The rubber turn: Saunders and the second mill

1897 – 1917

The borrowed superintendent: Before it made rubber footwear, the company bought rubber overs — usually, its history states, from the Goodyear Metallic Rubber Company, whose superintendent, E. A. Saunders, M. V. Beiger knew. In 1897 the company decided to manufacture rubber footwear itself. Saunders resigned from Goodyear Metallic and, in the company history's words, personally superintended the erection and equipment of the rubber mill. The library's summary fixes the ground work to the same year: stakes were driven for the rubber plant in 1897, beside the woolen mill at the dam. Emmett A. Saunders — the full name stands in the findings of a federal tax case that later fixed his place in the company — became president of the Mishawaka Woolen Company and, in the court's phrase, "the chief and most active executive" of what it called "the largest manufacturer of rubber boots and overshoes in the country." He died on 26 January 1933, aged eighty-four. The rubber department of Ball Band is his building in a literal sense: he designed its mill before he ran its company.

The two dates: The company history fixes the rubber works' start to two days, and both are printed as it gives them: "The first crude rubber was washed on Christmas Day, 1897, and the first ticket of shoes was made on February 23, 1898." Bock agrees: Ball Band rubber shoes were first manufactured in February 1898. From 1898 the Mishawaka works was two factories in one fence — a woolen mill and a rubber mill — and the company's center of gravity moved steadily toward the rubber side: the rubber boot and overshoe trade was national, branded, and growing, where the woolen trade had been regional.

The founder's death and the syndicate: Martin V. Beiger died on 26 September 1903, of an infection following an operation for appendicitis, aged fifty-six — the Beiger Mansion's account gives the cause and the date, and his own entry below carries his course whole. After his death, the library's summary states, a thirty-man syndicate took control of the company. The works did not pause: by the same year, 1903, employment stood at nearly two thousand, in the mansion account's figure — the measure of how completely the knit boot and the young rubber line had already transformed the mill the Beigers bought.

The First World War, at the size the record gives it:What is documented is the plant's wartime-era build-out and product course: a light-rubber plant costing $350,000 was built in 1915–16, in Bock's history; light rubbers entered the line in 1916 and leather work shoes in 1917, in the same account — the wartime years' additions, whatever their first customers. Employment climbed from nearly two thousand in 1903 to five thousand by 1923, across the war and the subsidiary sale that followed it. One further lead stands unresolved at small size: county historian John Kovach told an Indiana Historical Society paper (Indianapolis Literary Club, 2013) that the factory was mentioned as a site for Alice Hamilton's 1915 industrial-poisons research in rubber factories in thirty-five cities; the St. Joseph County Public Library's Kevin Wadzinski, searching for the reference, found no mention of a Hamilton survey of this factory. The claim and the negative search are both printed; the settling sources are the full text of the company history and the Mishawaka Enterprise runs of 1917–19 in Hoosier State Chronicles.

Sources:

1. The History of Ball Band (company history) — the rubber overs bought from the Goodyear Metallic Rubber Company, Saunders its superintendent and Beiger's acquaintance, the 1897 decision, Saunders's resignation and his superintendence of the rubber mill's erection and equipment, the first crude rubber washed Christmas Day 1897, and the first ticket of shoes on 23 February 1898.
2. Bankers Trust Co. v. Higgins, 65 F. Supp. 836 (S.D.N.Y. 1946), findings of fact — Emmett A. Saunders as president and "the chief and most active executive" of the Mishawaka Woolen Company, "the largest manufacturer of rubber boots and overshoes in the country," and his death on 26 January 1933, aged eighty-four.
3. Milton Bock, South Bend Tribune, 1937 — Ball Band rubber shoes first manufactured February 1898; the $350,000 light-rubber plant of 1915–16; light rubbers in 1916; leather work shoes in 1917.
4. Mishawaka-Penn Public Library summary (after Goldstein, 1980) — stakes driven for the rubber plant in 1897, and the thirty-man syndicate's control after Beiger's death.
5. Beiger Mansion, published account — Martin V. Beiger's death on 26 September 1903 and the employment of nearly 2,000 by 1903.
6. John Kovach, paper read to the Indianapolis Literary Club for the Indiana Historical Society (2013), and Kevin Wadzinski, St. Joseph County Public Library — the Alice Hamilton 1915 lead and the library's negative search, as both stand.