Emmett A. Saunders — the borrowed superintendent who became the chief

the rubber mill built 1897 · president of the Mishawaka Woolen Company · died 26 January 1933, aged eighty-four

The third founder: Emmett A. Saunders belongs in this company though he was neither founder nor family. Before it made rubber footwear, the Mishawaka Woolen Company bought rubber overs from the Goodyear Metallic Rubber Company, whose superintendent Saunders was, and whom Martin 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 first crude rubber was washed on Christmas Day 1897, and the first ticket of shoes was made on 23 February 1898. The rubber department of Ball Band is his building in a literal sense: he designed its mill before he ran its company.

The chief executive, on a court's findings: Saunders rose to president of the Mishawaka Woolen Company and, in the phrase of a federal court's findings of fact, was "the chief and most active executive" of what the court called "the largest manufacturer of rubber boots and overshoes in the country." The findings — in Bankers Trust Co. v. Higgins, a tax case that fixed his place in the company because his compensation was in issue — are this section's authority for his tenure, and they fix its end: he died on 26 January 1933, aged eighty-four, a resident part-time of South Bend. Between the Beigers' wool and the Eberharts' organization, Saunders is the third founder the plant actually had: the man who made it a rubber company, and so made everything after possible.

After Saunders, silence: In 1922 the company had become a subsidiary of the United States Rubber Company, and in 1923 its name changed to the Mishawaka Rubber and Woolen Manufacturing Company. Who held the local presidency or the works managership after Saunders's death in 1933 — through the Uniroyal decades to the closing of 1997 — is not documented in the record reached for this build: the parent company's officers are a national record, and the Mishawaka plant's own chiefs do not stand in the sources this build has read. The gap is named in the closing entry, with the company's records at the IU South Bend Archives and Babcock's history of the parent as the settling sources. The works' course under the parent is the Ball Band section's, cross-referenced.

Sources:

1. Ball Band — "The rubber turn: Saunders and the second mill" and "The people" (the Goodyear Metallic superintendency and Beiger's acquaintance; the 1897 resignation and superintendence of the rubber mill's erection; the Christmas Day 1897 washing and the 23 February 1898 first ticket) and "Under United States Rubber" (the 1922 subsidiary sale; the 1923 renaming).
2. Bankers Trust Co. v. Higgins, 65 F. Supp. 836 (S.D.N.Y. 1946), findings of fact, as carried in Ball Band — Emmett A. Saunders as president and "the chief and most active executive" of the Mishawaka Woolen Company, and his death on 26 January 1933, aged eighty-four.