The Inventive Life of Charles Hill Morgan: The Power of Improvement In Industry, Education and Civic Life. Allison Chisolm

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      The Inventive Life of

      Charles Hill Morgan

      THE POWER OF IMPROVEMENT IN INDUSTRY,

      EDUCATION AND CIVIC LIFE

      Allison Chisolm

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      TIDEPOOL PRESS

      Cambridge, Massachusetts

      Copyright © 2015 by Allison Chisolm

      Published in eBook format in 2015 by TidePool Press

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.

      TidePool Press

      6 Maple Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

       www.tidepoolpress.com

      Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com

      ISBN-13: 978-0-9914-5238-5

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Chisolm, Allison 1962-

      The Inventive Life of Charles Hill Morgan: The Power of Improvement in Industry, Education and Civic Life

      p.cm.

      ISBN 0-9914523-5-4/978-0-9914523-5-4

      1. Morgan, Charles Hill, 1831-1911 2. Worcester (Mass.)—Biography 3. Industry—History 4. Engineering—History

      I. Title.

      2014946784

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      CHARLES HILL MORGAN’S QUALITIES of “initiative, determination, persistence, courage and incisive directness,” as a Worcester Magazine obituary noted, were passed down through the generations to his great-grandson, Paul S. Morgan. When Paul commissioned this work in 2006, little did he know the project would stretch over eight years. He encouraged, and at times, cajoled this work to its completion. He remained steadfast in his desire to have his ancestor’s story told so that future generations would recognize his achievements and learn from his approach to life.

      Paul’s death at age 88 in September 2012 was a great loss to many people for so many reasons. He had read and commented on every chapter of this book. Only the introductory section and epilogue were missing at the time of his passing. Because of his persistence—and his firm belief that this project would indeed reach a satisfactory conclusion—I dedicate this book posthumously to Paul Shepard Morgan.

      Allison Chisolm

      Worcester, Massachusetts

      February, 2014

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      Charles Hill Morgan

      CHARLES HILL MORGAN’S FAMILY TREE, 1803–1911

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      Foreword

      SHORTLY AFTER BECOMING President of Morgan Construction Company in November 1965, I had the opportunity to read Charles Hill Morgan’s 1900 Presidential address to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It was a lengthy review of his accomplishments at Morgan Construction Company, which he had founded in 1888. I was hugely impressed! Growing up and until reading his speech, I had heard almost nothing from my father or my grandfather about this remarkable, self-taught engineer. I needed to know more, and so do you.

      It has taken too long, but before we sold Morgan Construction Company to Siemens I persuaded my son, Philip, and the directors to hire Allison Chisolm, the writer of our Square and Crescent and MCCo publicity, to write Charles’ biography. Having never researched and written a biography before, especially going back over 100 years, Allison estimated what it would take, Philip and the directors agreed, and the project was launched.

      This biography is truly a remarkable achievement. Charles had kept diaries throughout his life and these had been turned over to WPI Archives in the 1980s. Allison has read every word. In MCCo vaults were “letterbook” copies of outgoing correspondence and some originals of incoming letters going back to the beginnings. The copies are extremely difficult to read because time has made them very faint, but Allison has persisted as you will see.

      She now knows more about Clinton, Massachusetts, paper-bag making machines, cams and American steel plants of long ago than any other living person. We are the fortunate beneficiaries of her deep and thorough research.

      It is also our good fortune that she is an excellent writer and story-teller. It takes a lot of imagination and talent to take an historical sentence and turn it into a paragraph. And do that hundreds of times.

      One fantastic outcome to all this research and narrative is the knowledge that in 1864 Erastus Bigelow (of Clinton and worldwide carpet fame) was the person responsible for recommending Charles to Ichabod Washburn of the Washburn and Moen wire mill in Worcester. Mr. Washburn was looking for a General Superintendent. Charles moved to Worcester, and the rest, as you can read, is a history of hard work, integrity and entrepreneurial success.

      Paul S. Morgan

      Duxbury, Massachusetts

      June, 2012

      Preface

      THE LIFE AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS of Charles Hill Morgan were uniquely his own, but also emblematic. He was of a type that is easy to mythologize—the nineteenth century inventor and industrialist—but as Allison Chisolm’s thoughtful and well-researched work attests, Morgan is an altogether real example of the restless innovator and builder committed to perpetually improving most everything in his sphere. That ever expanding sphere ranged from complex industrial processes to dairy farming to the welfare of his employees, the community and his family and very much to his own spiritual life. This history, which was written for the benefit of his family five and more generations on, but without any editorial interference from them, deserves attention well outside the Morgan family. The reasons are diverse, but two are especially worth highlighting.

      First, the inventive life of Charles Hill Morgan is a reminder that Internet pioneers have no singular purchase on innovation. Appearing on the Charlie Rose Show in 2012, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley claimed that, “The core idea of a technology company is innovation, and that’s very different from a lot of businesses, right? The fundamental output of a car company is cars ... So the challenge tech companies have is they can never rest on their laurels with today’s project, they always have to be thinking in terms of the next five years and what comes next.” There are truly countless industrial examples that illustrate just how fundamentally wrong that claim is. This biography,

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