- This program is brought to you
by the combined resources of
the Wisconsin Historical Society
and Wisconsin Public Television.
- OnWisconsin Hometown Stories:
Two cities on the Fox River,
born in the heat of rivalry.
Built up by wood, wheat,
and the power of water.
Cities transformed
by papermaking,
innovation,
and generations of hard work that created
ground-breaking products
and household words.
OnWisconsin Hometown Stories: Neenah-Menasha.
♪ ♪
- Major funding for
Hometown Stories: Neenah-Menasha
is provided in part by
Richard and Amy Jo Aylward and the Aylward Family of Neenah,
Mary and John Sensenbrenner,
Bergstrom Automotive,
Community First Credit Union,
Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region,
Daniel and Mame Heaney,
Thomas J. Prosser,
Theta and Tamblin Clark Smith Family Foundation,
with additional support from
Alta Resources,
John and Katherine Davis,
Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company,
Kimberly-Clark Corporation,
Legacy Private Trust Company,
Bettie Hill,
Miron Construction Company,
the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
♪ ♪
- In 1845, former governor James Doty
finished up work on his dream home--
a large log cabin built on Doty Island.
- The story of Doty is intertwined so much
with the story of Neenah-Menasha
that without him
you probably wouldn't have seen
the community develop in the same way.
- Doty's cabin,
now preserved as a Neenah museum,
gives an insight into the life
of a former federal judge,
territorial governor,
and congressman.
Doty also became a land speculator,
perhaps best known for persuading legislators
to move the state capital,
from Belmont
to a town site he was developing
called "Madison."
- Doty had given pieces of land
to the principal leaders of the Legislature.
He was very clever
and a man with great foresight,
even though he may not have been entirely ethical.
Doty was apprenticing to a lawyer in Detroit
and became the secretary to Governor Cass,
the governor of the Michigan Territory,
which at that point
included Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa.
And in 1820,
he joined a canoe expedition
led by Governor Cass
and they traveled through the Great Lakes,
down the upper waters of the Mississippi,
and then up the Wisconsin River,
and get to Lake Winnebago.
And it was a beautiful, placid,
smooth body of water
and, of course, we know that it was even more swampy
than it would be today.
And they come upon Doty Island
at the north end of Lake Winnebago.
We call it Doty Island now--
well because
James Doty ultimately homesteaded it.
- Doty Island split the Fox River
into two channels.
And rapids on both sides were a sure sign
of water power.
Here, Doty could envision
an ideal place for a settlement,
where the river would eventually provide
both transportation and power for manufacturing.
[Native American drumming]
At the time of Doty's visit,
a Ho-Chunk village known as "Menashay"
stood on the Island led by Chief Hootschope,
also known as "Four Legs."
Across the south channel stood an immense Elm
where local tribes would gather in council.
A collection of artifacts,
now displayed in Neenah's city hall,
shows abundant evidence
of the presence of Native Americans,
who have lived in the area
for thousands of years.
Just northwest of Doty Island,
treaty negotiations began
that would result in the Menominee Nation
ceding a large portion of their land
to the U.S. Government.
- But another part of that Treaty of 1831
was the establishment of
a education program, as it was called at the time,
for the Menominee.
The education program
established a village
in around where Neenah is today
to teach
farming and animal husbandry.
And so, there's a series of block houses
Hewn timber, squared-off timber log houses
with a dovetail type joint on the end.
There would have been a blacksmith shop appointed
and also a mill.
It doesn't last very long,
about two years.
In 1836, there is another treaty that is negotiated,
known as the Treaty at the Cedars,
where the Menominee cede additional territory,
lands now north of the Fox River,
including the lands where this mission is located.
♪ ♪
- In Madison, Governor James Doty
heard about plans to sell off the Menominee village
and contacted his friend and political supporter,
Harrison Reed.
- Harrison Reed was the editor-publisher
of theMilwaukee Sentinel.
And he had been a great supporter of Doty.
And apparently,
Doty tipped him off
as to when the land would be released.
- Harrison said, "I don't really have any money."
He was being paid by his subscribers
with things like chickens.
It was a barter system.
And he was just scrambling.
But this was an opportunity for him to become something.
- Reed placed a winning bid
on the village lands
and all the structures that were there.
- Even though the federal law said
that you had to pay for it in cash up front,
Reed, apparently, was able to get it on credit.
- Reed connected with an investor in upstate New York
named Harvey Jones,
a glove manufacturer from Gloversville,
who dreamed of building his own town.
They struck a deal to own all of the land together
and split the cost of improvements.
At the site, Charles Doty, son of the governor,
and Harrison Reed's brother, Curtis,
another supporter of Governor Doty,
all pledged to help Jones
with the building of a dam
across the South Channel.
- You had this
core of men
revolving around Governor Doty,
but none of them had any money.
And this is just, like, a recipe for disaster.
- Mr. Jones came in with the money, and
the other people in the group-- other four people--
were happy to take his money.
Things were okay for, like, a honeymoon period,
and then things went downhill very fast after that.
- Shortly after Harrison Reed
mapped out a village called Neenah,
Harvey Jones drew up his own settlement right next to it
and began selling lots.
Jones refused to pay Reed
his share of the land sales
because Reed owed him money
for the cost of improvements,
like the dam.
- Jones had the ability
to create a debt that Reed couldn't pay.
- Because of the physical nature of this location,
with two branches of the Fox River
draining out around an island,
out of Lake Winnebago,
two water powers,
there was an alternative.
- Leaving Neenah and Harvey Jones on the South Channel,
James Doty and his son, Charles,
raised funds to buy up
hundreds of acres on the North Channel,
and with Curtis Reed,
they platted out a village they called Menasha.
Back in Neenah, Harrison Reed announced
that he was suing Harvey Jones
and that he still owned a share of all of the lots,
which couldn't be sold without his agreement.
- Reed was able to stop the development in Neenah,
and it lasted for about 13 years.
- When Wisconsin achieved statehood,
James Doty was elected to Congress.
The federal government gave the new state
a large land grant,
to fund work on the Fox-Wisconsin waterway--
a series of locks, dams, and canals
on the Fox River.
The government would have to choose
where to build the channel--
Neenah or Menasha.
- You can understand that
when the federal government decided to build a channel,
that meant big money because it meant
people would move to that area,
businesses would move to that area.
- When Menasha won the bid,
bitter feelings persisted
for years afterward.
- There's a story that
Doty actually turned the map upside down,
and that's the reason the North Channel was selected.
I don't know that that's true.
That's part of the folklore, if you will.
- These were the things that became the seedbed
for longstanding debate between the communities.
- Each village fought to stop the township government
from paying for improvements to the other.
Finally, Neenah's village president, J.B. Hamilton,
petitioned the county board
to split their township in two.
- And that's how we have
Town of Neenah and Town of Menasha,
with the island split by the County
down the middle,
like Solomon would have divided the child
in the biblical story.
♪ ♪
- As large crews of Irish construction workers
began work on the canals and dams
of the Fox-Wisconsin waterway,
settlers began venturing up the river
and casting their lot
with the developing communities of Neenah and Menasha.
- The river's always central to the story.
It's what drew people there.
It's what carried them there.
It's what fed their dreams.
- The thing I always say to people
is that settlement is not Little House on the Prairie.
This a very, very hard life,
harder than anyone can possibly imagine.
There were no roads.
There were no utilities.
There was nothing.
But the thing that they saw here,
and was the thing
that made them willing to go through the hardships
was that they saw this as the next Chicago.
- Like Chicago's highly successful canal,
the Fox-Wisconsin waterway
would also connect the Great Lakes
with the Mississippi River.
- It was the same arrangement,
same transportation type of hub that Chicago was,
but there was a difference--
and that fundamental difference was
that this was a location with water power
and free power.
And I don't have to speak to any industrialist
to be able to say you could start up an industry
and not have to pay for the power.
That is a phenomenal draw.
- Dams at Neenah and Menasha captured the flow
of both the Wolf River and the Fox River watersheds,
turning Lake Winnebago
into a large and powerful mill pond.
- This whole waterway system that came down through here
provided a limitless supply of water.
It wasn't just seasonal.
It never froze solid,
and so it could go all year.
So anybody who was thinking that they wanted to make something
would go, "This is the place to be."
- John R. Kimberly and his brother, Harvey,
bought some of the first lots in Neenah.
And together, they built a double house--
one half for each brother--
which stands today,
as one of Neenah-Menasha's oldest homes.
Using Durham boats, they hauled milling machinery
up the Fox River, and built the Neenah Flour Mill,
to grind wheat for the area's frontier farmers.
- Because they didn't have a lot of cash in the western frontier,
they needed a crop that they could sell
for goods and supplies and for food,
and that turned out to be wheat.
Wheat was the great western crop
that was fairly easy to raise.
Wheat was certainly labor-intensive,
but it wasn't nearly as labor-intensive
as animal husbandry.
Wheat, you simply had to clear the land,
sow the seed, and then sit back and watch it grow,
and hope that there was a good harvest
and the weather cooperated.
- The frontier crop soon gave rise
to a thriving frontier industry.
More mills went up,
and production grew to become second only to Milwaukee.
- At the same time, sawmills in Neenah and Menasha
began producing wooden goods,
like barrels for flour.
- The sawmills ultimately, as they grew,
grew more numerous in Menasha,
because at the outset, there was a forest
in the northwestern corner of the township.
- In Menasha, a dry goods store owned by Elisha Smith,
sold locally-made wooden pails, tubs, and butter churns.
- The company that was supplying them
ended up having financial problems.
And so, as the supplier to him, he thought,
"Well, maybe I could make a go of this."
So he ended up figuring out a way, with some other investors,
to buy the Menasha Woodenware business.
- Smith shipped his goods to Chicago
on a plank road built from Menasha to Kaukauna,
and then by boat,
on the newly-completed Fox-Wisconsin waterway.
But the hopes and dreams for the big waterway project
would soon come to an end.
- Here they were,
drawn to the water transportation,
spending the first almost two decades
trying to get this underway and built,
and while it was underway,
the railroads come in,
and, essentially,
overnight make that technology obsolete.
For us, the railroad builders,
who were primarily the flour-millers of Milwaukee,
did not want to build a railroad up to this area,
because it was going to bring the competition
down into their market.
Who came up to this area
was the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad.
The railroads offered
one of the first and only opportunities for cooperation
that the competitive villages had,
and that was when the railroad was first laid
right before the Civil War.
The railroad said, "Well, you've got all these
"channels and canals and river branches
"and all these bridges.
We're not paying for that."
And the two cities--
villages rather--
got together at that point in time
and said, "Oh, we'll pay for it."
And they actually agreed to pay for those rail trestles
and all of the connection that was necessary
to bring the railroad into town
right at the manufacturing center
right through the water powers
so that they could really make the most
out of this transportation opportunity.
Suddenly, the Menasha Woodenware,
with the wooden tubs,
which was the earliest form of product packaging,
went gangbusters,
because they could ship these things down,
they were lightweight, they weren't heavy,
the wood source was up here.
And the city of Chicago
was and is a national distribution center.
♪ ♪
- Easy access to Chicago by rail,
and to the Great Lakes by boat,
fueled the growth of both communities.
And the coming of the Civil War
created high demand for both wooden goods and flour.
With waves of European immigrants
arriving to do the work,
and with the Fox River powering the mills,
industries grew in a spectacular fashion.
♪ ♪
- By the 1870s, Menasha and Neenah
had become thriving manufacturing towns,
each with a retail center.
The two villages grew toward each other
and functioned as one place.
But old feelings died hard
and attempts to combine the two governments
and make one bigger, more efficient city
failed.
In Menasha's National Hotel,
George Reed, brother of Menasha and Neenah founders,
Curtis and Harrison Reed,
organized the Wisconsin Central Railroad.
The federal government promised to grant the railroad
over 800,000 acres of land
if it could build a line
from Doty Island to Stevens Point,
and through the northern wilderness
to Lake Superior.
Once completed, the Wisconsin Central carried
an abundant supply of wood
to the drying yards of the Menasha Woodenware Company,
which now spread out on both sides of the river channel.
Elisha Smith's factory continued to make a variety
of turned wooden containers for shipping products.
- And at that point,
butter, you know, it was very different back then,
was transported in wooden buckets
of various different sizes.
And they ended up making those
that they would supply to the dairies
that would then put the churned butter into these tubs.
So he ended up turning into
the largest wooden butter tub manufacturer in the world.
- In Neenah, flour millers
faced fierce competition from Minneapolis,
where former Wisconsin Governor Cadwallader Washburn
purchased the water power rights
at St. Anthony Falls.
There, he built an enormous flour mill,
equipped with the latest milling technology
that produced huge quantities of high-quality flour.
In Neenah and Menasha, most mills remained small
and used traditional grindstones
that produced a lower quality flour.
To make matters worse,
yields from area wheat farms steadily declined.
- Wheat growing was easy because it was basically
kind of an extractive industry, almost like coal mining.
It tapped the natural advantages in the landscape,
particularly the nutrients in the soil.
So what farmers tended to do,
because they didn't have a lot of money,
is they would farm a couple of acres of land
for a couple of years until the yield went down
and then they would move on
and they'd settle a new piece of land,
farm that for a few years,
but eventually you ran out of land.
- And pretty soon, it wasn't economically viable.
What took its place was paper--
paper production.
And they had the power to do it.
But they also needed clean water, itself,
in the manufacturing process of paper.
They needed to be able to rinse the pulp
to make sure the pulp was clean.
And water was used throughout the manufacturing process.
- Taking a chance on the promise of a new industry,
Neenah entrepreneurs purchased some papermaking machinery,
and built the city's first paper mill.
- That was the first financially successful paper mill
in the state of Wisconsin.
And so, there were local investors
who really took serious note of this.
- Four investors pooled their money
and formed a venture called Kimberly, Clark and Company
to build a second paper mill.
- It was Alfred Kimberly
and his business partner, Havilah Babcock,
C.B. Clark, a hardware store owner,
and Frank Shattuck,
a traveling salesman out of Chicago.
They purchased a water power site on the Fox River,
tore down a flour mill,
and constructed the Globe Paper Mill.
- Initially, they were creating paper primarily out of rags.
- They brought rags up from Chicago,
and they had picking rooms where you pick out
the pockets and the buttons and all those other things
and these were all ground and dissolved.
- Processing rags into pulp
made a paper of the highest quality.
- They marketed this as a source of making newsprint.
Every municipality worth its salt
had at least two newspapers
and very often four or more.
- Newspapers were expanding, magazines were expanding,
print catalogs, things like that,
and this required
so much paper
and there just weren't supplies.
They were able to go into markets
like Chicago and Milwaukee,
these big metropolitan centers
that were really expanding rapidly.
- It was for the company,
it was for the community,
and this part of the state, an economic perfect storm.
- Kimberly-Clark expanded into Appleton,
partnering with a mill
that used a new technology to grind wood for pulp.
They built the Atlas Mill
and produced the first paper in the Midwest made from trees.
And there, papermakers experimented with new methods
to make new kinds of paper
and pioneered a new process
to use chemicals to break down wood.
- And it was after that
that they expanded again and again and again and again
because they really found that they had it down.
- Success in papermaking required a great sales force,
required innovation in terms of technology,
and it required research and development.
And those three things are money intensive.
- They funneled all their money back into operations.
They took almost nothing out themselves for pay
or living extravagant lifestyles or anything like that.
They could buy timber rights and they could buy water rights
and these were the keys to their future success.
- The Neenah-based company expanded rapidly,
building new mills at several water power sites
in the Fox River Valley.
- A couple years later, they built the Vulcan Mill
next door to the Atlas Mill.
And they also bought the Genesee Flour Mill,
and they changed that over to the Tioga Paper Mill.
- Back in Neenah, they constructed the Badger Mill.
After that, they tore down the Neenah Mill
and reconstructed that into a very large mill.
They built the Telulah Paper Company,
and then they ran out of water power
in Appleton and Neenah.
And then, they bought more water power
in what was called "The Cedars,"
and they built a company town
and named it Kimberly.
- They built a very large pulp mill there.
After that, they bought more water power at De Pere,
and there they created the Shattuck and Babcock Mill.
- Other companies also built paper mills
in Menasha and Neenah,
drawing large numbers of immigrant workers,
who kept the mills running day and night.
- So it was so successful
that it spread outward
and shaped the entire region.
And so,
although Neenah and Menasha had remained small,
its impact on northeastern Wisconsin
has been enormous.
♪ ♪
- Decades of paper-making and other manufacturing industries
created unprecedented wealth in Neenah and Menasha.
Industry owners tended to build stately homes in Neenah
because property taxes there were much lower.
Menasha taxpayers struggled for decades
to pay off the city's debt,
taken out to encourage railroads to build there.
Menasha industrialists built on the Neenah side of Doty Island
because we didn't have the railroad bonds
sitting on our backs,
and the property taxes were less.
So Neenah became known as the city of mill owners.
Menasha is a city of mill workers.
But both cities are mill towns, and there's no way around it.
And what that means is that you have
a handful of people sitting on top of the pile,
and the vast majority of everybody else just getting by.
- To bridge the gap,
industrialists and their families gave back
and used their wealth to address
some of the most pressing problems of the day.
- There was this understanding that
you have to make it work.
You have to somehow or another
make sure that everybody is accounted for.
- Women in Neenah and Menasha
formed a very strong backbone
for the life and times
of their society.
They had a very deep philanthropic streak
and a very deep quest for education.
They came together
and they formed societies and clubs.
- In 1906, in response to
a devastating earthquake in San Francisco,
women in Neenah and Menasha formed the Emergency Society.
- The Emergency Society started as
a group of women who wanted to do something
to help the victims of the San Francisco earthquake.
So they got together to sew clothing for the victims.
And when that need was finally over,
they went on then to do things within their communities.
- The Emergency Society formed a new organization,
the V.N.A., or Visiting Nurse Association
to address the public health needs in Neenah and Menasha.
- They formed this organization.
They hired a nurse.
Her name was Ida Heinecke.
And each month, she made visits to individuals in the community.
I think initially it was more related to women and childbirth
because there was no real healthcare for them
following up after they'd given birth.
And no one telling them how to take care of a baby.
- Ida Heinecke cared for poor and immigrant families
and helped them adapt to American culture.
At first,
she made her rounds on foot,
until the communities
pitched in to buy her a car.
Making over 2,000 calls a year,
Heinecke fought smallpox, scarlet fever,
and when a doctor was unavailable,
delivered babies herself.
- At the time the V.N.A. began,
construction started on a new hospital for the community,
funded by the family of Theda Clark.
Daughter of Kimberly-Clark founder C.B. Clark,
Theda lived a privileged life,
but also attended the local public schools.
She developed a keen sense of community responsibility
from the example set by her father,
a former Neenah mayor, and member of congress.
- Her father was
so adamant about her helping her community,
and being community-minded,
and thinking of the future of the community.
She's saying things like,
"I know the perfect spot for a library,"
years before it's built.
- Clark led the campaign
to build a new public library in Neenah
and donated the land for the site.
But it was her experience of personal loss
that fueled her vision of a hospital,
which would serve both communities.
- Community members' health issues,
including her own father's death,
probably impacted her
when she thought about the community
and what it needed most.
F.C. Shattuck, a neighbor,
he died from complications of appendicitis.
Her friend, Helen Kimberly Stuart's first child
died after birth.
Her next door neighbor, D.L. Kimberly,
died from complications
of having back surgery performed in his home.
There was no hospital.
And maybe in her mind, she thought,
"We could've prevented this."
And then, unfortunately, she died
just following the birth of her first child.
She hemorrhaged to death over the course of a day or two.
- In her will, Theda Clark
provided funding for the building of a hospital,
to be carried out by her brother, Bill.
- The Clark family covered the hospital's losses
through the crucial first decade.
After that, both communities
began providing generous support.
In Menasha, another philanthropist, Elisha Smith,
president of the Menasha Woodenware Company,
and employer of over a thousand workers
appeared before the City Council.
Smith announced that he would provide all of the funds needed
to build the Menasha Public Library,
and furnish it with books.
He also informed the council
that he would donate 24 acres of land
for a public park.
- After the community learned
of the generosity of Mr. Smith,
thousands of people decided to gather
and march to his house.
There were speeches, the mayor talked,
two bands provided music,
and Mr. Smith
came to address the people.
And he said that any person
will live longer and be happier in this world
by doing something to help mankind.
And Mr. Smith passed away
the year after the library opened.
And he was so revered
that his funeral procession stretched over a mile.
♪ ♪
- By 1905,
three of the four founders of Kimberly-Clark had passed away,
and John Alfred Kimberly had retired from active management.
- And so, the constant for Kimberly-Clark
was a man named Frank J. Sensenbrenner.
Frank J. Sensenbrenner is born in Menasha
and Sensenbrenner was kind of a classic American success story--
dropped out of school in 8th grade,
kind of kicked around for a little bit.
He found his way into papermaking
doing bookkeeping for Kimberly-Clark
in several of their mills.
Sensenbrenner calls himself the general manager,
but he's really the chief executive.
He's calling the shots.
One of his most important accomplishments
is that he realized
that chemistry was going to be the basis of success
for Kimberly-Clark.
- In 1914, the company hired
an Austrian-born chemist named Ernst Mahler.
Mahler had studied at
the top paper-making university in the world in Germany
and had many contacts at the school.
- And so, Mahler was able
to bring this back to tiny Neenah, Wisconsin
and create a staff
that was solely focused on innovation in paper-making.
This is a manufacturing company,
and the paper-making process is heavily manufacturing-based.
When you think of taking giant trees,
and stripping them down to nothing,
turning them into a pulp soup with chemicals,
and then that eventually becoming paper--
this is a heavy manufacturing process.
And under Mahler's leadership,
they're able to really turn this heavy manufacturing company
into a first rate R&D company.
And that's fueling everything.
- A new opportunity for the company
emerged with the rising price of cotton,
as an insect
called the boll weevil spread throughout the south.
- So Kimberly-Clark scientists want to find a way
to turn logs into cotton,
and the opportunities for this kind of product
seemed unlimited.
So James C. Kimberly and Mahler
head back to Europe on a fact-finding mission,
right before World War I breaks out.
But while they were there, they used Mahler's connections,
they talked to a lot of scientists,
learned some things about the chemistry of paper-making,
and they think, "Wow!"
They have kind of the key now.
And company lore has it
that Kimberly and Mahler are high-tailing it across Europe
and back to the United States,
just as World War I is breaking out.
They come back to Neenah, and they were able to adapt
the German process to the American trees
and that led to the ability
to make this kind of fluffy cotton wadding,
and they call it "Cellucotton."
And they realize this could be used in hospitals right away.
So Sensenbrenner sends out a team of sales people
to talk to Midwestern hospitals,
asking them to test out this new product.
And almost instantly,
they realized, "This is better than cotton."
It's more absorbent, it's cheaper to make,
and the Red Cross needs absorbent wadding
for bandages and in surgery,
and the Army War Department needs the same materials.
- Kimberly-Clark won a contract to sell cotton wadding,
at cost, for the war effort,
and huge orders came in.
- The Armistice ends the war in 1918,
and the Army and the Red Cross immediately stop the contracts.
And so Kimberly-Clark
has tons and tons of excess Cellucotton
and they don't know what to do with it.
- Kimberly and Mahler traveled
to Sears and Roebuck in Chicago,
where they hired a salesman named Walter Luecke
to figure out a new use for the product.
Luecke found a letter in the company files
from a group of French nurses, who gave him a suggestion.
- This wadding you've been sending over--
we've noticed that women are using this
for sanitary napkins,
so you've got a real opportunity
to create a product that's necessary.
- Despite the need for the product,
marketing it
meant breaking through strong cultural taboos,
in businesses run mostly by men.
- When consumers wanted to buy products,
there was usually a table or a glass barrier
between the clerk and the consumer.
So the consumer had to ask the clerk for all their products.
This was such a cultural taboo,
men weren't willing to even stock the product,
let alone talk about it.
So they had to overcome this barrier.
Kimberly-Clark tried direct sales--
they tried to sell it directly to women,
they tried to get women to sign up.
It's such a taboo topic
that women won't even take free samples.
- The company gave the unmentionable product
a new name-- Kotex--
and overcame the reluctance of national magazines
to run their ads.
Sales were slow.
But a decisive breakthrough came,
after creating a new way to buy it--
with the product placed on top of a counter,
next to a coin box.
- Customer puts the coin into the box,
takes the box away.
No conversation.
And this was revolutionary,
not only for Kimberly-Clark and this product
but for the buying process in America.
Self-service was not a thing
that people understood or ever did,
and so this was one of the first self-service opportunities
that people had,
and it kind of changed the way people thought about shopping.
- Kimberly-Clark soon developed another consumer product
based on its wartime research.
Using the filter material developed for gas masks,
researchers developed an absorbent tissue
called Kleenex.
- At the time, the cosmetic industry is exploding.
Women are starting to wear makeup.
They need a way to remove the makeup,
a way to remove cold cream,
They create Kleenex as a cold cream remover,
put it out into the marketplace,
and what they find is that sales are flat.
When they went in to focus groups and talked to consumers,
they found that two-thirds
of the people who were using Kleenex
weren't using it as a cold cream remover,
they were using it as a disposable hankie.
So, immediately they launch a new advertising campaign
and totally rebrand Kleenex
as a disposable handkerchief.
And this allows Kimberly-Clark to create a market,
and then dominate that market right away.
- Kleenex would go on to become
one of the best-known products in American history.
And its pop-up box,
first made by the Menasha Printing and Carton Company,
became a design classic.
- It's not necessarily that
that box was some innovation that transformed the world,
but for this particular product,
in this particular time,
there was just some kind of magic to that thought:
that when you pull one up,
another one's waiting for you.
♪ ♪
- While Neenah and Menasha became well-known
for making many kinds of paper,
other industries,
like the Jersild Knitting Company,
made an abundance
of different products.
Early foundries, like the Bergstrom Stove Company,
began to specialize,
producing a full line of stoves,
for both cooking and heating.
And as communities like Menasha improved their streets,
the Aylward Sons' Foundry branched off from stoves,
and into municipal castings,
like storm sewers to drain newly-paved roads.
Ed Aylward would split off from the family company,
and start what would become the Neenah Foundry,
which grew to be one of the largest in the state.
And as cities around the country
installed water and sewer systems,
manhole covers,
from the Neenah Foundry,
became an iconic part of the streetscape,
in all 50 states, and many countries.
[cast iron clangs]
The George Banta Publishing Company
was started by George Banta, Senior,
and greatly expanded
by his son, George, Junior.
But it was his mother, Ellen Pleasants Banta,
who took the first steps to grow the business,
which became
one of the largest printing companies in the country.
It all began in George and Ellen's home,
where George printed forms for his insurance business
with a small press on the dining room table.
Eventually, Ellen convinced him
to start a storefront business in Menasha,
which grew with local trade.
- He had some health challenges
and so he would go off to the Southwest,
sometimes for months at a time.
So, it fell to his wife, Ellen,
to take over running the company.
And this was unheard of at the time
for a woman to run any kind of enterprise.
One of her brothers had moved east,
and got in on the ground floor of Quaker Oats.
And he saw an opportunity,
in his position there,
to throw some business in the direction of his sister.
- So when they were set to come up,
Mrs. Banta came in and told everybody,
"You run every print press in the plant."
- Just take paper--
blank paper, used paper, whatever--
and run it through
whatever number of presses they had at the time
so that they looked exceedingly busy.
- And here was this din of activity and stuff going on!
And, as the story goes,
the Quaker Oats people said,
"Man, if they're doing this up here,
they really must know what they're doing."
And so, it was this sham
that got them their first big break.
But it was Mrs. Banta who did it.
- George Banta Publishing
would soon become a national leader
in printing books
for schools, universities,
and the military.
But it was a contract to print soap wrappers
that helped to launch another industry,
the Menasha Printing and Carton Company.
Purchasing its own equipment, the company expanded
into printing millions of bread wrappers.
And after the National Biscuit Company
first packaged their Uneeda crackers
in a printed paperboard box,
Menasha Printing and Carton
joined a growing revolution in food packaging.
They focused next
on making printed cartons for ice cream makers,
and also cartons for butter makers, nationwide.
The business bought so much paper
from the Marathon Corporation in Wausau
that the owners there decided to buy the company.
- And while their name didn't survive--
In merging, Marathon moved here,
which tells you how big the production was here.
- Marathon Corporation became a major manufacturer
of packaging and consumer products,
like waxed paper.
The packaging revolution
became bad news for the Menasha Woodenware Company,
as demand for wooden containers
like cracker barrels and butter tubs
plummeted.
- It's falling out of favor,
you know.
The world was changing,
and they stumbled upon this product called "corrugated."
And they were one of the first companies to invest in
a corrugator.
Not understanding a lot about it,
they literally had to make a shift
to this new product.
♪ ♪
- So, there was a lot of production and work
within those two cities that was available
to almost anybody there.
I kept going down to Gilbert's
to put in my application,
and, finally, I got a job there.
I started on March 10th, 1937.
I worked in the finishing room,
and they would bring the reams of paper
from the cutting machine.
First, it was sorted to see if there were any bad spots on it.
And then the ladies would fan it up and count it.
And we would
seal 'em up like a package.
And sometimes, I would go home at Noon.
We had a bowling team,
and we got to go to the tournament one year
in La Crosse.
Gilbert used to have parties.
I made a lot of nice friends.
It was a lot of fun.
- And most of the industry
were all locally-owned people.
The Kimberlys and the Clarks from Kimberly-Clark
lived in Neenah.
And George Banta lived in Menasha.
But those people met their workers
and knew them on a first-name basis.
They went to church.
Saw them at church and the school functions
and civic functions.
I know my dad told me
that sometimes they'd only have work for two days a week,
but nobody got laid off.
- The connection that everybody had
in making it work
was very prominent in those days.
You had to have people stirring the pulp.
You had to have people printing the paper.
You had to have everybody.
Even if you were a secretary,
you had a sense of ownership
because it was in your town.
It was in your hometown,
and you were helping make it go.
It was all one big operation.
♪ ♪
- In recent decades, the homegrown,
and often family-run companies of Neenah and Menasha,
faced intense competition from industry giants.
- It used to be believed that the economy here,
based on paper,
would provide endless stability.
But they weren't thinking of a digital world,
where paper has somewhat less significance
than it did before.
And everybody, no matter what your business is,
has to look at reinventing yourself,
repositioning yourself.
- To compete in a global marketplace,
the companies faced growing pressure to get big
by acquiring other companies or sell out.
- Perpetual growth and expansion
is beyond what
a family-owned operation can really maintain for very long.
- Some companies, like Gilbert Paper,
were sold, sold again,
and finally closed.
[brick and metal crashing]
- One exception was the Menasha Corporation,
formerly Menasha Woodenware.
Hit by a catastrophic fire,
the descendants of founder Elisha Smith,
continued to rebuild and grow the company.
- I think the way they did that when you look at the history,
was, "How do we innovate?
How do we make ourselves relevant in a changing market?"
- At Kimberly-Clark,
CEO Darwin Smith transformed the company
by selling off paper mills and timberlands.
He then plowed millions of dollars
into developing a new product, called Huggies.
- Darwin Smith gambled
the entire future of the organization
on this disposable diaper.
And so, Huggies is really the product
that drove them to the next level,
moving away from papermaking completely
to a full-on focus on consumer products.
- His gamble paid off,
with company sales exceeding $4 billion dollars in 1985.
Smith then sent shockwaves through the entire state,
when he announced
he was moving the company headquarters
to Texas.
- And so, our pride took a hit, I think.
And the community was worried about it.
But, most of the jobs stayed here.
Their manufacturing facilities were and are still here.
- The old rivalry between the two cities
continued to play out,
mostly in sporting events.
- But in 1972, studies showed
that taxpayers could save over half a million dollars a year
by becoming one city.
Put to a referendum,
the plan was soundly defeated.
Since that time, the two cities
have merged their fire departments,
and this led to another merger--
of a long-standing tradition in both communities--
the Santa float.
[festive beach music]
- Merry Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!
[police sirens] Merry Christmas!
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Merry Christmas!
- When the condition of their downtown areas
became a hindrance to further development,
both cities encouraged efforts
to restore some of their historic buildings,
and preserve the character
of their retail centers.
- Alongside the old canal,
Menasha constructed a new marina,
which made the area more attractive
for waterfront development.
[traditional powwow vocals, drums,rattles,shakers]
- In Neenah, the renovation of Shattuck Park
now brings many people to enjoy the downtown area
and has also attracted new investment nearby.
On this day, members of the Menominee Nation held a powwow,
in the same place where the federal government
once built a village for them.
- We talk about the circle,
and completing the circle,
so it's kind of-- coming back here
is kind of like doing that in some sense, and
completing that circle that we've left,
we've come back.
- A series of public-private partnerships,
like this industrial park in Neenah,
created new jobs for residents of both cities.
- The City of Neenah
also partnered with the Wisconsin DNR
to take down the former Bergstrom Paper Mill
and clean up the site.
This cleared the way for building a new headquarters
for the Plexus Corporation.
And near the old water power sites,
a group of local investors
partnered with the City of Neenah
to build a series of office towers
that now bring hundreds of workers
to the city center.
- The investment group
also partnered with the City of Menasha,
adding a new office tower in the heart of the city.
- The Visiting Nurse Association
continues the legacy of Ida Heinecke,
and also continues to benefit
from Neenah-Menasha's long tradition
of philanthropy,
receiving support
to provide services for senior citizens.
- And sponsors from both cities recently funded
the building of a new Boys and Girls Club
in Menasha.
- It's asking, "Do you want to buy it?
- Both cities continue to make
many different kinds and grades of paper,
and a variety of paper-based products.
- And while the Fox River
no longer provides a source of power for industry,
it remains a source of beauty for the cities.
Easy access to the river and to Lake Winnebago
improves the quality of life for everyone.
Both cities take pride
in their large water-front parks,
set aside by farsighted leaders
throughout their history.
- I think if you look back and then look at today,
and look ahead to tomorrow--
which is always so important is to position yourself properly--
it's pretty clear that
the community is what the citizens make it.
And that's something to be aware of.
And in this case, it's something to be proud of.
♪ ♪
- Major funding for
Hometown Stories: Neenah-Menasha
is provided in part by
Richard and Amy Jo Aylward and the Aylward Family of Neenah,
Mary and John Sensenbrenner,
Bergstrom Automotive,
Community First Credit Union,
Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region,
Daniel and Mame Heaney,
Thomas J. Prosser,
Theta and Tamblin Clark Smith Family Foundation,
with additional support from
Alta Resources,
John and Katherine Davis,
Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company,
Kimberly-Clark Corporation,
Legacy Private Trust Company,
Bettie Hill,
Miron Construction Company,
the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.