The all-knit boot and the reorganization of 1886

1886 – 1893

The invention: In 1886 Martin V. Beiger and Adolphus Eberhart invented the all-knit wool boot — in the words of the Ball-Band Factory marker that stands on the site today, the first wool boot to hold its shape without shrinking or stretching. Goodspeed's 1893 biography of Beiger gives the inventor's own road to it: "In 1886, seeing the successful sale of the felt boot, Mr. Beiger conceived the idea that wool boots could be made by knitting instead of felting, and began the industry of manufacturing an all-wool knit boot." The boot displaced the company's older lines: flannel and yarn manufacture was discontinued as the knit boot took over the works, in the company's published history.

The reorganization, from Eberhart's biography: Goodspeed's Memoirs (1893), in the biography of Adolphus Eberhart, state that Eberhart "organized the Mishawaka Woolen Manufacturing Company" in 1886 with capital stock of $200,000 — eight times the 1874 capital — and print the officer roster of the reorganized company: M. V. Beiger, president; F. G. Eberhart, vice-president; J. C. Eberhart, secretary; A. Eberhart, superintendent; Marvin Campbell, treasurer. (One transcription of the roster reads the secretary's initials as "J. S."; the Beiger biography in the same volume prints "J. C. Eberhart, secretary," and that reading is followed here.) The directors included Clement Studebaker and J. M. Studebaker of South Bend. Eberhart sold a half interest in the boot patent to the company for $100,000 — the single largest documented transaction of the company's woolen era, and the measure of what the partners believed the boot was worth. By about 1893, the same biography states, the company employed 140 to 150 persons and did $200,000 of annual business, in shops the memoir itemizes.

The Studebaker money: In November 1887 a half interest in the company was sold to John M. Studebaker and his brother Clem, in the company's published history — the wagon fortune of South Bend taking its seat inside the woolen works across the river, a seat the Studebakers' presence on the 1886 director list already foreshadows. The boot itself was billed, in the company's claim as the memoir prints it, as "the only all-wool knit boot made in the world" — a superlative carried here as the company's own billing, which the trade's agreement on the boot's novelty supports in substance.

A tension in Bock, printed as it stands: Bock's 1937 history dates the invention to 1886 and credits it with beginning large-scale production; the same history, as printed, also states that "not until 1896 did the company begin to produce on a large scale." The two statements stand ten years apart inside one published account and are printed here together rather than reconciled: the invention is 1886 on every carrier; the works' growth to large scale belongs to the decade that followed, on Bock's own second dating.

Sources:

1. Goodspeed Brothers, Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs (1893), biographies of Adolphus Eberhart and M. V. Beiger — the 1886 organization at $200,000 capital, the officer roster, the $100,000 half interest in the patent, the 140–150 employees and $200,000 of annual business about 1893, the Studebaker directors, and Beiger's conception of the knit boot.
2. The History of Ball Band (company history) — the November 1887 sale of a half interest to John M. Studebaker and Clem Studebaker, and the discontinuance of flannel and yarn manufacture as the boot took over.
3. Ball-Band Factory historical marker, Mishawaka (Historical Marker Database, m64088) — the 1886 all-knit boot as the first wool boot to hold its shape without shrinking or stretching.
4. Milton Bock, South Bend Tribune, 1937 — the invention of 1886 and the statement, as printed, that large-scale production began in 1896.