The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
Beginning in 1901, the T.E. Bissell Co. factory at Elora produced disk harrows that found buyers across the country.
During the first half of the 20th century, the T.E. Bissell Co., and its successor, the Fleury-Bissell Co., made the name of Elora a familiar one to Canadian farmers and to some in the United States and overseas.
I have, during the past 20 years, written at length on this firm, including a Master of Arts thesis 15 years ago and eight columns in the old Elora Sentinel.
The Bissell firm was notable because it bucked the trend toward consolidation in the farm implement industry. The founder of the firm, Torrance Bissell, grew up on a farm near Prescott, and as a young man worked as a salesman for J.S. Corbin, a manufacturer of tillage equipment in Prescott. Corbin sold out to Massey Harris in 1892, leaving young Bissell adrift.
After dabbling at several ventures, Bissell decided to get back into farm implements. He gathered up all his savings, about $4,000, and started a company to make disk harrows. His first expenditures were for a typewriter and some fancy letterhead.
As a salesman he realized the importance of making a good impression. He wrote letters of introduction to farmers, then followed up with a personal visit. When he had a handful of orders, he ordered components and assembled them with temporary help in rented quarters.
Something of a basement tinkerer, he made improvements to the old Corbin model that he had sold for several years. The implements proved to be an immediate hit with farmers, and word-of-mouth endorsements helped the young business. After a couple of years of his makeshift production methods, he was able to keep a small workforce employed full time.
Bissell soon realized that the greatest sales opportunities were in southwestern Ontario, not the Prescott area. Consequently, he moved his production facilities closer to his market, first to Preston, then to Fergus in 1897, where he rented half the Beatty Bros. factory. The Beatty firm, following a bankruptcy, was struggling to get back on its feet.
The arrangement proved to be ideal for both firms. Bissell operated the foundry, and Beattys the machine shop, and they did work for each other. Bissell’s sales increased by about 30% per year in this period, and the firm became very profitable: he made a net profit of $3,700 on sales of $24,000 in 1899.
The Beatty firm also did well in these years, and the Fergus factory soon became cramped. In the summer of 1901, T.E. Bissell signed an agreement with the village of Elora, by which the village gave him a $5,000 interest-free loan and title to the old Elora Carpet Factory buildings, which had been vacant for several years.
Bissell added a foundry department, and made extensive renovations to the old building, which had been constructed in 1873. The machinery was humming by November 1901, with a staff of 20. Sales in 1902 passed the $50,000 mark (equal to three or four million in today’s dollars).
At home, T.E. Bissell led an austere life. Tales of his cheapness soon became a currency in Elora. He drew a salary less than most of his employees, and invested everything he could back into the firm. His equity in the firm passed the $60,000 mark in 1907, a good increase on his original $4,000 investment. When not at the factory, he devoted his spare time to temperance causes, the Methodist church, and local politics: he served as reeve of Elora from 1916 to 1918.
The product in the first years at Elora consisted of a horse-drawn disk harrow, in six- and seven-foot wide models. Three features placed it above the competition: a patented design for steel disk plates (which were produced for Bissell by a specialty steel firm in Ohio), and a heavy duty ball bearing journal, cast in one piece, and sealed against dust and dirt.
In 1905, some competitors were trying to sell disk harrows with hardwood bushings. The third important feature was the arrangement of the gangs, which eliminated the uncultivated strip between them.
Though president of the firm, Bissell considered himself a practical man, and disliked spending too much time at a desk. He could often be found in the shop, working with new models, or wandering through the shop, looking for ways to streamline production.
He thoroughly enjoyed the fall fair season, when he would go on the road and personally sell his disks to farmers. He often came back with new ideas gleaned from farmers, such as a specialty disk for use in orchards.
The wheat boom on the Canadian prairies offered new opportunities. The firm introduced a 12-foot model in 1910, and eight-foot wide and 14-foot wide models a year later.
Steam tractors on the prairies, and gas tractors in Ontario presented new challenges. The firm did much experimental work between 1911 and 1915 and soon had models up to 32 feet wide on the market. Eventually there were 26 models of disk harrows in the Bissell catalogue.
In the meantime, Bissell had added other products to his offerings. First was a steel land roller, introduced in 1898. Then came the Bissell silo in 1916, made of wood staves held together with steel bands. The firm made only 146 of them before it was discontinued in 1925. The Bissell stone boat, also introduced in 1915, enjoyed more popularity.
After 1907 and the signing of a distribution agreement, many of the Bissell disks on the prairies carried the name of John Deere. Bissell painted these implements green, and sent them west in carload lots to the Deere distribution network. After 1910, John Deere accounted for between 40 and 60% of the firm’s production.
After 1915, Bissell made efforts to sell into the American market, and found success in Michigan and Ohio, with some sales as far away as Georgia. There were some scattered sales overseas, in Europe, South Africa and Australia.
As production levels increased, Bissell made additions and improvements to the factory. Typically, additions were small, with much of the work done by his regular employees during the summer months, when the factory was often idle.
The most enduring project was the dam across the Grand River, completed in Sept. 1909, and containing 1,100 cubic yards of concrete. It provided water that was used to run some of the equipment and the generator providing electric light.
Sales for the firm dropped off in the early 1920s as a result of the slump in agriculture, but recovered in 1927 and 1928, peaking at $302,000 in the latter year, when it produced more disk harrows than any other manufacturer in Canada.
After 35 years as a manufacturer, and sensing that the market was at the top of one of its periodic cycles, T.E. Bissell sold the business in 1928 to a group from Toronto dominated by Harry Hatch, who controlled the Hiram Walker-Gooderham & Worts liquor complex.
The new owners created a limited company, with shares traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Bissell received $255,000 for the business and its assets. He also held some $244,000 in other assets and investments. His net worth, in current dollars, would total at least $20 million.
During his ownership the firm had produced about 90,000 disk harrows and more than 7,000 rollers.
T.E. Bissell remained as nominal president of the firm, but he did not enjoy his retirement for very long. He died in December 1931 of a stroke following a car accident in Guelph.
In the meantime, the Bissell firm continued under its absentee owners, with day-to-day management in the skilled hands of T.C. Wardley, who had been with the company for many years.
During the worst years of the depression, between 1931 and 1935, the firm posted losses, but it turned the corner in 1935, though an aggressively competitive marketplace had reduced prices to the point that it was difficult to generate profits.
Majority shareholder Harry Hatch had decided around 1935 that some kind of reorganization would be necessary. He made his move in the fall of 1937, when he purchased the firm of J. Fleury and Sons of Aurora.
Established in 1859, the Fleury firm had developed a respectable name for its farm implements, and in particular, its plows. Hatch considered the amalgamation of the Fleury and Bissell firms to be a wise one, in providing a full range of tillage equipment.
Hatch established the head office of the new firm, to be known as Fleury-Bissell Ltd., at Elora. Fleury’s Aurora facilities became a branch plant, and were eventually closed in 1940.
Harry Hatch had made his name with the merger of Gooderham and Worts with Hiram Walker & Sons in 1923, and he hoped to repeat this success in the farm implement business, about which he knew virtually nothing.
To manage the merged business he brought in Ross McKinnon, who previously held senior positions with General Motors, Massey-Harris, and the Hudson Motor Car Co. McKinnon planned for the addition of new equipment and updated production facilities, and assisted about 35 families who moved to Elora from Aurora.
Things soon started to go bad for Hatch. Ross McKinnon died suddenly in August 1940, leaving a leadership vacuum that would never be filled properly. Hatch himself devoted little attention to the firm, being preoccupied with other business concerns and with fast horses.
Fleury-Bissell enjoyed reasonable if unspectacular years in the mid 1940s. Then, in the postwar boom, production soured in 1947 and peaked in 1948, led by the firm’s plows and disk harrows. A couple of salesmen went to South America to scout the market potential. To further expand the line, Fleury-Bissell began distributing Cunningham tractors and mowers.
Profits for 1948, on sales of about $450,000 and with the factory operating at capacity, amounted to only $18,000. It was an ominous sign. Sales declined in 1949 and 1950. The pent-up demand from the war years had been satisfied.
Harry Hatch’s solution was refinancing, new equipment, and another merger. In 1950 he purchased the Canadian Transformer Co., based in Waterloo, and merged it into the Fleury Bissell firm, which was thence known as Elora Industries Ltd. The Industrial Development Bank underwrote the reorganization with a $270,000 mortgage on the property, and the Bank of Montreal provided an additional $300,000 of working capital.
The combination of transformers and farm implements resulted in administrative nightmares and inefficient production. Employment hovered in the 200 range, the highest ever, but there was no sign of a profit on the horizon.
Sales dropped off drastically in the spring of 1954, as the farm implement industry went through yet another cycle. Much of the workforce received layoff notices. They never returned to work. Later that year, the Industrial development Bank initiated foreclosure proceedings when the firm fell months behind in its payments.
An auctioneer knocked down the assets of the company at a sale in March 1955. The vacant buildings survived another decade before succumbing to the bulldozer.
The site of the old factory is now Bissell Park in Elora. A few ruins, and the 1909 dam, remain as evidence of this once important business.
*This column was originally published in the Advertiser on March 24, 2000.
