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About 1900 – 1927
The president's portfolio: Melvin W. Mix ran more of Mishawaka than Dodge. His biographical record — assembled in the Coachbuilt biography from the period sources — lists the Mishawaka companies he controlled besides the power-transmission house: the National Veneer Products Company, makers of the Perfecto line of trunks; the Fast Feed Drill & Tool Corporation, a machine-tool house of exactly the kind the Dodge works anchored; the Lyradion Manufacturing Company, which made radios and phonographs in the first years of the radio trade; and the Mishawaka Public Improvement Corporation, which owned and operated the Hotel Mishawaka, the city's downtown hotel. Together with the Dodge presidency the list describes a one-man industrial group of the kind the Midwest's manufacturing towns produced — the largest employer's president also holding the trunk factory, the drill works, the radio shop, and the hotel.
At the record's strength: The four houses are carried here at the strength of that single biographical carrier: no output, employment, or closing figures for them were verified first-hand, and none are printed. Mix died on 11 December 1927 in Chicago, and the record reached does not carry the portfolio past its holder. The settling sources are the Mishawaka city directories of the 1910s and 1920s, which print officers and addresses firm by firm, and the South Bend Tribune's business pages; the houses stand in this section as named Mishawaka manufacturers of the Mix era, awaiting that directory work, not as firms whose courses are known.
Sources:
- Coachbuilt, the Melvin W. Mix biography — Mix's control of the National Veneer Products Co. (Perfecto trunks), the Fast Feed Drill & Tool Corp., the Lyradion Mfg. Co. (radios and phonographs), and the Mishawaka Public Improvement Corporation, owners and operators of the Hotel Mishawaka; with his Dodge course and dates as carried in the Dodge entry above.