the first
of the industry in the west to sell
goods in Boston. Fine" shoes are
made in Beloit in the trade use of the
word. This concern employees $50 peo-
pie. The name CASTOR means a good
deal in this city. w B. CASTOR planted
a scale works fifty years ago:t He is
now 50 years old. The R%esenblatt
Overall. Co, find need of 100kworkers,
making coarse furnishing goods of
many kinds. Space forbids mention OF
other oncerns-even larger.
One of the men who believes in Be-
lott is ex-President w. B. Strong of the
Atchison and Santa Fe railway. Within
sixty days lie has bought $4,000
worth of business property that the
citizens can put their fingers on, and
it is said lie win invest a quarter of a
million. He has a tract of 100 acres
he is exploiting as a homeland. He
is building homes on it for tenants and
'Gudley Chapel in honor. of his ia
Their, is a place where they may all
worship.
From Trunk Throwing to a Presidency
Mr., Strong was born up in Vermont
and when a boy of IA he came with
his parents to Beloit. That was in
1851. He began his career by carrying
messages for Charles f, Sholes and
laOrpAJ tnInpro rbxy -, InIr;t ThAp