Slab Town and the South Branch of the Ahnapee River

South Branch of the Ahnapee about 1915

Over 130 years ago, the area along the South Branch of the Ahnapee was referred to as Slab Town. Hall’s Mill on the South Branch began operation in the 1850s and eventually the chair factory, the broom factory and other short-lived businesses operated in the same area. It was said that as far as one could see up and down the river were piles of logs or lumber awaiting shipping. Mill owners as far upriver as Forestville pitched slabs, sawdust and waste into the river, a situation addressed as early as the first editions of the Ahnapee Record in 1873. The paper's editors were 16 year old George Wing and 17 year old Charles Borgman, boys ahead of their time. They’d surely never heard of pollution, but they recognized it when they saw it!

Plumbers on left bank - Plywood on right bank

By 1892 Mel Perry returned to town and, with money from community stockholders, organized the veneer factory. Known locally as The Veneer and Seating Plant, The Panel, The Plywood and now as Algoma Hardwoods, the facility has had a storied history and has always been a major city employer. About the same time that Perry went into business, Sam Newman opened his toilet seat factory across the South Branch. For most of 100 years, the factories operated in the shadow of the other.

In the early days, the Ahnapee River was deep enough to allow schooner traffic, and Newman's lumber came via his own vessel. At one point, the Veneer plant was allowed to dam a portion of the river. Whatever happened is unclear, but the damming prompted vandalism to the dam, which was built in such a fashion that neither fish nor smaller boats were prevented from going upriver.

Before 1940, most employees of both plants were men, though clerical positions were often filled by unmarried women. With the advent of World War ll, things changed dramatically. Women had worked alongside their husbands on farms, in grocery stores and other family businesses. Women had been employed in the textile factories of the northeast well before the turn of the century and in the breweries of Milwaukee following the heavy German immigration to Wisconsin, but women in manufacturing positions in Algoma, Wisconsin, were largely unknown.

A 1912 Veneer and Seating Plant 20th anniversary photo shows the 108 employees, who were given white canes and hats for the picture. Lydia Overbeck, the only woman in the picture, was sitting in a carriage with Edgar Parker. Another picture, dated 1915, shows 75 employees, all men. Just three female office employees were the women on a photo as late as 1937. Then, on May 9, 1941, Esther Rosengren was recognized. She was the only woman of the 38 employees who had served 20 years. By then, the winds of war were blowing and the employment of women in Algoma’s U.S. Plywood manufacturing positions was about to change.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the drafting and enlistment of Algoma's men, and defense contracts, women were hired in manufacturing positions for the first time in the Plywood's history. Area women were thrust into positions they would not have accepted in normal times. Married women, especially those with children, did not work outside the home and few single women desired employment in a "plan." However, this was war. Seventy years later, young people would find it difficult to understand words such as "duty," "commitment" and "pull together" as they applied to the early 1940s.

An August 28, 1942 Record Herald editorial encouraged those seeking employment to take positions in Algoma to help the war effort rather than going to the shipyards. The article pointed out that Algoma's industries could return to peacetime work, thus offering some job security. An editorial on October 10, 1942 pointed out that all four of Algoma's manufacturing plants were engaged in either "war work or work vital to the prosecution of the war" and "not a single plant was working on non-essentials." The editorial continued saying that while Selective Service had taken many of the area's men and would take many more, women were responding and filling the men's places. The editorial view was that the city was "going to have to pay" in directing every effort to doing its part to win the war. 

 

Women in the office usually worked an eight-hour day, putting in overtime for quarterly inventories. Normal production hours were 7:00 - 5:00, five days a week, plus 7:00 to noon on Saturdays. Sometimes those working in the boat works put in additional hours. Working married women were still responsible for the all the household chores they would have been doing during peacetime. Women whose husbands had not been drafted did not expect them to help with the household work.  Farm women had additional chores before and after work. Millie Nimmer was among those who would schedule her week of vacation during haying.


Most of the women at the Plywood worked in the "boat works." Boat hulls manufactured during the war were light landing craft for water that was not too deep.  Few realized the Army boat hulls were among the largest and most complicated pieces of plywood being made in the U.S. The PT boat carrying General Douglas MacArthur from the Bataan Peninsula to Australia was constructed using materials manufactured at Algoma Plywood. Molded plywood shells were converted into hulls for Coast Guard patrol boats. One such hull built for the Army was hung from the ceiling for a display at the 15th anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In August 1943 the Algoma Record Herald reported that five Japanese planes had been shot out of the air over Guadalcanal by Lt. Murray Shubin flying a Lockheed P-38 Lightening plane for which Algoma Plywood supplied parts. The article pointed out that not only was it a red-letter day for Lt. Shubin, but also for the Algoma Plywood. The workers received a pat on the back in a telegram from the assistant chief of the Army's Air Force staff, Major General Giles. In his telegram, he praised those on the production line who "had done your work exceedingly well and I thought you would like to know it." 

A September 1944 Weldwood News article mentioned the July production rally. Eight-hundred Algoma Plywood employees attended the rally "to rededicate ourselves as free citizens to an all-out effort to produce war material so vitally needed by our Armed forces."  Lt. Com. J.F. McEndry, the Naval officer in charge of the program, emphasized not letting down and keeping up an all-out effort. He said the employees were working for the Navy just as "we are” and their efforts were needed to insure victory.

A Century of Quality Woodworking; 1892-1992 Algoma Hardwoods indicates that before the women came into the plant, it was stripped of its "calendars and other pictures," but according to the women interviewed for Women of the Plywood: The World War ll Years, they were accepted. They felt that sexual harassment, as it was known in the mid-1990s, did not exist until after the war when the men started coming home. As the men returned, most of the women who had taken their jobs were laid off. A few women remained until the boat works was sold to Wagemaker of Michigan, quitting at that point rather than relocating.

Women responding to the war employment call helped pave the way for women of the future. The October 2, 1942, Record Herald editorial was ahead of its time when writing that Algoma citizens thought about the future of industrial and employment opportunities in order that there be a continued "diversity and balance in industry when the war is over and the peace treaty is signed.”

There is much, much more to the mills, shipping, pollution, women in the workforce and the two companies that put Algoma on the map over 100 years ago. It all began in a small area nicknamed "Slab Town."


Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, Women of the Plywood: The World War ll Years, A Century of Quality Woodworking; 1892-1992 Algoma Hardwoods, Commercial History of Algoma, WI, and the microfilmed files of Ahnapee Record/Algoma Record Herald, all of which can be found at Algoma Public Library. Weldwood News and postcards are in the blogger's files.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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