One Third Crew, One Third Boat, One Third Luck: The Menasha Corporation (Menasha Wooden Ware Company) Story 1849 - 1974 [VINTAGE 1974]

Fine unread condition green cloth boards with gold front cover decoration and gold spine lettering contained in a fair condition color illustrated dust jacket. Includes Foreword by George Banta, Jr.; Preface; Preliminary Page Quotes by Walt Whitman and Psalms 16:6; Appendix consisting of: A Product Lines History, and A Chronology of Important Events, Illustrated with black-and-white photographic plates, a double page Menasha Wooden Ware Company and Menasha Corporation Presidents - Elisha D. Smith Family Tree, black-and-white portrait plate frontispiece, and photographic front and rear endpapers. The dust jacket has a large upper spine edge chip, a seven inch repaired rear jacket tear, and scattered edgewear (see photographs). All pages are in fine unmarked condition and the spine/binding is exceedingly tight and square (see photographs). Also includes the original ". Presented to your with the complements of Menasha Corporation" Card, in as new condition. "This book tells the story of the Menasha Wooden Ware Company-Menasha Corporation, from its birth as a small pail factory in 1849, to its emergence through 125 years of progress and crises, as a manufacturing enterprise responsible for twenty-seven industrial operations in twelve states. One Third Crew, One Third Boat, ONe Third Luck begins in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, when 23-year-old Elisha Dickinson Smith and his young bride set out on theri long trip, by rail, stagecoach, boat, and on foot, to the muddy shore of the Fox RIver in Menasha, Wisconsin. Now begins a life of rugged pioneering, of privation and hard times, and finally of well-earned success. The early products of Elisha's Pail Factory were wooden pails, wash tubs, and quart and bushel measures. Later in the Wooden Ware era, the product line was exapnded to include a startling assortment of other turned woodenware items. To provide raw material for the manufacture of these products, extensive timberlands were eventually acquired in northern Wisconsin and Michigan and in the Pacific Northwest. During this period of growth the Corporation became known as the "largest turned woodenware factory in the world." In these pages are the stories of the men and women who made the products, and of members of four generations of the Smith family who provided leadership. After Elisha came his two sons, Charles R. and Henry S. Smith, his gradsons Mowry and Carlton Simth, and then the fourth generation, Mowry Smith, Jr., Oliver Smith, Tamblin Smith, and D.C. Shepard, Jr. At times, other able leaders were chosen to steer the ship and lead the crew. That theirs is a saga of faith, optimism, courage, and some luck, is especially revealed in the chapters, "Exit the Crackerbarrel Era" and "A Transition Swift and Deadly," when employers and employees alike face a revolution in packaging almost dramatic in its crises. It is a revulution which saw the extinction of the wooden container and the abrupt creation of a huge market for corrugated packaging. Far more than being merely an institutional history, [the book] is a narrative of human effort in the face of frequent adversities: the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II; the panics of 1857 and 1873; depressions and recessions. The fires of 1867, 1877, 1878, 1904, 1942, and 1964, when large portions of the plant were destroyed. The book closes as members of the Corporation family, the employees and the officials who employ them, observed the 125th year. Obvious is the natural pride these men and women feel that the orgainizaton they helped build is the oldest business enterprise in the Midwest under the same continuing management-ownership; that it has always risen to the challenges of tomorrow in the servie of its customers; and that it has always been mindful of the welfare of the community." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.…