Name/Title
Booklet, Clarence Addison Shaler --- "A Very Large Wizard of Oz"Description
Paperbound booklet entitled, "A Very Large Wizard of Oz" by Clarence Addison Shaler by June Kelly. It has a clear plastic cover and bound with a black plastic spiral clamp. Donated by June Kelly.
"My memories of Grandpa Shaler are those of a very young boy. With his inventions, sculpture and pink neon tube around the ceiling of a room in Pasadena, he was almost like the "Wizard of Oz" to me. And since he as much taller than my other grandfather, a very large "Wizard of Oz." -Arthur Stuart Hanisch. This is outlined in pink.
INNOVATIVE FARM BOY
Clarence Addison Shaler, a son of Wisconsin pioneer parents, was born May 29, 1860, five years before President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. His birthplace was on a homestead farm in the township of Mackford Prairie, Green Lake County, Wisconsin. Born a twin, his siste
Extended Description: Paperbound booklet entitled, "A Very Large Wizard of Oz" by Clarence Addison Shaler by June Kelly. It has a clear plastic cover and bound with a black plastic spiral clamp. Donated by June Kelly.
"My memories of Grandpa Shaler are those of a very young boy. With his inventions, sculpture and pink neon tube around the ceiling of a room in Pasadena, he was almost like the "Wizard of Oz" to me. And since he as much taller than my other grandfather, a very large "Wizard of Oz." -Arthur Stuart Hanisch. This is outlined in pink.
INNOVATIVE FARM BOY
Clarence Addison Shaler, a son of Wisconsin pioneer parents, was born May 29, 1860, five years before President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. His birthplace was on a homestead farm in the township of Mackford Prairie, Green Lake County, Wisconsin. Born a twin, his sister was Clara A. Shaler, who dies February 8., 1878, in the "morning of her life," as her brother expressed it.c
Ansel Shaler, Clarence's father, was born in March, 1813, in Haddam, Connecticut. His family originally came from St. Ives in Corwall County, England. It is not known when Thomas Shaler, the first family member to emigrate, came to this country, but there is a record of his marriage in 1673 in Haddam.
As a young man, Ansel traveled west to Michigan where he accumulated considerable property. However, he lost almost all of it in the panic of 1837. He later decided to try his luck farther west and journedyed to Wisconsin, settling in Rock County in 1845, where he taught school for two winters. He earned enough money to purchase 80 acres of rich farmland in the township of Mackford.
He later told his son, Clarence, that when he first saw the beautiful virgin Wisconsin countryside, he exclaimed, "This is as near heaven as I ever hope to get!" He continued a careet in teaching until 1859 when he was married to Sally Steward Graham, widow of Benjamin Graham, a farmer in Green Lake County. Ansel gave up teaching to manage his wife's farm. Did the country still seem so heavenly to him when confronted with the cruel Wisconsin winters and the unfamiliar tasks of farming?
Shaler's mother, Sally born in 1830, was the daughter of Abijah and Lydia (Davis) Steward of Delaware County, New York. Her father died in New York and her mother died later in Michigan. Her first husband, Benjamin S. Graham, who was born in 1824, died in 1856. They had two children, a son, Henry A., and a daughter, Helen, half-brother-and-sister of Clarence. Sally died in 1902.
Ansel never gave up his interest in education. He served the township as school superintendent and passed on his firm belief in the importance of education to his children.
He and his wife worked hard and improved the farm which grew from 80 acres to 600 acres of valuable land at the time of his death in 1881, leaving his family in comfortable circumstances.
Milwaukee was the nearest railroad station, so supplies and lumber for their small home had to be hauled by oxen. Clarence remembered clearly all of his life how his family built sod fences because lumber for fencing was unavailable. Later in his life he wrote, "I can still picture those sod fences and how the wild flowers grew all over them."
Curious and innavative as he was growing up, inventing came early to the young farm boy who helped with thechores. Story has it that his first creation of note was a miniature treadmill to which he harnessed numerous cats that populated the Shaler barn. The idea came to him as he watched the well driller who came to the farm to drive deeper for water, using a horse-tread for power. He used this feline force to power his mother's churn that made cream into butter. The nine-year-old boy did not mak any money off of this clever contrivance, but it save him from the monotonous task of operating the plunger himself. Later that fall, he created a small cat-powered threshing machine which worked perfectly. Investigating wind power, Clarence designed and consturcted numerous and various kinds of kites.
It was about this time that young Shaler broke a led in a fall or farm accident, causing him to be lame the rest of his life. He found walking behind the plow wearing because of the lameness, so he made the first sulky plow on which one could ride. This was never patented--probably because he had never heard of patents at that time.
The prairie was still a place for Indians then and, while he was growing up, Shaler learned the way of the Indians, played with Indian children, seeing at an early age how the white man was pushing the native American out of his native land.
Among his early recollections of that life on Mackford Prairie were the many tales told by his mother. One he remembered most vividly. Before she was married to his father, Sally was a young widow with two small children. During a winter storm which blew in the windows of her little house, she stuffed feather beds into the open windows to keep her children from freezing. Another storm carried the little house for some distance on the prairie with her and the little children in it.
Shaler later wrote, "The one thing that stands out in my memor, when I was but a child of six or eight years of age, was the calls made by the two other pioneer women left on Macford Prairie. They would come in he early morning and stay until dark." He told of their kindness, good wishes and how they would always inquire what they could do for his mother.
The four children were often left alone for the day when their parents went visiting or to the neighboring town to do their trading. Invariably, when they were away, one of two things would happen, Shaler recalled. "Either the stone chimney would take fire and born out, or the back kitchen door would slightly open without warning and a dusky head would be thrust through the opening. Then a band of Indians, usually four or five, would enter. You can imagine how frighened we were. They were begging for food. We gave them everything they asked for. I presume we would have given them the house, had they asked for it."
In later years, Shaler wrote, "I well remember, as a child, seeing the tepees of the Indians lining the shore of the nearby lake (Lake Emily), and it was not unusual to see their dark faces appear at our door with their figures dressed in brightly colored blankets. As I look back on those frequent visits of the Indians, I know now they were only asking for what was their just right."
Clarence and his siblings lived happy, carefree lives as young children in their home carved in the wilderness. They never missed the yearly revival services at a nearby Baptist Church where the fallen away and converts were received and baptized on the shores of Lake Emily. During the following weeks, the young twins, Clarence and Clara, became missionaries to the barnyard cats. The troughs for watering the horses became baptismal fonts and the cats became staunch Baptists.
When the Shaler children were 14 years of age, the family moved to Ripon, Wisconsin, so they could attend the Prep School at Ripon College, which they did from 1874 to 1877. Although Ansel continued to operate the family farm, they resided on Ransom Street between Watertown and Howard streets.
Clara died at this home in Ripon Feb. 8, 1878, a tragic memory Clarence carried the rest of his life, and which was to later become the inspiration of one of his finest pieces of sculpture, "Morning of Life." It was as if part of him died with her. She was buried in Mackford Union Cemetery.
Enrolled at Ripon College, Clarence furthered his education three more years. The death of his father in 1881 forced him to leave in his senior year to run the family farm. However, because of his bad health and an inaptitude for the work, he left the farm after six or seven years and went to Waupun to enter the business world.
He was married to Blanche Bancroft in 1895. They had one daughter, Marian Shaler. Their home, located on the corner of Watertown and Wilcox streets (300 South Watertown Street), reflected a man who nurtured a sensitive feeling for the sublime and who surrounded himself with many things of beauty. For instance, he brought from California a white stone front for the fireplace which was an intaglio frieze of a man, woman and child. A special lighting effect gives the impression of bas-relief. It is still in the mansion now owned by Mrs. James Drummy.
Marian was married to Arthur Hanisch in 1925 and they have two sons, Shaler Arthur Hanisch, now of Pasadena, California, and Arthur Stuart Hanisch, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his only son, Erik Martin Hanisch.
INDUSTRIAL LEADER
Prior to Shaler's move to Waupun, that city had been making some industrial effort, according to a writer for the Wisconsin Magazine. "But like every other city with a Main Street, the name Waupun, for the most part, was confined to a railway station and a post office marker. With the coming of Clarence A. Shaler, came new life. His indomitable courage and keen foresight, coupled with the talents of an inventive mind, gave him a rare combination of qualifications for leadership," he wrote. Henry Ford once said, "The inventor is a prince of progress." Shaler the inventor was destined to put the name of Waupun before the commercial world, and brought economic progress to the city.
Shaler's transition from educated farmer to manufacturing mogul began with an investment with some other investors in a flax mill. However, the mill soon failed and the investors, left with an empty building, decided they would use the facility for the manufacture of some other kind of product. One of them suggested that, with all the timber in Wisconsin, they could make washboards. Another felt they could make butter tubs, indicating they would sell well in Wisconsin, a leading dairy state.
Clarence, who had invented a way to prolong the life of that useful device that protects us all from bad weather, said, "Let's make umbrellas. Everyone uses them!"
Years before synthetic materials, the cotton umbrella covers became rotten from dampness. Shaler had conceived the idea of a detachable covering so that the umbrella top could easily be replaced when worn out. Concentrating his efforts on the idea, he produced a patented appliance for their manufacture. Before the turn of the Century, Shaler and Henry Hartgerink formed the ShalerHartgerink Company.
The business later became The Shaler Umbrella Company, founded in 1893. The Shaler umbrella featured a removable cover with pockets that held the rib ends of the frame. Handles were designed with various models, from plain to fancy. Some of the fancier handles were gold plated.
Coveted markets were opened and they sold well in the central and western states. A modest fortune was made.
Mr. Shaler, recalling those days, told a story of his first trip to New York to purchase materials for his first real adventure in manufacturing. "I was buying a large bill, it seemed to me. I was directed to the credit manager. I told him that I had but $3,000 and an interest in a farm with which to get credit for $20,000. 'You could easily get rid of your $3,000 and your farm interest, couldn't you?' the credit manager asked.
"I told him that I could. Looking at me keenly, he said, 'Young man, don't you know that credit does not depend on the amount of money one has but upon the character of the man?' And that blessed stranger let me have the goods. I think he would have been amazed if he knew that, before leaving New York, I purchased a small marble head of a beautiful girl which I still have and which I could ill afford at the time.
"The impression that incident made on me in my young manhood has been lasting. The Golden Rule, I decided right then and there, would forever by my motto." The purchase of the marble bust awakened in Clarence an active consciousness of art which was to fulfill his dreams the rest of his life.
While the umbrella business was successful and growing, the company president's health was not. He began having stomach trouble which became worse and worse and he spent a large part of his earnings over a period of many years searching for a cure. Specialists were consulted and all conceivable treatments and prescriptions were administered. All failed.
Finally, a more or less obscure practitioner discovered that the prime cause of all the trouble was the leg that had been broken in childhood. As it healed, it became shorter, causing him to throw his weight on his other leg and brought about an increasing pressure on a portion of the nervous system. The medications given for the pain caused the ruin of his digestive system.
A shoe last was made with a sole of triple thickness and he walked with crutches or a cane. As with all problems that confronted him, Shaler made an intensive study of himself and devised a complete laboratory of appliances for keeping himself physically fit, working on various pieces of apparatus, many of which were his own inventions.
It was during a period of illness that Shaler, in Chicago for medical treatment, accidentally wandered into the studios (which happened to be in the same building) of the sculptor, Lorado Taft, and was held spellbound by the messages of love and beauty which his works had to offer. The two men struck up a life-long friendship, having the love of sculpture in common.
"We became friends instantly and were friends until his death, "Mr. Shaler said. "Since that day in Chicago I have always been interested in art in general and sculpture in particular. But then we did not suspect that my young friend would become one on the greatest sculptors of the nation or that I would become a sculptor myself, after waiting almost 50 years to take up the art seriously."
From the time he read an article in a Boston newspaper about the "horseless carriage," Shaler became excited about the mechanical aspect of the vehicle. What an invention! his inventor's mind was saying. What a future it offered to mankind! Especially to him, because it opened an easier way of travel in his delicate condition.
Clarence Shaler was the second person in the state of Wisconsin to purchase an automobile. It brought to him an avalanche of ideas and he devoted much study to its mechanism. But, as in many other great inventions, such as the steam engine, the steamboat, the cotton gin, the automobile was not readily accepted. One of Clarence's closest friends, a young city attorney of Waupun, was the owner of a high spirited driving horse. His objection to Clarence's vehicle was so great that he tried to persuade the city council to pass an ordinance barring automobiles from the streets of Waupun.
According to the owner of the new conveyance, the spare tire and demountable rim were undreamed of in those days, and the extreme limit of an automobile tire was about 3,000 miles. While he ventured to the surrounding countryside and made numerous trips, he came to the conclusion he would have to give up his Winton unless something was devised whereby tires could be repaired more easily.
On one trip alone, he recalled, he experienced seven punctures. Patching a tire in those days was a slow, tedious job. At the time, several repair outfits were on the market, but when put to the test, they failed to give satisfaction.
If Henry Ford put the American motorist on the highways, it was Clarence Shaler who brought them home again when they had the inevitable flat tires on the way.
Just about the time Mrs. Shaler was insisting that Clarence resign his presidency of the Umbrella Company and as president of the bank and, in fact, from all other business activities, because of his poor health, he began experimenting in a 15 by 25-foot shed in his back yard.
'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz said, 'Now I will create something out of nothing." —"The Wizard of Oz" By L. Frank Baum, 1900.
In the fall of 1905, he produced his first vulcanizer. Hooking up a discarded electric flatiron and a rheostat from a dynamo, and with the aid of a few tools, he produced the first practical hot patch that would not only remedy his own tire trouble, but would solve the problem for the entire auto world.
Much later, when the inventor was to reminisce about those beginnings, his face would light up with a smile as he told about how neighbors brought their tires to his shed and watched in wonderment as the "wizard" applied the magic touch that lengthened the life of the tires and made the repair of the trouble comparatively easy.
"At first, only electric vulcanizers were made," Shaler recalled. "But the demand for vulcanizers among car owners who did not have access to electric current led to the invention of other models heated by steam generated by gasoline or alcohol burners."
A room was set up in the umbrella factory and the growth of the company from that time on was rapid. Repairmen were demanding these types of vulcanizers as they all embodied an important exclusive feature: automatic temperature control. So shop vulcanizers of various styles were added to complete the only line of vulcanizers manufactured in the world.
Automatic temperature control was something Shaler had worked with before. He invented and patented the device which controlled the electric heating pad which he made to treat his sciatica. The company manufactured them, but he later sold the patent for $1,000. He also had the basic patent on the principle of the flatiron that shuts itself off at a certain heat. When asked why he had not sued those who had made fortunes through its use, his reply was that it would have been such a bother and he had all the money he wanted.
By 1906, Shaler had his first international order from England. A request for a catalog of the Shaler vulcanizer and accessories was received from a royal secretary representing King Alphonse of Spain.
Because of his poor health, Shaler associated with F.E. Jones and Walter Graham, forming the C.A. Shaler Company. Ed Van Loo of Alto was employed as superintendent. Ten vulcanizers per day were being turned out. By 1907, Robert Dunlap of Waukesha and Ira Roberts of Waupun traveled for the company.
They attended an automobile show in Madison Square Garden to demonstrate the vulcanizer. Soon after, they added a salesman out of Los Angeles and another from New York. The company by then employed eight workmen and turned out an average of 15 machines a day.
In 1910, Shaler purchased patent and manufacturing rights for the Stitch-in-time Vulcanizer, a gasoline powered, portable machine, and began the manufacture of the first portable vulcanizer, giving the Shaler company control in the United States of the manufacture of portable vulcanizers, both electric and gasoline. That also was the year the first building of the company was erected. (Another was built in 1920.) The company expanded and started the manufacture of the "Shaler Roadlighters," headlights for automobiles.
In 1912, a new department was formed installing a nickel plating plant for the finishing of the vulcanizers. The equipment included two large plating vats and a complete outfit of grinding and polishing machines. The company opened its factory to do job nickel plating and replating of such articles as tools, stove parts, automobile parts, bicycle parts and others.
The Shaler Company continued to manufacture electric, steam and alcohol vulcanizers, electro-pads and electro-stoves. They made electric models of the vulcanizers for private garages and steam roadside models (alcohol heated). Their motto was "Seal the Cut and Save the Tire." The models sold for about $15.
Sixteen years later, the company had grown to 125 employees. It had a ready market all over the nation and many foreign countries. During World War I, the company had furnished the three armies of the United States, England and France with vulcanizers.
Business was flourishing when the plant was struck by a spectacular fire at about 4:15 p.m the afternoon of March 2, 1922. It completely destroyed the buildings and most of the machinery and took the lives of three women employees. The victims were Bessie Koekoek, Mrs. Howard Carney and Mrs. Emma Michels. The fire caused an estimated loss of over a half million dollars.
The plant of the Althouse Wheeler Foundry, located north of the Shaler buildings, caught fire, but was extinguished after an estimated $20,000 damage had been done. The home occupied by the George Buecus family was destroyed, leaving them homeless and penniless. Citizens of the city were near panic, as embers from the blaze carried for blocks, and buildings had to be closely guarded as they, including the state prison, were threatened with fire.
Ada Bille recalled that when the fire got so bad the Bear Brand (hosiery factory across the street) sent it employees home. Ada remembers that she and a friend were on their way to the library. "An elderly lady was walking ahead of us," she said. "She was wearing a velvet hat, and there was a hole burned in it and the smoke was coming from it. I told her and she took her hat off, slapped it on her knee and put it on her head again."
Fire companies from Fond du Lac, Beaver Dam and Oshkosh assisted the Waupun Fire Department. Of all the stories advanced as to the cause of the fire, the testimony of John Beck, an employee of the punch press room, seemed the most reasonable. Beck said that all of a sudden he saw a flash of light like lightning across the room, followed quickly by another from the opposite direction. This caused officials to believe that the fire was caused by high tension power lines crossing wires to a motor on the ceiling of the room.
Beck said the bolt knocked him down and burned his clothes. Within seconds, the whole interior of the room had burst into flames. The fire was punctuated with a series of explosions which blew off the roof and shattered one end of the block-long building.
A demonstration of the first Shaler Electric Vulcanizer was given to Elbert Hubbard in 1908. Hubbard, a writer, lost his life when the Lusitania was sunk prior to the entry of U.S. into World War I. Even in its early days, the Shaler vulcanizer was so well thought of that considerable comment was made by Hubbard in many of his writings.
Clarence Shaler demonstrates how easily the electric vulcanizer is put to work.
In the days of plus fours and punctured tire tubes, thanks to the Shaler portable vulcanizer, the trip could go on.
F.E. Jones, secretary-treasurer of the company, said he knew of nothing in the building to explode, but he thought gas formed quickly and he judged the intense heat must have caused the gas and explosion. "It was high voltage suddenly thrown into our motor wires from the outside that caused the fire," Jones said. It was also believed that the chemicals used in the manufacture of the vulcanizers were responsible for the deadly gas.
Many valuable dies were destroyed which could not be replaced. All of the office fixtures were saved. Many of the supplies of the factory were moved to points of safety. Citizens gave every aid possible to the officers and employees of the company in rescuing office records and files from the blazing building. This saved the company an inestimable sum. The labor of several years were represented in the files, which contained almost priceless designs and patterns of special machinery. They were taken to rooms above the Waupun Produce Company where temporary offices were opened the next day.
A complete printing plant, including three job presses and a folding machine, were lost in the blaze and steps were taken to replace them at once. The greatest loss was the specially built machinery in which the firm specialized and the fact that no deliveries could be made for about three weeks. The plant's lens business was not affected, as all Shaler lenses were made in its glass factories which were located elsewhere. There were hundreds of orders on the books to be filled from the Waupun plant.
The Shaler Umbrella Company leased a building from Breyer Bros. Whiting Company and was located there temporarily, following the fire. At the time of the fire, Mr. Shaler, still president of the company, was in California, where he had been spending his winters for a number of years. He did not return immediately, but wired company officials to proceed at once in using their best judgement toward reestablishing the plant in Waupun.
Ironically, S.F. Walker, manager of the Shaler Company's branch at Nottingham, England, had traveled all the way from England for the sole purpose of inspecting the Waupun factory which turned out a class of vulcanizer not made anywhere else in the world. He arrived in Waupun at 6 o' clock in the evening, just in time to see the firemen waging their battle to keep the fire from spreading to other buildings.
As soon as the debris was cleaned up, a new plant was underway. In clearing away the debris from the ruins, workmen discovered that practically the entire stock of patch and heat units, of which there were hundreds of thousands on hand, had not been destroyed.
These units were used with the Shaler "Five-Minute Vulcanizers" and consisted of a pan of tin a little larger than a silver dollar, which contained a disc of strawboard impregnated with chemicals, there being a piece of unvulcanized rubber on the opposite side of the bottom of the pan. Although the heat of the conflagration was so intense that the rubber on the bottoms of the pans was thoroughly vulcanized (vulcanization taking place at a temperature no lower than 250 degrees F.) the chemicalized strawboard discs had not even ignited and most of them were intact.
In November 1922, a big dancing party was given in the Shaler plant to celebrate the completion of the new building. The ballroom was the new machine room which was 30 x 50 feet. Music was furnished by the Prison City Jazzapators with Walter Henker of Brandon as vocalist. Attending were about 300 people, including the officials and employees and invited Quests.
Following the tragic fire, the Shaler Company began functioning in temporary quarters the next morning and by the end of the year, was running full blast. One of the outstanding features of the company was the loyalty and devotion shown by the employees. Many of them spent their entire working years of their lives in its employ. There were many father-son employees and even three-generation employees in one family.
There seemed to be no labor problems within the company. The management provided social functions for the employees and between company and employees. A clubroom was provided in the office building, fitted with tables for cards and magazines and a six-tube radio. It was open to all employees and gave them a meeting place and a place to hold special programs and get-togethers.
By 1926, the company was manufacturing over 2,000 vulcanizers a day with over four miles of patch heat units for use with the vulcanizers.
While in California, Shaler divided his time between his apartment in the Castle Green in Pasadena and his sheep and almond ranch in the northern part of the state. Hunting was one of the activities that helped to keep him healthy.
Among his self-prescribed means of keeping as fit as possible was playing the game of golf, which he greatly enjoyed.
The Shaler manufacturing plant was reestablished after the buildings were destroyed by fire in 1922.
Mr. Shaler was a consistent believer in advertising, both when the business was at its peak as well as at its lowest level. Before he had been in business a month, the first ad appeared in an automobile trade paper at the "enormous" cost of 80 cents, and he never stopped. One letter to the company inquiring about the patches was dated September 1928, and it referred to an ad in the "Saturday Evening Post" magazine of August 27, 1928.
Following two weeks of rumors, a brief, formal announcement was made January 13, 1927, by the company that "some of the older partners who have not been active are withdrawing in favor of new capital." The official announcement read: "The C.A. Shaler company, which has been manufacturing automotive equipment in Waupun for the past 20 years as a partnership, has been incorporated under the name of 'The Shaler company."
The acquisition of the company by Milwaukee interests was a deal involving well in excess of $1 million. At this time, all the partners retired, and William Wagner was left in charge of all departments except sales.
At the time of the sale, approximately 20 percent of the company's sales was export business with the foreign market susceptible of large development. The company's product sold at such a low price that its use was spread over a wide market. The business was not a victim of "hard times."
In 1928, the company began manufacturing golf clubs, pioneering in the matching set and Shaler "Tailor-made" clubs, thus conquering "golf's grea... [truncated due to length]Acquisition
Accession
2014.0029Source or Donor
Waupun Heritage MuseumAcquisition Method
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