Last week’s column on the start of construction of the Beatty Brothers Hill Street factory prompted several readers – two of them retired Beatty hands – to contact me. All were unaware of the rocky early years of the company, and its rapid rise and expansion in the early 20th century.
The Beatty firm deserves to have a full-length business history, and as far as I am aware, the subject is waiting for someone to tackle it. There are some papers of the company at McMaster University, and a much larger collection of material at the Wellington County Museum & Archives. As well, the Fergus News Record has survived in an almost complete run during the years that the company operated, and there is much material in the Toronto financial press.
As noted last week, the company struggled for its first two decades, which saw the early death of one of the founding partners, Matthew Beatty, and bankruptcy in 1895. Creditors settled for 25 cents on the dollar. The new firm, reorganized that year, was initially dominated and in effect, managed, by the Imperial Bank, the largest loser in the old company.
Some creditors objected to the heavy involvement of the Imperial Bank, suspecting that it was favouring itself. The objectors got nowhere. Ties between the Imperial Bank and the Beatty firm remained strong as long as the family dominated the company.
Though a competent mechanic and machinist, old George Beatty might be described as inept as a businessman. In fact, his wife handled much of the paperwork. All that changed after 1900, when William and Milton, of the second generation, joined the firm.
Beatty Brothers, during the 19th century, had been makers of plows, reapers, and mowers, struggling in an industry of dozens of small manufacturers such as themselves. The new generation saw the wisdom of specializing. By 1908, the firm was pushing new designs of hay carriers, barn slings, and manure handling equipment, and setting up a system of national distribution necessary to manufacture in large quantities. The strategy was immediately successful.
That year, old George Beatty and the Imperial Bank agreed that Will and Milton should be admitted to the firm as full partners. A year earlier, an addition had expanded the factory on the Grand River. It was soon obvious that a new factory would soon be necessary, and one with better access to rail transportation. The result was the first stage of the Hill Street plant, planning for which began in 1910, and which was described in last week’s column.
Small additions to both the Grand River and Hill Street plants followed. A huge expansion came after World War I, expanding the Hill Street plant 192 feet to the east and 144 feet to the west. Construction, like the first stage of the plant, combined old-fashioned rubble stone walls with a single storey building, poured concrete floor, and a modern saw-tooth roof.
By this time, the Beatty firm was the dominant player in the Fergus economy. In 1919, with an expanding workforce drawing people to Fergus and a rush of returning soldiers, the town faced a housing crisis.
Beatty Brothers jumped into the void, setting up the Fergus Housing Company to build residences for its workers. Employees could buy the houses and pay off the mortgage with weekly payroll deductions. In 1919, the company built 12 houses on Kitchener Street, and had plans for a further 25 in the northwest part of Fergus.
There were further plant extensions in 1925, with new wings at Hill Street, and a 52,000-square-foot extension of the Grand River plant to the west. The new wings brought the Hill street plant up to 125,000 square feet, almost three acres. The residences and the plant extensions were all designed by H.W. Matthews, who had joined the firm as staff architect and designer. As with earlier construction, the contracts went to local firms: concrete work to Charles Mattaini and Quinn & Wilson, stone work to William Gow, and brickwork to Norman Stafford, of Elora. The firm’s own employees did most of the carpentry, electrical and heating work.
By that time, the barn mechanization lines had been supplemented by various models of domestic appliances, particularly washing machines. The company boasted that it operated the largest appliance factory in the British Empire. It was quite an achievement for Will and Milton Beatty in the quarter century since they graduated from college.
In addition to the Fergus expansions, Beatty Brothers had taken over several other firms during the early 1920s, some of them former subsidiaries of American firms. The list included James Provan & Company, Tolton Brothers of Guelph, and R. Dillon & Sons.
Most of the acquired plants continued in operation. By 1928, there were more than 1,300 employees on the payroll, only a third of whom worked in Fergus. The company had a chain of distributors and warehouses spanning the country, and a presence in the British and Commonwealth market.
Next week: a big 60th anniversary celebration for Beatty.