Shot Down Like Dogs - Labor history of South River, NJ

Herrmann, Aukam & Co.

Illustration above - by author, from contemporary post card

NOTE:

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In 1882, Herrmann, Aukam & Company purchased a large mill off of the town’s main southbound street, Whitehead Avenue. The mill, built in 1877, bordered the South River on the east, the Raritan River Railroad (a passenger and freight line that ran between South Amboy and New Brunswick) on the south, Whitehead Avenue to the West and the namesake Herrmann Street, a dead-end street lined on both sides with company housing, to the north.

Herrmann, Aukam & Co., was formed in Troy, NY in December, 1873. A partnership between Frederick G. Aukam (who claimed to have manufactured the first cotton handkerchiefs in the US in 1862) and Adolph Herrmann, they also manufactured men's collars and cuffs, shirt fronts, and women's under-clothing.

1877 Herrmann, Aukam ad, Troy City Register

The company maintained it’s main offices and 4 floors of showrooms in New York City and apparently had retail outlets, with a "fancy dry goods " store listed in an 1875 Boston city directory (on 48 Summer) and possibly elsewhere. It was primarily a handkerchief manufacturer "...plain and hemstitched for men and women...they specialized, however, in making the famous red bandannas which working men used..." [Selover].

Some sources claim that it was the largest manufacturer of handkerchiefs in the United States with branches in Pennsylvania (Lebanon, opened in 1897, Annville and Mt. Joy), New York City (the West New Brighton section of Staten Island) and overseas.

In 1903, they opened another New Jersey factory in Hightstown, 15 miles south of South River. They also had two short-lived branches in the well-known textile manufacturing NJ region of Passaic & Paterson in 1906-7 period. (The Paterson plant appears to have been closed only months after opening because the company could not get help due to refusing to pay at rates equivalent to the town's silk mills).

In 1906, the company was incorporated in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with the officers being listed as Milton O. Herrmann, Theodore A. Little and Joseph Michaelis. (Little would retire in 1916 and was reported to have been with the company for thirty years.)

HAND COLORED IMAGE BY AUTHOR, FROM OLD PHOTO

Originally built as a rug mill, the building had also housed a mens' shirt manufacturer before the Herrmann, Aukam & Co. purchase. In the company's 36 years of existence in the borough, the company would enlarge the mill with 2 three story additions, a four story addition and a separate power plant (only a portion of the complex remains today, mostly unused.)

In 1917, Charles Herrmann was the superintendent of the factory. He was the son of Henry Herrmann, who had previously been plant superintendent (and, legend has it, owned South River's first bath tub in 1884.) It is probably Milton Herrmann a 1918 Home News article refers to when they quote a Captain M.C. Herrmann as saying "My company has a handkerchief factory in South River." Given a commission in the army during World War I, he was, said the paper, "in the millionaire class".

Charles Herrmann had originally been "forced through ill health" to leave the employ of H-A in 1892, and opened a general store downtown. He also operated a "Ladies Underwear" firm on the corner of Main & Thomas Streets before his association with Herrmann, Aukam. A January, 1913 Want Ad advertised for operators on "house dresses". This business was leased to the New York firm of Epstein & Levy later that year. See Herrmann family bio's.

By 1917, Herrmann, Aukam employed 600-1000 people (about 10-15% of the town's population- estimates vary possibly due to seasonal employment variations, the inclusion of "home workers" and possibly reduced employment due to the strike) and was by far the largest employer in town. A 1913 report by the South River Board of Trade claimed that eight smaller embroidery firms employed 500 people, while Hermann, Aukam's total employment was 800.

The other garment firms, such as the Lunepp Lace, Embroidery and Underwear Company on Division Street, Walter Sennhauser's Middlesex Embroidery Company, Schlegel, Jacob Benzinger and several firms run by the Bohi family, where much smaller. In 1918, the Bohi's, Lunepp, Middlesex & South River Embroidery together employed only 232 people.

The next largest employer, other than the brick firms, appears to have been the General Cigar Company, makers of White Owl and Robert Burns cigars, with 200-400 employees. General Cigar was the successor company to the South River Cigar Company, which as late as 1915, when it was struck for five days, had employed 400. The General Cigar Co. was diagonally opposite the Herrmann, Aukam facility on the corner of Herrmann & Water Streets. Another tobacco firm, the Porto Rican American Tobacco Company, would be closed in 1917.

For more info, see 1918 South River Industrial Statistics

A Herrmann, Aukam employee

Two-thirds of the Herrmann, Aukam workers were "girls and women" (Sunday Times 4/1). Since "boys" also were employed, adult men were a minority of the workers. A 1910 fire map states that Herrmann, Aukam had 700 employees with 200 being men. ( The Staten Island factory of Herrmann, Aukam had 160 women and 60 men employees in 1914 along with 7 "children 14-16" according to New York State labor sources.)

Most workers were Russian, Polish and Hungarian, with some Italians and a small portion of Swiss embroiderers. In the 1890s, Congress investigated Hermann, Aukam's use of contract workers from Europe.Of course, just as South River men commuted to Milltown and Sayreville, women workers from those towns also took the trains and trolleys into South River to work at Herrmann, Aukam or other local factories.

No official accounts mention wages. Contemporary accounts for other "handkerchief workers" put the average wages at $5-7 a week. $10-15 a week was about average for the time for men, with women averaging about $8. The work week was most probably 50-60 hours. (About 35% of Polish and Russian immigrant men made under $10 a week in 1912, with 50% making $10-15, according to the book Immigration and Labor, by Isaac Hourwich (1912).

Charlotte Dow Barber, in her memoir of South River, A Time To Remember, notes that an uncle made only $15 for a fifty hour week as a Chief Engineer so, if anything, $10 a week or less seems right for laborers and operators. It would also correspond to another account which puts the annual total payroll as $300,000 for 600-650 employees.

South River's two main industries, garments and tobacco, were among the poorest paying in the state. A New Jersey Bureau of Statistics report in 1916 noted that textiles ranked 23rd and tobacco last out of 25 industries studied. (According to Patricia Cooper's

account, Once A Cigar Maker, 88% of New Jersey women cigarmakers made less that $9 a week in 1910.) Textile and their products, however, employed the largest percentage of New Jersey workers, over 100,000 in 1925.

Barber claims that underage children were frequently employed, that “...youngsters ten or twelve years of age worked long hours for very little pay. Each time inspectors came from New York City, the children were hastily concealed in large boxes until such time as the ‘coast was clear’ ”. An 1888 report by the state's Bureau of Industrial Statistics noted that a "shirt and handkerchief factory" in South River employed girls "...from 8 years up, at as low wages as 75 cents a week...". NJ State inspectors reported that, in 1895, the company had 50 employees under 16 (out of 375) and 33 (out of 780) in 1900. 2 were "discharged" after that 1895 inspection, apparently because they were too young.

--- September 19, 1894

A 1903 report by the New Jersey State Board of Education claimed that 60 school-age children worked in South River's factories.

The company also had an extensive "home work" system. The material was picked up in bundles at the factory to be finished at home, the work consisting of trimming loose threads and scalloping edges, "...the boys and father joining the women..." reports Selover (288).

During the last few years of the company (possibly due to the strike?), work was delivered and picked up at homes by the company. Even after the closing of the factory in October, 1918, the company maintained a network of "private home workers" shipping unfinished goods from their main plant in Lebanon, PA., to South River at an office they would maintain on Ferry Street up until 1923.

TYPICAL HOME WORKERS IN THE 1910s (UNKNOWN LOCATION)

Such "home work" usually paid poorly and, as labor reform laws were passed in the early decades of the 1900's, it became heavily regulated to try to prevent the worst abuses. The state of New Jersey, which licensed "home work", found that as late as the 1930's the average hourly wage was 9 cents and the average family income was only $2.60 a week. Embroidery firms were some of the last businesses allowed to use "home workers". Despite the illegal child laborers, home work system and apparent long hours (Selover notes that operations often continued until 9 P.M.), Herrmann, Aukam appears to have been a paternalistic employer, similar to those that attempted to run “model” industrial company towns, (of which the Pullman Company’s town outside of Chicago is probably the most famous), as opposed to the garment and textile firms in New York City and other large New Jersey manufacturing areas like Paterson and Passaic.

Like many other "company towns", there were also claims that H-A employees were pressured into shopping at a sort of "company store", Charles Herrmann's .

"It is also a fact that the men employed in the factory are expected to buy all of their groceries at the grocery store kept by a son of the superintendent. If a man does not he is made to understand that the superintendent is not please with him, and if he is wise and wants to hold his job he does better - that is, he buys where he is expected to buy. It is a regular company store system."

---Unnamed striker, quoted in The Daily Times, Oct. 8, 1899.

Want ad, New York Sun, June, 1880

(2 years before opening South River plant).

A review of the business in the Lebanon (PA) Evening News in late February, 1917, calling the South River factory "modest", noted the Staten Island and Lebanon were larger mills, with Lebanon employing 1,800 hands. Lebanon also had two satellite plants in nearby Mt. Joy and Annville.

A very laudatory article on the company appeared in a Sunday Times section on South River (4/1/17). It describes the numerous 7-room company cottages "rented to employees at a nominal sum..." (contemporary accounts show other companies charging $3-4 a week rent - about half a week's pay - what the Home News considered nominal is unknown.)

(Not all the ads above were for South River facility - some used for illustration purposes only.)

Herrmann Street, South River.

Herrman, Aukam & Co. would later that year offer for sale some of the houses for $2,100-2,350.

Work areas were a "...light, airy and clean...cheerful environment" in the factory and the sanitary lavatories and shower baths with attendants were opened to the use of the employees and the public at "absolutely no cost" and "each of the towels is sterilized after use...". A lunch room was not currently operating (again, possibly due to the strike), but it had featured "...appetizing lunches at a very nominal cost...". The article concluded with the paragraph:

“The organization and administration of the company are of a high standard. The interests of the company are identical with those of the borough and the welfare of each is best served by mutual co-operation.”

What the story neglected to mention was that a strike had been in effect against Herrmann, Aukam & Company for two months.

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