Business: Amazing Amoskeag

• Share

To the 10,000 New Englanders who work in the great Amoskeag cotton, wool and rayon mills at Manchester, N. H., came last week two welcome announcements: 1) All disputes about last winter's 5% bonus have been adjusted; 2) The company will assume responsibility for its employes' deposits in the $11,000,000 Merrimac River Savings Bank which recently closed its doors (TIME, June 23).

It was amazing, not that the bonus dispute should be settled, but that a bonus should be paid at all. For many years

New England textiles have been notoriously ailing, unable to compete with cheap labor in Southern mills. Amoskeag Manufacturing Co., largest maker of cotton cloth in the world, is the century-old giant of the industry. In 1928 it lost more than $1.500,000. In 1929 it earned well over $1,500,000. Those who know Amoskeag agree that credit goes to one man: Frederick Christopher Dumaine, who at 64 is treasurer of Amoskeag.* "Some of the owners of this property are getting alarmed and urging us to discontinue before all the money is lost. That's an easy suggestion. . . ." Thus Treasurer Dumaine in an after-dinner speech in February 1929, when Amoskeag first learned of her $1,500,000 deficit. He did not accept the easy way. "I am ready," he said, "to do all possible, institute every economy, shoulder every responsibility and stand every criticism, to carry on." Treasurer Dumaine, onetime mill boy, has been called "a past master in New England economy." His economies at Amoskeag were heroic. Amoskeag messenger boys now furnish their own bicycles; Amoskeag trucks, all except three, stay inside the plant walls to avoid the necessity for license plates. With costs at the rockiest of rock bottoms, Treasurer Dumaine has also modernized production and selling. The new rayon mill turned out 800,000 Ib. of rayon last year. Not without opposition has Treasurer Dumaine set Amoskeag on its feet again. Employes have grumbled against his rigid economies, as when last March the print-cloth workers voted 4-to-1 against accepting a 10% wage cut so that Amoskeag could get a big printcloth order.