[Trade Journal]
Publication: Central Manufacturing District Magazine
Chicago, IL, United States
vol. 24, p. 29, 32, col. 1-2
Rise of the Owens-Illinois
Glass Company
ONE OF THE SHOWPLACES of the industrial area served by the Los Angeles Junction Railway is the modernistically designed plant of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, located at 5120 South Soto street. Constructed of reinforced concrete and glass brick, this "factory of the future" has been a point of interest to local businessmen and tourists since it was constructed in 1929. In 1937, an addition which featured the use of glass brick was built to provide increased warehouse, and office space. The present "model plant" is one of the most up-to-date of any of the Owens-Illinois branches in the nation, according to S. M. Cantrill, its manager.
The story of the inception of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company and its resultant expansion in Los Angeles and other cities is an interesting one. It reverts to a studious young fellow named William L. Libbey who lived in Boston. In 1819, young Libbey became associated with Deming Jarves as a confidential clerk in a new glass factory the latter was starting at Lechemere Point, Massachusetts. The company flourished and Libbey gradually was given an increasing share in the management of the business. In 1855 Libbey bought out Jarves, and twenty years later moved his business to Toledo, Ohio, where his son, Edward Drummond Libbey, became manager. At this period two important events occurred.
One of these events was the founding of the Illinois Glass Company in 1873 by William Eliot Smith and Edward Levis at Alton, Illinois. The other was the employment of Michael Owens by the Libbey plant at Toledo.
Smith and Levis at Alton launched an industry which soon made itself a leader in the container field. The began with limited capital and one glass furnace, but Smith was such a good salesman and Levis such a good production man that they soon found it necessary to expand and it was not long until their sprawling plant in the Mississippi river town had become one of the most important industries in that section of the country. At the same time the Libbey factory established a reputation as manufacturer of glass tableware and elaborately cut heavy crystal. In this field the Libbey plant had become as important a factor as the Illinois Glass Company in its own particular line.
In a little private workshop at the Libbey plant, young Michael Owens, who had risen to the rank of foreman, was conducting experiments which presaged a revolutionary change in the glass industry. Owens was imbued with the idea that the laborious process of producing bottles by hand was much too slow for the demands on the industry. He was convinced bottle blowing could be accomplished automatically and his preliminary experiments indicated he had hit upon a practicable idea.
Edward Drummond Libbey saw merit in the work of Owens. He encouraged the young Irishman to go ahead with his studies and experiments and fortified him with money as well as advice. Finally, in 1903, Owens succeeded in assembling a bottle-making machine which worked and Libbey had the satisfaction of standing beside his able young foreman and watching the cumbersome machine turn out new bottles with a relatively small amount of human assistance. The Owens Bottle Machine Company was organized in the same year to exploit Owens' inventions and began business as a licensor of bottle-blowing machinery.
The name of Owens first was linked with Illinois in an unofficial way. It occurred in 1910 when the Illinois Glass Company, then doing a thriving business under the management of the sons of Edward Levis, decided to substitute machinery for hand labor in a number of its operations. The Illinois Glass Company thus became one of the early licensees authorized to use Owens bottle machines and also achieved distinction as one of the important pioneers in the field of machine-made glass containers. The Owens Bottle Machine Company a short time later also became a bottle manufacturer and subsequently changed its corporate name to Owens Bottle Company.
The Owens Bottle Company and Illinois Glass Company continued as active competitors for many years. In their expansions both companies acquired plants in many sections of the country and by 1929 the two companies had achieved a truly dominant position in the glass container market. The merger of the Owens Bottle Company and the Illinois Glass Company to form the Owens-Illinois Glass Company was accomplished in 1929 and much progress in the scientific development of glass has been achieved by the combined companies.
At Alton, Illinois, the site of the world’s largest glass container plant, Owens-Illinois maintains a great laboratory where glass and furnaces are studied and machines produced to fabricate glass with the utmost efficiency. In Toledo, Owens-Illinois has a Packaging Research laboratory where scientists, technicians, artists and designers devote themselves to the innumerable packaging and processing problems of thousands of customers. At Muncie, Indiana, other Owens-Illinois glass experts have perfected glass block as a structural material and the company’s sales organization has sold block for installations in many of the finest residences, office buildings, industrial plants, commercial establishments and schools.
Although Libbey now produces a great deal of its tableware by machinery, the fine old art of handmade glassware has been perpetuated in the company’s plant at Toledo. Off-hand shops still are important parts of the thriving Libbey establishment. In them Libbey produces glassware which graces the tables of the finest hotels and restaurants and veteran Libbey craftsmen turn out crystal ware which is as perfect as man can make it.
Thus the vast Owens-Illinois Glass Company, besides the work which stamps it as among the most progressive in its field, also prides itself upon the perpetuation of its traditional art of off-hand glass making.
Other products of Owens-Illinois are cans and all types of metal containers manufactured by Owens-Illinois Can Company in Baltimore, Maryland; closures which are produced principally at Toledo and Glassboro, New Jersey; and corrugated boxes produced at a number of the company’s plants.
In addition to the factory on the Los Angeles Junction Railway lines, and those previously mentioned, Owens-Illinois has plants in Oakland and San Francisco on the Pacific Coast; and in the East in Bridgeton, New Jersey; Charleston, West Virginia; Clarion, Pennsylvania; Columbus, Ohio; Fairmont, West Virginia; Gas City, Indiana; Huntington, West Virginia; Terre Haute, Indiana; Streator, Illinois; Clearing, Illinois; and McKee Rocks, Pennsylvania.
