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“Never hesitate to go into debt for something worthwhile.” – William H. Mason

DUST TO DUST

In the early years of the twentieth century, the lumber industry as a whole faced a serious downturn. Vast areas of virgin forests had been clearcut to supply timber, but even with replanting, trees of a viable size would take generations to regrow. The timber industry’s might was waning, and all timber companies were left with was sawdust.

Sawdust from timber production actually accounted for nearly thirteen percent of any finished lumber product. This waste eventually became a commodity unto itself, serving to power various industrial processes at several local businesses. However, no matter how efficiently it was used, its existence served to highlight the waste inherent in the milling process.

EDISON’S PROTEGEE

Around this same time, a young engineer named William Horatio Mason proposed to his fiancé, the daughter of a timber land baron. Mason was a Virginia native who was educated at Cornell, and at the time of his engagement and subsequent marriage, was working as an apprentice of Thomas Edison.

After his apprenticeship, Mason worked in a shipyard during WWI, and became interested in the technical properties, applications, and potential of wood, especially when exposed to steam. His interest morphed into a fascination with lumber production, and specifically the sheer amount of waste generated. He conducted a series of experiments, eventually uncovering a means to extract turpentine from lumber, thus reducing waste and allowing the end result to be sold for shipbuilding purposes — “naval stores”.

He presented his idea to the owners of the Wausau-Southern Lumber Company — relatives of his wife — who agreed to allow him to test his processes in their Laurel mill. His methods proved so successful that the company converted several of their traditional kilns to this process and exponentially expanded Mason’s business, and their own.

He then turned his attention to a similar problem: extracting rosin from low quality pine lumber. Using a similar methodology, Mason proved that his processes could take 15,000 board feet of lumber containing turpentine and rosin — officially waste products of the lumber industry — and turn them into usable products for naval application, all the while improving the quality of the lumber being treated.

The process ultimately paid for itself and then some, earning Mason local and national recognition.

As with most business ventures, timing is everything. While Mason’s achievements were monumental, they weren’t sustainable. Shipbuilding, the primary market for the turpentine and rosin Mason extracted, was dying off, and the timber industry was facing a shortage of pine in the coming years. His solutions seemed to appear as the need was waning.

UNDER PRESSURE

Faced with declining markets for his new industry, Mason searched for another means to generate revenue for himself and his Wausau-Southern backers. He entrusted the day to day operations of his extraction mills to his former colleague and fellow Edison mentee, Charles Westphalen, and turned his attention to back to invention.

His original curiosity about the effects of steam on wood had led to his innovative extraction process, but he wasn’t satisfied that the potential had truly been explored. He began testing a combination of steam and pressure on rough wood chips — essentially the litter from hauling, planing, and finishing lumber — and discovered that they could be broken down into wood fibers.

Those, he could work with.

Ever the showman, Mason knew that he had to sell his new product idea to his Wausau financiers. He killed two birds with one stone, creating a pressure chamber to facilitate the process in the form of a small cannon, which was guaranteed to make an impression on his audience.

The “gun”, created by Laurel Machine and Foundry, was comprised of a fifteen inch steel shaft with a three inch diameter. One end fit into a valve in the barrel, and a fitting in the shaft read the internal temperature. The shaft was then loaded with wood chips and water and heated to 480 degrees, producing roughly 600 pounds of pressure per square inch. When the “trigger” — the pressure valve — was pulled, the force sparked an explosion that resulted in Mason’s new wood fiber product.

SUCCESS WITH THE FIRST SHOT

The true test of Mason’s new process came in 1924, when he and Charles Westphalen traveled to present their ideas to the Wausau-Southern investors. Without seeing the product or Mason’s showy process, the investors agreed to provide the funds for Mason’s continued research and testing as long as they retained all patent rights.

Once the deal had been agreed upon, Mason and Westphalen returned to Laurel, inviting their backers to visit their investment in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the endeavored to build a new “gun” — a bigger and better version that would be impressive to investors, as well as create more product per load. They used engines from steam-powered automobiles — now an obsolete means of personal transportation — to create the steam and pressure needed for the transformation of wood to fibers.

After extending the invitation and agreeing upon the dates their investors would be in Laurel, Mason and Westphalen encountered an issue in their construction. The car engines they’d used to create the larger gun were old, which meant that they leaked and could not retain the pressure needed to convert the wood chips into fibers as in Mason’s original design. Rather than admit defeat, Mason decided that they would just fake the demonstration and rebuild the gun later — after the investors left Laurel.

The day of the demonstration arrived, and the eager investors gathered in Mason’s lab. The “gun” was loaded, the shot fired, and the investors awed by the blast. At this point, Mason reportedly yelled, “Success with the first shot!” His outburst and the explosion allowed Westphalen time to enter the testing chamber and cherry-pick the best sample — not the entirety of the contents of the barrel — to show investors.

Since the investors were never close enough to the load to know the difference between input and output, they only saw what Mason and Westphalen wanted them to see — the showy demonstration and the impressive final product.

The investors were convinced, and continued their funding of Mason’s research. However, the question of utility was raised. What did Mason intend to do with these wood fibers he’d created? How could they be used to generate revenue for the company?

MASONITE

The question of the product’s purpose required almost as much research and testing as its creation. Paper products seemed the logical choice for the wood fiber, but all tests in this vein failed; paper made from the fibers was weak and substandard. Mason moved on to creating pressed insulation board, but found his equipment wasn’t powerful enough to create the sturdy building material he desired.

Undeterred, he shipped a train car of his fiber material to the Marathon Paper Mill in Wisconsin, convinced that their larger, steam-powered presses would do what his equipment could not. Through repeated testing and tinkering, he discovered that the fibers could be made more sturdy, but he hadn’t found the right combination of variables to result in industry-level strength.

Sometimes a fluke results in the greatest forward progress. This was such an occasion for William Mason. While working with the paper mill’s presses, Mason had loaded the steam press with fibers for an experiment he planned to conduct after he returned from lunch. He turned the machine’s pressure valve off, and left.

Unbeknownst to Mason, the pressure valve was faulty. Rather than remaining off and holding the pressure constant, the valve allowed steam into the chamber with the wood fibers, creating a reaction that lasted for the entirety of Mason’s lengthy lunch break.

When Mason returned, he found that the faulty press had created a much stronger board from his fibers than any of his extensive testing had yet produced. Further testing was conducted on the board, and revealed that the new board was stronger than the original wood from which it was created. Mason had invented a product, made from lumber waste, that was stronger than the original timbers it was comprised of. He named the revolutionary new product after himself — “Masonite”.

 

Wausau rightfully recognized Mason’s achievement as a potential industry disruptor, but they knew they needed help to fund and market the product. They approached Eastman Gardiner as partners in 1925, and with their help, the Mason Fiber Company was born. Charles Green, of Eastman Gardiner, was installed as the company’s president, and Mason took on the title of vice president but remained firmly ensconced in research and development, his primary passions.

 

 

Unwittingly, the Mason Fiber Company — eventually renamed Masonite — became one of the chief reforestation and conservation proponents in the Piney Woods. It encouraged replanting and reforestation on the bare landscape, offering free education and advice to farmers willing to make an investment in timber.

The company’s attitude toward resource management encouraged a culture of research and conservation that extended into the civic realms of Laurel, effectively changing how the city interacted with its industrial residents.

 

 

PAST TO PRESENT

William H. Mason was an inventor and a visionary, and while not a native of Laurel, spent most of his life here. His true passion lay in finding ways to reduce the environmental footprint of the behemoth lumber industry, and create products from their cast offs with relevant uses to the wider market. He reinvented himself time and again: refusing to accept failure or even complacency; throwing himself into new challenges with tenacity; wrestling with every problem until it was solved.

Mason, along with our founders, John Lindsey, Catherine Gardiner, and a host of other leaders, visionaries, and makers, represent the spirit of our City Beautiful. Laurel is complicated, enigmatic, and at times, downright unruly. But she is also steadfast, enduring, and endlessly hopeful.

Laurel was brought into this world on the screaming rails of a lumber company train, her birth heralded by the smell of smoke, sap, and sweat. One hundred thirty-five years later, she stands again at the crossroads of progress and possibility, facing our generation with a legacy of innovation, imagination, and hope.

We have a lot to live up to.

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“Although things are a bit crude, the people are real neighborly.”

– Catherine Gardiner, 1891

 

A FORCE OF CULTURE

Catherine Gardiner was a force to be reckoned with. 

Uprooted from her comfortable and familiar life in Iowa, Catherine followed her husband, albeit rather unwillingly, to a home in the Piney Woods.  While her husband helped build the economy of Laurel through the Eastman Gardiner Lumber Company, Catherine worked to build the culture.

The timber industry and its relatively stable jobs caused a small population boom in Laurel, and in the absence of a formal city planner, Catherine stood in the gap.  The City Beautiful movement – an architectural and aesthetic revival that advocated for the beautification of cities to promote social order and civic virtue – had taken root in several large, metropolitan cities, and found a staunch supporter in Catherine Gardiner.  Refusing to accept that Laurel was too small for such grand plans, Catherine worked in earnest over several years to lay the foundation for a town that, in Laurel society minds, could become the next state capital.

She began by planning the residential area adjacent to the burgeoning business district, basing her street layout (and the property values that went along with them) on her experiences up North.  From First to Seventh Avenues, she ascribed meaning to each tract of land, creating generous lanes lined with young oak trees.  The lumber barons — the high society of the time — lived on Fifth Avenue in an echo of the wealth and splendor of New York City’s Fifth Avenue.  Their employees lived on parallel streets; managers lived on Fourth Avenue, and foremen lived on Third Avenue.  First and Second Avenues were home to mill workers.  On the opposite side of the “high” street, Sixth and Seventh Avenues were reserved for wealthy merchants.  Nearly every lot was filled by 1920, ensuring that the architectural integrity of Laurel’s now-historic residential district was protected. 

Into this hierarchy, Catherine worked to infuse culture.  She commissioned a series of parks, gave generously to social clubs looking to promote education and well-being, and promoted various traveling theater groups and lecture series.  Her family spearheaded an educational overhaul, bringing in R.H. Watkins, a Tennessee native and fierce proponent of progressive education.  Their influence and his vision resulted in extreme academic achievement among Laurel’s white high school students, leading a dean of the University of Chicago (Watkins’ alma mater) to state that any graduate of Laurel’s high school would be accepted into the university without an entrance exam.  Catherine’s hand could be seen in almost every progressive cultural endeavor in Laurel in the early twentieth century.  However, her two greatest contributions stemmed from her heart — one as a result of a family tragedy, and one as an impassioned response to societal injustice.

 

THE LAUREN ROGERS MUSEUM OF ART

Lauren Eastman Rogers, Catherine’s great-nephew, was poised to be the heir to the family fortunes and legacy.  Engaged and planning a family, Lauren Rogers was on the cusp of a promising future in Laurel.  As a wedding gift, his family was building him and his bride-to-be an elaborate home on Fifth Avenue.  However, at the age of twenty-three, Lauren developed acute appendicitis and passed away before the home, or the town’s ambitions for him, had a chance at completion.

The family went into mourning for two long years, leaving the house vacant and half-finished.

Finally, in the face of their pain and dashed hopes, the family rallied and decided to give their heir’s home back to the city in the form of a museum.  The building was completed, and the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art was born.  Catherine, a longtime admirer of Native American art, donated her extensive collection of woven baskets as the first exhibit.  The rest of the family followed suit, donating their art collections, and additional  pieces have been added over the years.  The museum now boasts works by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and a myriad of other influential artists of the last two centuries.

 

OAK PARK VOCATIONAL SCHOOL

The museum seemed to reinvigorate Catherine, and she jumped back into social life, and her cultural pursuits, with a vengeance.  By this time, Laurel’s black middle class was thriving.  The higher wages offered to African American workers by Eastman Gardiner had opened the door to more opportunity for Laurel’s African American community.  This came during a time when black workers in other parts of the country, and especially Mississippi, were earning a fraction of Eastman Gardiner’s pay.  Within the progressive bubble of Laurel, this rapidly growing middle class was working to offer educational opportunities to black students by raising money for the school the community had created.

Catherine’s involvement came later, after she read a New York Sun article that stated that African American schools received only a quarter of the funding of white schools.  Determined not to let this injustice continue in Laurel under her watch, she went to the leaders of the black community and pledged ten thousand dollars toward the building of a new school and the employment of top-tier educators, asking that the community match her contribution.  The community response was overwhelming, and the process was set in motion.  Private donors offered the land, a bond issue was passed, and these, combined with the funds donated by Catherine and the black community, served to erect a new educational complex for African American students.

Oak Park Vocational School opened in 1928.  Jim Crow was still in full effect, and in order to keep Laurel’s progressive roots intact and stay out of the racially tense public eye, the school officially operated as a vocational center.  However, Oak Park continually attracted talented educators from across the country with competitive wages and academic rigor, and the school grew.  Graduates of Oak Park Vocational School include Ralph Boston, an Olympic medalist; Leontyne Price, a world-renowned opera star; and author Cleveland “Troller” Payne, who still lives in Laurel.  The school operates today as an elementary school in the Laurel City School District.

PAST AND PRESENT

Travel through Laurel’s Historic District, and you’ll see Catherine Gardiner’s vision.  The stately oaks lining the streets; the homes that seem pulled straight from an architectural style textbook; R.H. Watkins (now Laurel High School), the Lauren Rogers Museum, Oak Park School, and all they each represent — all were touched by Catherine, determined to grow our little city through any means available.  There’s an old proverb that says, “Behind every great man is a great woman.”  Catherine would have disagreed.  It was her husband’s decision to move to Mississippi, but once here, she worked beside, not behind, him to make our City Beautiful a wonderful place to call home. 

If only she could see it now.

 

 

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“The genius of the pioneer lumberman lay in the way he made every improvement in method subserve the character and training of his workers, and every improvement in character of the workers subserve the organic growth of the enterprise.”

– Ethel Puffer Howes, “The Aesthetic Value of Efficiency”, Atlantic Monthly, 1912

The Problem

Lumber camps were not hospitable places.

Camps had the reputation for being chaotic and dangerous. According to the Atlantic Monthly, a popular periodical of the time, it was a common saying that there were always three crews in action at any moment — “…one coming, one going, and one at work.” The general tumult was furthered by the fact that only the workers lived there, and without the critical assessment of their wives or, for the most part, the mill owners, the men drank, gambled, and brawled to their hearts’ content.

The camps were all, at their most common denominator, temporary. Although Eastman Gardiner was on the forefront of lumber milling technology, production operated in such a way that workers were forced to move every few weeks in order to reach the next stand of pine for clearcutting. Railroad tracks were laid as the woods were cut, and heavy equipment, loads of lumber, and railway cars for the workers’ bunks traveled constantly towards the next grove of trees.

The trees were felled, and then towed to trucks, or large carts on the tracks, to be towed down the line back to the mill. The implementation of the skidder, a huge piece of equipment that used a combination of steam power and horses, meant that they could quickly crank in massive logs via cables, to be loaded onto the waiting railway truck using a steam-powered crane. This sped production considerably, which further kept workers on the move. They ate, slept, and toiled beneath the pines for as long as the work held out. They supported, but, by necessity, left behind, wives, children, and extended family — the camp had no place for them.

Eastman Gardiner realized that for workers, these migratory lives with no family connections left men untethered — they were inefficient, prone to violence, and unreliable. After all, the mill owners themselves recognized the absolute importance of family; upon their arrival in Laurel, finding themselves far from home and bound only by their mutual work, our Iowa men quickly made the decision to move their wives and children to the Piney Woods. As they proved again and again, the well being of the community as a whole was their priority.

The problem they faced, though, was how to move women and children into such a transitory environment without affecting the progress of clearcutting. The additional bodies meant additional lodging; traditionally in lumber camps, railway cars were outfitted with rows of bunks, and workers were assigned to a car and a bed. While efficient, this arrangement didn’t lend itself to mixed company. In some places, women and children followed their men into the woods, living in virtual shantytowns along the tracks, but this, too presented issues. Quality of life was low, and the families had to move and rebuild every time production progressed.

The Solution

The solution came in an unexpected form — manufactured housing.

While the idea of manufactured housing wasn’t exactly novel, its application in the lumber industry was. Eastman Gardiner began to produce small, prefabricated pine components that, on site, could be easily assembled to form private homes for the workers and their families. They removed the boxcars formerly used for workers’ bunks, replacing them with the housing units along the tracks.

These homes were completely mobile as well. During construction, holes were drilled in the top and bottom of the unit. On moving day, a steel cable was run through the top and bottom beams, and the steam loader simply picked up the entire unit and placed it on the tracks. Production moved ahead, with everyone in tow.

Once constructed, the units themselves were roughly eighteen feet by six feet, and every worker received between two and six units in which to house his family. When allocated, they received a fresh coat of red paint and a place along the tracks. Workers and their families weren’t asked to pay rent until 1910, when the company began charging $1.50 per unit per month to cover loading, unloading, and transportation costs for the movable mill town.

Camp Life

As one might imagine, this arrangement drastically changed the environment of the lumber camps. Not only did production improve, but the chaos of the male-driven camp gave way to a more orderly, community-centric atmosphere. In every camp, the routine elements of community life were established; Eastman Gardiner had each camp incorporated as a town under Mississippi law, and men were elected as aldermen and superintendents, to govern the camps from within. The company’s Cohay camp was one of the largest and best examples of the family-oriented camps. It boasted two schools, a hospital, and a Y.M.C.A. that residents used for both secular and religious purposes — all housed in portable units and placed on the tracks on moving day.

Lumber camp life was traditionally viewed as temporary — a temporary job, a temporary town built around that job, and temporary bosses who would eventually leave to return to their homes up North. Eastman Gardiner didn’t want their workers viewing their lives as temporary. Our Iowa men meant to stay, and put down roots, so they wanted their workers to experience the same sense of establishment.

By folding community and family life into the unruliness of the traditionally male-dominated lumber camps, Eastman Gardiner gave their workers a home, albeit one on wheels, and created a completely different way of doing business.

Eastman Gardiner took care of their men, and in return, their men took care of them.

 

 

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