Kalamazoo to You

AN institution of learning, founded in 1833, created in the sublime spirit of service, dedicated to fellowship in learning, continued in the making of pathfinders, with attendant self-discovery, initiative, and individuality, has alumni in Turkey, India, China, France, Great Britain, Mesopotamia, the West Indies, Porto Rico, Hawaii, Japan, Canada, and in nearly every state of our country.

Kalamazoo College, limited to four hundred in the student body, adheres to the known concept of its founder, Rev. Thomas W. Merrill, a graduate of Colby College, who journeyed on horseback a dozen years before the coming of the railroad and worked several years to raise the necessary funds to obtain a charter, in 1833, in the territory of Michigan, which read: “An Act of the Legislature Council of Michigan, 1833, to promote the knowledge of all those branches of education usually taught in academies and collegiate institutions.” Varying the name, the college was granted a charter under the name of the Kalamazoo College by the state legislature of Michigan in 1855, and was the first coeducational institution of the country. Among the presidents was John Milton Gregory, LL.D., who was called from Kalamazoo College to become the first president of the University of Illinois.

Once you view the college campus of over twenty-five acres, you feel the inspiration that produces memories unpurchasable in the student mind. A mile from the heart of Kalamazoo, these acres seem far removed — almost cloistered. A Christian spirit isevident; in talks with nearly every member of the faculty, the dean of women, and many of the students, the writer discovered real and practical expressions of the spirit of the Great Teacher.

The college is maintained largely by the generosity of the Baptist denomination, which founded it, yet there is no discrimination. All faiths are represented in the student body— the Jewish, the Roman Catholic, and all Protestant denominations. A careful record of daily chapel service disclosed in four years only one student who asked to be excused from attendance. This little college has sent out seventy-five per cent of its pathfinders as teachers, preachers, and missionaries. Here is a normal group of real college young men and women, all animated with the idea of finding the real path to service.

College expenses are within reason. Every student can find an opportunity to meet expenses in part by some sort of effort in Kalamazoo. The faculty includes graduates from the leading universities of every quarter of the United States. Nothing can swerve these earnest men and women from their purpose of keeping the watch-fires of individuality in the forefront.

The actual operation of instruction is the most striking feature of this college. The classes are just large enough to be formal. There is a moral in the very morale, convincing to the outer view. There is enough formality to ensure discipline, and enough congeniality to make for ease in conveying instruction

—s tudent and professor actually seemed to blend in the different classes that came under observation.

Before the end of the first year of residence, each student, after consultation with the president, must choose some member of the faculty as his adviser. Just the nub of what President Hoben said: “Our idea is the restoration of the old English conception of a college: namely, a faculty of known excellence living in fellowship with a small student body; to maintain a strict limit in point of number so that personal acquaintance is guaranteed; and to select for faculty positions only those persons who care to live with youth in the fellowship of learning. In conformity with this ideal, I make it a point to interview at length every student entering the college, for the purpose of ascertaining his calibre, degree of promise, and particularly his moral purpose. If one can succeed in the development of young people of promise to the point where they choose the good and spiritual things of life, rather than the inferior and superficial, I shall regard that as meeting the demands of a liberal education.”

Surely everyone will say that Rev. Thomas W. Merrill, in founding Kalamazoo College, builded right.

The wondrous strides in the fabrication and output in tonnage of paper in the United States have caused the admiration and envy of the entire world.

The precise time of paper-making in the western world is unknown. In the eighth century the Arabs began making paper. This knowledge went to Spain. Paper was soon after made in France, Germany, and later in England. From England in 1690 came the paper-makers who established a paper-mill in this country. To-day, Kalamazoo is recognized as the leading centre in papermaking. Its output is about two million pounds of paper daily.

One of the model paper-mills in the Kalamazoo valley, now in operation making Rexford Enamel and X-ray enamel papers, is the last achievement of a pioneer in paper-making who has left an unprecedented record of actual progress in this craft.

The Rex Paper Company of Kalamazoo is really a monument to a son of Pennsylvania who learned paper-making in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

The founder, John F. King, was not only associated with paper-making here but throughout the land. The Rex Paper Company is just east of Kalamazoo, in a twenty-five acre tract of which more than half is in buildings, embellished with beds of growing plants and flowers. It makes daily twenty-five tons of coated papers, generates its own power, and filters its own water.

The spiritual side of the manufacturing business in Kalamazoo is well exemplified in the Rex Paper Company. Talks with forty per cent of the workers of this mill show that a sense of loyalty exists among men and management, and almost of reverence for the founder. The company aims to pay a little more per hour in wages than is current.

The founder was born in Pennsylvania and found himself in a paper-mill in Holyoke, Massachusetts, at the age of twelve. He came west and was a machine tender. One of the oldest paper-makers in this valley said: “John F. King was a practical chemist and he acquired and understood a knowledge of paper-making that at times seemed intuitive. Never interested in moneymaking, he spent his time in inventing machinery, improving and improvising a galaxy of by far the most useful forces in this craft.”He was looked upon as an outstanding paper-maker of the nation. His idea of better paper, of superlative enamel, with its added rag base, is winning now in competition between hemispheres. His inventions, his known building-up of many of the bigger mills now in operation, placed him as a leader among men in his line, and he is so regarded in the United States. His last effort is a model of efficiency and he has left an organization not only loyal but unexcelled in its particular field of paper-making. From general manager to beater you will find no superiors.

The history of Michigan by George N. Fuller shows that John F. King was pioneer and leader of the paper-industry of the Kalamazoo valley. Machine tender, superintendent, organizer, he made one of the largest mills in Kalamazoo and also created the King Paper Company. In 1915 he organized and became president of the Rex Paper Company. He was an authority in all details of paper-making.

The consensus of opinion in this region is that John F. King aided in making Kalamazoo valley the big factor in paper-making in the country.

The known advancement made by the Rex Paper Company since the departure of its founder, John F. King, shows that the present president, his own son, Merrill B. King, and his organization have carried on.

Out in Parchment the community spirit has eclipsed the old-fashioned policy of selfishness, and while the individual still works out his own salvation he is ready to and does help others. You get a full realization of this in the Sunday School connected with the Community House at Parchment. Two hundred and twenty-five pupils of nearly all creeds are taught to realize not only the love of their Spiritual Father but the love of country as well. They reverence God and they salute the flag, knowing the reasons why they do so. Their creed is loyalty — to God, country, and self.

In the fall of 1909, Jacob Kindleberger reached Kalamazoo and started the Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Company, just outside the confines of Kalamazoo. Five or seven workers began with the idea to render service to manufacturers and users of foodproducts that required protection.

In the mile and a half of buildings now there are eight hundred employees, working capacity. The invested capital is $7,000,000. All workers are American citizens by birth or declaration.

The company insures the lives of all employees hired before they have reached the age of sixty, and contributes one third of the money paid out by the Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Employees Welfare Association against loss of time from sickness, etc.

A manufacturer having a problem in regard to the wrapping of his goods is invited to send his material to the research laboratory of the Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Company, and actual effort is made to wrap and protect the food-product economically, and to recommend the best wrappingfacilities.

The Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Company made and sold paper for use in the habitable globe last year. Food-preserving papers, genuine Vegetable Parchment, pure wax papers, bond and ledger papers, Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment bond (water marked), Glendale bond and writing, Flivver bond, white and buff Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment ledger, waxed parchment, and shelf household papers, ice blankets, etc.

You learn why the business has gone on with such strides as to startle and mystify paper-makers. One man tells you he has been with the company from the start. He said: “This man Jacob Kindleberger, the president, knows how to make paper. He is a worker. When he first started here I saw him digging a ditch, stripped to the waist. He has a sense of loyalty and the men seem to know it and get it and grip the idea. I have had lots of outside offers. I work here because I feel at home. My job is good as long as I take care of it. No man loses his job because of age.”

Another man said: “I never saved a dollar until the president asked me, ‘How many days’ work have you put by since you have been here?’”

Interviewing men and women for a day and a half showed that cleanliness, loyalty, ability, and work were in the minds of all. As one old man put it, “This man Kindleberger never said, ‘Go on,’ but ‘Come on, let’s do it.’”

Jacob Kindleberger is the president and founder of the now seven-milliondollar plant, created in sixteen years. If you ask him his idea of his employees, his answer is: “We are one people: if those who work for the company succeed the company succeeds; if the company succeeds the workers succeed. Everyone is in the open here, and we feel that the spirit of service and fair dealing are not just words, but actualities out at Parchment.”

Industry has made greater progress in the past twenty-five years than in the previous five hundred years, and from this forward movement has come service to mankind. Uncounted millions living in every part of the globe where gas is to be found are using hot water from a big service station that has been years in the making.

Cleanliness can be next to godliness since hot water is cheap. Tables show that cold water service in cities costs from $22 to $300 per person. The cost of heating water, after deducting the cost of the Humphrey heater, is the actual cost of the gas used.

H. S. Humphrey, the designer and inventor of Humphrey Gas Water Heaters, and president of the company, started to manufacture them forty years ago.

In going through the Humphrey Company buildings in Kalamazoo, Michigan, your guide lolls you: “We make the most complete line of gas water-heaters in the world.” He introduces you to one of the men, and, as the guide steps aside, the man says: “Humphrey is one of us. He worked on the bench when we were just a few. He was then interested in what we did and how we got along. The men will all tell you that we all own our homes and feel certain that, as long as we can work, there is work here for us. If a man is in trouble or distress and Humphrey knows it, he will help him out. The fear of getting old, of not having a job, does not exist in this factory.”

The shorthand notes taken from over eighty of the employed force show that a distinct fellowship of service is expressed in this concern.

Humphrey service comes in many types and sizes. For example, Humphrey Automatic Gas Water Heater, Type A, gives a limitless, instantaneous, economical hot-water supply. It has a thermal control. The operation is entirely automatic. Water is heated only as it flows through the coils. Opening any hot-water faucet starts the flow of water through the heater, and automatically turns on the gas. Closing the faucet stops the water, the gas, and the expense.

Frank A. Lemke, secretary, treasurer, and general manager, stressed the point that these Humphrey Automatic Hot Water Service Heaters are used in all kinds of places and in all climes.

H. S. Humphrey, the president, said: “In rendering a service to humanity, we are not unmindful of the men who have worked and aided in this endeavor. We take a personal interest in each and every one of them. They have shown high purpose in their usefulness, and we appreciate them.”