Leighton Pine — Singer's man, and the works he kept in South Bend

sent to South Bend, 1868

A founder by commission: Leighton Pine founded no company of his own; he founded South Bend's second-largest works as another company's agent, and then kept it here against his own employer's second thoughts. In the 1860s the Singer sewing machine sat in a wooden cabinet that Singer bought on contract; standing in the center of the black walnut country, South Bend drew the company's bids, and in 1868 Singer sent Pine, a cabinet worker from its New York office, to build the company its own works here. Pine bought a site on the East Race for $2,500 and supervised the construction; in its first year the plant employed 168 men. By 1891 the works had 898 employees, and by 1900 the East Race site was outgrown.

The fight that kept it: Some Singer officials wanted the cabinet works moved to Cairo, Illinois; Pine argued it stayed, and acquired the west-side site on Division Street, now Western Avenue, where the new plant, finished in 1901–02 on about sixty acres, was intended to be the largest sewing-machine cabinet factory in the world. At its 1914 peak the works employed about 3,000 people and made, on the attributed estimate the Businesses section carries, about three-quarters of the world's sewing-machine cabinets; the city was also the company's cabinet distribution center for the United States and overseas. Pine's vital dates are not established in the record read for this history; his monument is institutional rather than biographical — a works that existed because one company man chose the ground and defended it.

Sources:

1. Businesses — "The Singer cabinet works" (the contract-cabinet background and the walnut country; Pine sent in 1868, the $2,500 East Race site, 168 men in the first year and 898 by 1891; the Cairo proposal and Pine's successful argument; the Division Street plant of 1901–02; the 1914 peak and the attributed three-quarters estimate).
2. Notable People — "The brake maker and the cabinet maker: Bendix and Pine" (Pine's vital dates expressly not established in the record read).