- Business - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- Samson paved the way for GM
- Eighty-seven vehicles an hour run off the assembly lines
at the General Motors Corp. Buick-
- Oldsmobile-Cadillac Group plant here.
- The trucks and cars built here today have electronic devices
that contribute to traffic safety, energy
- efficiency and driver comfort.
- But they can trace their roots back to one of the simplest
tools ever manufactured: the plow.
- The local plant's father was GM's Samson Tractor Division,
which was born of the marriage of
- Samson Tractor Co. of Stockton, Calif., and the Janesville
Machine Co., which made plows, planters and cultivators. Janesville
Machine was formed in 1881 to take over the business of HARRIS
Manufacturing Co., whose history dates to a partnership formed
in 1859 to make farm implements here. The original partners were
James HARRIS, Zebediah GUILD, D. R. ANGELL
and Leonard TYLER.
- Janesville Machine operated in factories along South Franklin
and River streets.
- J. A. CRAIG rose through ranks at Janesville Machine:
salesman, general manager, company
- president. In 1918, he convinced W. C. DURANT, president
of the fledgling General Motors Corp., that Janesville Machine
would be a good acquisition. How much convincing Durant needed
is open to debate because he was buying companies left and right,
and his impulses eventually led to his fall from grace at GM.
- This corporation bought Samson Tractor soon after and formed
the tractor division. CRAIG was
- named to head the company in 1919, and his nephew, Hugh CRAIG,
later was named general sales manager.
- J. P. CULLEN & Sons Construction Co. erected the
first GM building here in 1919, and the city
- experienced another of its periodic booms. Population, which
had been rising gradually, jumped. In 1910 [1919?], it was 13,894,
up only 711 from 1910[?], but by 1920, the population was 18,293.
- The city paved South Jackson Street, put up street lights
there and opened up Industrial Avenue
- for a few blocks.
- A GM subsidiary erected whole streets of new houses for workers
relocating to Janesville. The
- plant drew workers from other areas because the available
labor force was growing scarce.
- On May 1, 1919, the plant started making 10 Model M Samson
tractors a day. A year later, the
- plant was turning out 150 tractors a day and [a] smaller
model known as the "Iron Horse."
- The Iron Horse proved to be a nag. Although it was fashioned
like a tractor and had no driving
- horses, it was steered by reins. It sold for $450 but was
such a failure in the market that Samson had to repurchase nearly
all of the units and salvage them for scrap and parts.
-
- [Photograph; caption reads: Assembly line workers add parts
to Samson tractors in the Janesville factory in 1919.]
-
- The GM plant today boasts some of the automotive industry's
newest technological innovations,
- and so did the tractor plant in its time: first use of an
air-powered wrench and water bath air filter on the assembly
line.
- The company also produced two sizes of truck: three-quarter-
and 1 1/4-ton. The trucks' market-
- ing was geared toward farmers and other users of horse-drawn
wagons. Advertising cited the claims: "Samson trucks will
not eat up all the profits in their first cost and upkeep"
and "It costs twice as much to haul by wagon as it does
by motor truck."
- The trucks could be equipped with wheel base extensions that
enabled them to be used in soft or
- plowed fields.
- The three-quarter ton sold for $655; the bigger model for
$1,095.
- But while the tractor business was a fallow field, American
farmers weren't ready to turn whole
- hog to mechanization. And Henry Ford's "Fordson"
was reaping a good share of the limited market.
- By September 1921, truck and tractor production had stopped
here, and the plant was used to
- make parts for tractors already in the field.
- A year later, however, CRAIG had put his persuasive
powers to work again, and GM decided to
- build Chevrolets here.
- Chevy expanded the building and added a large loading dock,
which increased the plant's size to
- 321,000 square feet, a mere fraction of what it would become.
- The first car rolled off the assembly line Feb. 15, 1923.
First-year production for cars and trucks
- totaled 42,509 vehicles.
- Fisher Body Division shipped closed-vehicle bodies to the
plant in the early '20s, but in 1924, the
- division put up a 162- by 612-foot addition to make the bodies
here.
- Both divisions expanded again in the decade, but on Sept.
17, 1932, GM suspended production
- at the plant here. That year the country was in the depths
of the Great Depression, but GM's stated reasons for closing
the plant sounded like a harbinger of things to come: The corporation
said Wisconsin's corporate and income taxes, the prospect of
an unemployment tax and possible increases in other taxes were
hurting or would hurt its balance sheet.
- Luckily for 200 employees, GM was operating a model assembly
plant at the Chicago World's
- Fair. They went to the Windy City to make four cars an hour,
six days a week. Their pay was $7 a day.
- GM reopened the plant after 15 months, and Gov. Albert SCHMEDEMANN
bought the first
- truck off the line for the state.
- By May 1936, the plant covered more than 786,000 square feet
on 34 acres and was served by
- 5.7 miles of railroad tracks.
- Labor, not management, was the force that stopped production
late in the 1930s, when the grow-
- ing Congress of Industrial Organizations tested its strength
with a brief sit-down strike. The CIO leaders directed strike
strategy and tactics from offices [on] the second floor of a
building at Milwaukee and Main streets.
- Vehicle production stopped again in January 1942, but this
time management and labor were
- united against a common foe: the Axis. President Franklin
D. Roosevelt had ordered a halt to car production so America's
industrial might could be turned toward winning World War II.
- GM's Oldsmobile Division assumed command of the Janesville
plant, and local workers turned out
- enough ammo for thousands of artillery barrages: more than
16 million shells, mostly for 105mm howitzers. Wartime employment
reached a peak of 2,150.
- With the end of the war came the resumption of vehicle production
here, and cars and trucks
- started rolling again here in October 1945. Chevrolet built
another addition to boost capacity to make the cars to meet the
demand of a nation that hadn't had any new models for almost
four years and had millions of veterans returning from overseas
and needing transportation.
- In 1947, Chevy and Fisher Body put on another two additions.
The plant then encompassed
- 500,000 square feet.
- In the early '50s, more building was undertaken - to the
tune of $6 million - and a second produc-
- tion shift was added. Prosperity reigned during the decade,
and J. P. CULLEN & Sons Construction Co. undertook
the largest single expansion to date in 1956: 300,000 square
feet to include a new loading dock, second-floor pain department
expansion and an addition to the car paint shop.
- More additions pushed the plant's size to 2 million square
feet by 1960, but the corporation
- wasn't finished: Major additions continued yearly from 1963-65.
- It was on Nov. 4, 1968, that GM announced the consolidation
of the Fisher and Chevrolet
- divisions here into a single operation as a plant in the
General Motors Assembly Division. The '70s saw one large and
several small additions, but it was in 1981-82 that the biggest
addition and most radical improvements were undertaken.
- The times had been changing in the 1970s. Oil embargoes and
shortages made new. Gas cost
- more than $1 a gallon, and lines at stations had become common.
"Made in Japan" no longer was a joke as small, less
expensive, more fuel-efficient vehicles from Japan and Europe
became common in the auto industry. The Associated Press ran
weekly stories about auto production schedules, layoffs and employment
levels.
- After almost 60 years of making the biggest and often best-selling
cars, the Janesville plant was
- expanded by a half-million square feet and renovated to make
fuel-efficient, front-wheel-drive sub-
- compacts: GM's new generation of J-cars. The plant sprawled
over more than 3 million square feet.
- The eight-month renovation also installed what at the time
was the latest in technology: robots for
- spot welding and to hold car frames, laser beams to check
the fit of critical areas and computers to correlate information
in the assembly procedure.
- Automation and the new smaller size of the cars cost 300
jobs at the plant, but when both truck
- and car lines work two shifts, more than 7,000 people work
there.
- The cars originally scheduled for production here were to
be Pontiac 2000s, but GM decided to
- produce other J-cars, Chevrolet Cavaliers and Cadillac Cimarrons,
here. The Cavalier today is the No. 1 selling car in the United
States, and Janesville is the only plant to make the Cimmaron.
- In 1984, General Motors went through another reorganization,
and the assembly division plants
- were assigned to one of two "super groups." Janesville's
factory is now part of the Buick-Oldsmobile- Cadillac Group.
- The truck line's 1,700 workers make light-duty pickups for
the Chevy and GMC nameplates. As
- this edition goes to press, the future of the truck line,
which was not renovated in 1981-82, is in doubt because GM announced
plans to consolidate truck production in a new plant in Indiana.
GM said it plans to make trucks here into 1987, and negotiations
are under way to secure a vehicle for production beyond then.
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