May 20, 1965 Shelton Mason County Journal | ![]() |
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Sec. C--8
i .....
.......... ,
m , ,.
Supplement of SHELTeR-MASON COUNTY JOURNAL
:i:i! i i~ ~,
AS IT ONCE
tracks were r
road Avenue
ton's main e
fare looked,
camera lens
curved aspect
Railroad and
First Avenuq
right. The
from atop a
at the
Railroad,
Hollywood
Editor's Note: The following ar-
ticle is reprinted from the Arg~ls,
a.n indcl)endent news, comment
and /)pinion magazine of the Pa-
cific Northwest printed in Seattle
under the editorship of Philip Bai-
ley. The article, written by Shelby
Scales, is one of the finest, liveli-
est and most snccinct historical
pieces ever compiled on the Simp-
son Timber Company. For that
rcasou The ,lournal is reprinting
it in this special Simpson 75th an-
niversary edition. It originally ap-
peared iu the December 11 and 18,
].964, editions of The Argus.
There's no business in the North-
west like the timber business, the
raison d'etre for the area's devel-
opment, and no company quite
like the Simpson Timber Co., pos-
sibly the largest family-owned
corporation in this nation of in-
visably-owned corporations.
Simpson celebrates its 75th,
birthday in 1965, a stark fact!
v. hich llides a good share of Wash-
ington's history and an industrial
evolution exte.ncting from ox-teams
i.o acoustical tile. In that span Sol
Siml)son's logging outfit has ma-
tured into an industrial giant with
the kind of dimensions that im-
press Boston bankers tl~e way Miss
America's anatomical figures sway
Hollywood producers.
Not. just the size has changed.
Simpson's logging legacy is a
comlmny that farms and logs
; ! "~'" [ !i' P' ' "~'
vellcer, his/l)( r find illsUlattion
I)oard, then goes out and sells its
I.)roduct. The nature of the busi-
ness has (tllllllge(l.
Equally important is a h/nnan
leg'acV, li'ronl a VVol'k force of 50
~lle|l and 12 horses Simpson has
(~()me to enlploy 5,500 pers(ms,
most of thenl living and working
in such pla.ees as Shelton and Mc-
Cleary, \¥ash., Lyons, Ore., and
.Arcat'.a, Calif. Ill these towns, as
Simpson goes, sO goes the local
! ~¢ottomy..
It isn't certain how many rag-
ging companies have come and
/4ont during that 75-vear period,
bnt l/l(!l'C :tFe havd 'FcasoHs foF
MARK E. REED
Simpson's endurance and growth.
Sol's grandson, William Reed, heir
and board chairman of the busi-
ness, talked about them one day
recently.
"I don't think a box full of se-
curities would be as satisfying as
the day-to-day challenges of a
business," said Reed. "I want to
he active in business and pass on
the responsibilities to my heirs. I
suspect they will feel 'the same
way."
His family owns about 80 per
cent of the Simi)son Co., the value
a well-guarded family secret. M'ost
of the rest of it is o{vned by heirs
of Alfred Anderson, a giant of a
nlnn with a flair for' finance who
(:,,alue west frool YVi:,;consiu to joi~
with Sol Simpsm in his logging
venture. The balance is owned by
55 of t.he company's key men un-
der a stock purchasing plan.
SHELTON CIRCA 1890 '
IL takes a moment of'mental ad-
.~tlutme~t to ~hiit one's thoughts
from Shnpson's carpeted, wood-
p:lncled, executive offices on the
20th floor of Seattle's Washington
Building to the point where it all
BEST WISHES
SIMPSON
TIMBEI
COMPANY
75 years of progress
and conservation have
built a strong community
in the
Shelton Working Circle
COTA GRILL
"WE NEVER CLOSE"
111 Cota Street
began, r0ugh-and-ready Shelton on
the Northwest frontier in the
1890s.
The most popular place in town
those days was Billy Forbes' sa-
loon, The Bear. Nearly all the cus-
tomers were woodsmen, a lot of
them employed by Sol Simpson.
They were an unhomogenized col-
lection of Swedes, Noz~vegians,
French - Canadians, Easterners,
Southerners and Finns. Some of
them still had the smell of steer-
age. The only American place
they'd known before Shelton was
Ellis Island.
Billy entered business for him-
self on a stake built up by driving
Mason County bull-teams. History,
moving swiftly then as now, failed
to nail down this specific point,
but it's just possible that he left
the woods when Simpson, a revo-
lutionary, switched from oxen to
horses as the means for dragging
his logs from the forest. Every-
body at the time said Sol had gone
plumb out of his skull. They said
the same thing years later when,1
Simpson introduced a steam-pow-
ered donkey engine to handle some
of the logging burdens.
Actually, it wasn't that compli-
cated. SimpSon was simply stay-
ing one step ahead of his compe-
tition, sn aim his heirs in the
company have shared.
By 1895 the prospering Simpson
and Anderson ialterests were con-
solidated and growing. Their logs
kept buzz-saws humming along
Puget Sound and the lumber that
emerged was helping build a na-
tion in the throes Of its great post-
Civil War expansion.
DIFFERENCE
Ste.wart Holbrook, the late Bos-
well of the Northwest woods, has
written that the m o s t signifi-
cant difference between Simpson
and other logging companies of
the first half of this century was
the company's retention of cut-
over land. Other firms reduced
their chances of snrvival, assure-
ling they, like Sim I~on, wanted to
sm'vive~ by allowin~ their lands to
revert to 'the counties for unpaid
taxes.
William Reed says that this par-
ticu]ar company policy probably
started as nmch by accident as de-
sign. "They may have reasoned
that if they let the land go for
taxes, the company would have to
make up for it in tax monies in
some other way."
Whatever the reason, Simpson
has held its land and three-quar-
ters of a century later they have
the hemlock and Douglas fir that
it produces.
The man mainly responsible for
this difference was Reed's father,
Mark Reed, who was born near
Olympia within earshot of axes
tearing at a stand of Douglas fir.
He was a towering figure in his
industry and in the state until his
death in 1933.
"In some ways," says a thought-
ful company spokesman, "the
story of Simpson is the story of
Mark Reed. He was the man who
took it over the first transition
from a logging company to a log-
ging and sawmill company and
carried it through the labor trou-
bles of the post World War I era."
Reed was a shrewd businessman
with what liberal writers of a lat-
er generation were to revere as
"social conscience." As a youth
he got a taste of logging camp
Just a Simple
but Sincere
THANK YOU
SIMPSON
TIMBER CO.
for
Things Too Numerous
to Enumerate
,ir,;{.~i
Eells & Valley
Appliance Center
!
SOL G. SIMPSON
life, a crude existence of bad food,
long work hours and the fir-bough
bedrolls. Long before the emerg-
ence of the Wobblies, Rccd vowed
that if he ever ran a logging camp
those conditions would be improv-
ed.
He carried out the vow. Simp-
son camps didn't eater to hewers
of wood with Waldorf Astoria ac-
commodations, but the cooking
was good, mattresses replaced fir
boughs for bedding and the cab-
ins were clean and warm. Simpson
camps got a reputation for hav-
ing better conditions than most
others, a key factor in the com-
parative lack of labor difficulties
faced by the company in the Wob-
blY era.
REED'S REFORMS
Reed married Sol Simpson s
daughter and served as the corn-:
pany's president from Anderson's
death in 1.914 until his own death
in 1933. He didn t confine his re-
forms to the logging camps. As
COP majority leader in the state
House of Representatives, he push-
ed through the nation's third set
of Workmen's Compensation Laws,
a fact that may come as a sur-
prise to some Goldwater Repub..
licans.
His fatal illness and death, the
reader of old ncwselips will dis-
cover, was front-page news to Se-
attle papers for a week.
It was Mark Reed who extended
Simpson's operations from . the
woods into lumber. He built a
sawmill in Shelton in 1925. The
firm's next great leap forward
came under the aegis of President
Chris Kreienbaum. It was a hard
business deal with humanitarian
overtones and came in 1942.
. Henry McCleary founded and
owned, lock, stock and smoke-
staek,i the town of McCleary, near
Shelton. Its several hundred resi-
dents, living in company houses,
made their wages working for Mc-
Cleary either in the woods or in
the town's door-manufacturing
plant.
In 1912, their timber depleted,
the McCleary interests decided
either to sell out or simply quit.
Simpson stepped in, purchased the
town, then re-sold the houses to
their occupants. The firm was no}v
logger-sawmill operator and man-
ufacturer and the citizens of Mc-
Cleary had a place to work.
William Reed was called back
from the Navy during World War
II to take control of the firm on
the death of his older brother,
Frank. "During i:hose war years
the company was pretty well run
along ti~c lines laid down by the
War Production Board," Reed re-
calls.
LOTS OF CASH
"After the war'we had a h)t of
cash, a small amount of timber A.H. ANDERSON
and a plant in badneed of repair.
I decided then that if we were to in Shelton which went into opera-
stay in business we needed more tion in 1947.
timber and more plants." "Reed and Kreienbaum had al-
Reed dispatched Fenwick Riley ready made the great decision to
an ace timber appraiser, on a mis- take' us into manufacturing with
:don to find his firm more trees, the purchase of the McCIeary in-
He actually had Manchuria in terests," said Henry Bacon, the
mind, but p'olitical developments-- firm's president, whose office is
the approaciting takeover by Chi- across an uncluttered reception
nese Reds-- closed the door. Rilev room from Reed's. "But Bill wasn't
looked elsewhere and found red- going to stop there, or even with
wood in California and oiher tim- the insulating board plant.
bet' in Chile. That set the stage PULP AND PAPER
for a massive timber acquisition "In 1946 I decided that we want-
of one billion feet of redwood, ed to get into the pulp business,"
Meanwhile, back home in Wash- says Reed. "I thought it would be
ington, Reed and Kreienbaum se- logical to buy a piece of Rayonier.
cured a 100-year contract with the I did, but it didn't work out.
U. S. government for joint ha.r- I lost a fight for control of the
vesting and growing of timber company, sold my stock and start-
within all area embracing about ed searching elsewhere for a pulp
400 square miles. In return for property."
getting' exehlsive rights to the par- Reed says he was re.ady to cruise
chase of timber from the govern- the coast seeking a pull~ mill, but
ment lands, the firm had to come got no farther than Everett where
up with the means for complete the Everett Pulp and Paper Co., a
tffilization of the timber. This gave firm established by the Rockefel-
birth to an insulating board plant lers in 1889, caught his eye.
................................................... At this l)oint in the firm's ex-
pansion the problem appeared to
hc financing. Reed hegan to look
for the man who could raise the
mi!qions needed to carry out his
program. Among those'he called
FRANK REED
Son Of Mark Reed
on was Thomas Gleed, theu pres-
ident of the Seattle-First National
Bank. Gleed suggested himself.
Reed accepted.
"Tile big expansion came dur-
ing the Gleed period," says Henry
Bacon, who had gone i.o work as
Reed's assistant in 1945. "It was
Gleed who sold the insurance corn-
panics on the idea of investing in
land and timber with long-term
loans. Consequently, we were no
longer dependent on the hanks."
The first of these acquisitions
was Everett Pulp and Paper. In
1955 for $20 million Simpson
bought the Schafer Brothers Log-
ging Co., a ~,¢l.cp that COnsolidated
its land holding.:; in the Shelton
trea. Then in 1956 Gleed psved
the way for a $90 million prop-
2rty expansion that included large
sdditlons of timberlands in Oregon
'and California. These pnrchases
included the M&M Woodworking
Co., the Nortlmrn Redwood Co.,
and the Sage Land arid Timber
Co. in California.
Later the Everett Pulp and
Paper mill was merged with Lee
Paper Co. of Michigan to fern"
the Simpson Lee Paper Co. Simp-
son ow]m 60 per cent of the firm
which has annual sales of $30
million.
GLEED AND MUCKLEY
"The trick in all of this was
~he skillful ability of Gleed and
his assistant, Joseph Muckley, to
make the financial deals," says
Bacon, now Simpson's 1)resident.
"This fixed us with sufficient land
in Washington and California.
Mv job now is to make it all pay
off."
It now seems slightly incredible
but at the l:ime Reed made his
decision to pllSh Sinlpson onward
and upward in the immediate post-
war era, there was some feat, and
trembling about the state of the
nation's economy. Some feared de-
pression.
"We thought that in the long
run the countl:y's econonly "~ras
going to be good," Reed said.
"Frankly, I don't worry about
whether we are going to have a
boom or a bust next year---as
long as we are ,~ jump ahead of
the pack in development."
The major challenge of the im-
mediate future fro' his firm is sell-
ing the products that it produces;
a production firm has become a
producing and m~rketing business.
To help push their products, Simp-
son now has a building and supply
division with offices in eight cities.
To stay ahead of the pack in
other areas, Simpson has phmged
into the international and research
fields. Its new research office in
Bellevue employs scientists trying
to find new products that can be
made from trees. Acoustical tile.
is one of these and Bacon is bet-
ting his boots there'll be others
to follow. Non-combustible wood
is one of the Simpson objectives
already achieved in softwo()d pro-
ducts. CH I LE
Simpson actually went interna-
lional with the purchase of 40 per-
cent of the largest and ol~test
fm'est products company in Chile.
"We decided that we'd better quit
complaining and get. into the in-
ternational market field," said Ba-
con.
The firm is now doing business
in 42 countries and Simpson In-
ternational, the export-import div-
ision, in three years has increased
its sales from virtually nottiing
to $11 million.
At. the same l.imc Simpson is
in the throes of a $21 million ex-
pansion and modernization pro-
gram, and, if earniugs permit, this
will be followed by a $10-year pro..
gram of investing $6 million a
year in new plants.
' "There is a problem with the
geographical location of our plants
with regard to our markets," said
Reed. "We will have to review this
sitnation."
A bone in the company's throat
---one that also bothers other
Northwest
the Jones
quiring U.S.
between coa~
,The
most
who
Midwest
"We have
markets
onr
inte
The
ter-rich
QUICK
From
son and
prescllt,
bottom
ing apPm
to call a
a routine
effect, is
decisions in
con,
and Tom
Iwho is
Finance
since nlo
New York,
ident of
KreienbaUm
man three
years in the
As for tr
ments,
ties.
could fall
now and
ial to take
feet of this
yond these,
there is a
young mana
have eyes P
now coming
the Univers:
the Harvar'
Now an(
conlea up a
Timber Co.'
status as a
and becom~
the otl~er
cerns, a ptl
"I don't
Simpson's.
three chtl~
and" some
his
SIMPSON'S
means
SHELTON'S
Here's to another 75 Years
for both of us.
SHELTON EL]
• ,' to .....
Simpson Timber
"?" ',, ~ , , Oll
your
..... 75th ? NNI¥ E:
i1! , '" With 0ver Fifty
Memories of the Life
Growth and
of this
GEORGE GRISDALE was an today the model logging corn-
early-day Simpson camp fore- reunify, was named after him
man who earned the compliment and his brother Bill. George died ~IA~"~ ~1"
Of being a "captain of men, a in 1929. U.a.~L]' ..LVJ.,
friend to all". Camp Grlsdale,
i