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(Editor’s Note: This is the 13th in a series of articles revealing Area industrial plants that supply the money for the family pay envelope. The articles appear weekly.) No. 13 Rototiller, Inc., 102nd Street and Ninth Avenue Troy. BY C. B. DINGMAN. Most of Troy’s Industries can trace their birth date back to the days of the wooden Indian and the mustache cup. But it does not necessarily take a century of production to create a product after which the world will beat a proverbial path to your door. It may take only a good idea; plus men with capital and the courage to risk that capital plus more men geared to opportunity through hard work. Rototiller, Inc. up at 102nd Street, Troy’s newest and one of its smallest industries, is making itself known around the country by this formula. The visitor wanders through the factory talking to inspired workmen whose chief concern during their working day is not clock-watching, but new ways to sell the story of roto-tillage to a larger audience. Among them are young men whose mechanical education started with an erector set or the dismantling and reassembling of an old tea-kettle or an automobile. Now they are working with the Rototiller which they assure you has already revolutionized the agricultural world and is making a strong bid for the job of building the nation’s roads and concrete runways by a new technique. As you step in the Rototiller factory, which employs fifty men and which moved to Troy from Long Island City four years ago, you meet Edwin Starkweather. He is a husky, personable former Needham, Mass. Young man typical of the other workmen at the plant. He sniffs at the WPA, civil service examinations and other forms of security, for he is seeking a high place for himself in American industry through his own hard work and ingenuity. He has his eye focused on opportunity, not security. Starkweather was selling Rototillers in Massachusetts a year ago. He became convinced that there was future in this revolutionary, new type of tillage tool and so he applied for a job at the Troy factory. Today he is in charge of the assembling, testing and shipping of the finished product. The Rototiller is a gasoline propelled machine that plows, disks, and harrows and even sows in one operation. "Rototilling is different," Starkweather points out. "Sharp-pointed, self-sharpening spring-mount tines revolve through the soil like picks. Each sharp point breaks its way through a small amount of ground instead of shearing chunks as do the shovel, plow and disk." "We like working on the Rototiller for it presents difficult, engineering problems for us to solve. These problems are the fascinating side of the Industry," he said. "The Rototiller must tear up any kind of ground and pulverize it and must go into the ground that is full of stones and roots and all kinds of bad conditions and keep on going, doing its work, always working in the maximum of dust, dirt, and often under extremely wet conditions." "It is like putting an automobile in low gear and running it through mud up to the running boards day in and day out with the throttle wide open. Because no automobile motor, or motor of this type would stand this sort of work, it has been necessary for Rototiller to build its own motors and this motor is radically different from the ordinary automobile motor," Starkweather continued. "A Rototiller may operate 1,000 hours a year where an automobile operates about 300 hours a year; that would be 9,000 miles a year at an average speed of thirty miles an hour; in other words, a Rototiller has to do three year’s work in one, and always low gear work." Starkweather said that for the last few years the firm has been working on a much larger type machine. Some years ago the Portland Cement Association used Rototillers in experimental work to develop what is now known as the soil-cement road. Today these large type Rototillers are generally recognized as the most efficient tools available for the construction of this type of road. The 17 acres of cemented acres at the World’s Fair in San Francisco were all made with Rototillers and more recently three city blocks of soil-cement road in Granville were made with Rototillers. The company has had invitations for the use of their machines for road building in many parts of the United States and for airport runways all over the country. It is believed that thousands of miles of secondary roads will be built in the next in the next few years using soil-cement construction and this will mean the building of hundreds of these large type Rototillers and more employment for Troy workers. |
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Incidently, it is interesting to note that all of the lawns and gardens at the World’s Fair in New York were built by Rototiller. That the United States government uses Rototillers in various departments throughout the United States. That they used in the City of Washington for parks work and lawns and that the City of New York, in the construction of the lawns along the new Riverside Drive in New York, Rototillers were used. New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and many other principal cities have purchased dozens of the machines, so that Rototiller is not only a tool for the farmer and grower, but it is used on golf courses by municipalities, fruit growers and in road construction and one of the most unusual uses is found locally, for Mid-City Park in Albany keeps the beach around the swimming pool clean and loose with a Rototiller. Young men like Starkweather spiritually attuned to opportunities rather than security, can talk night and day about their work because they have heart and soul in the product they have a part in making. Ray Reynolds, a Troy reared young man, is another inspired Rototiller workman. He once had a WPA job, but dropped it like a hot poker when he had the chance of getting a job at Rototiller, here Ray started out with a $15 a week job and has advanced steadily to his present job in the drafting department. Ray is as enthusiastic about Rototiller as Starkweather. You talk to Pete Maraj, the factory superintendent. He has been with the company for two and one-half years. He started out as a lathe hand. He had several raises as the reward for his ideas to improve the Rototiller, so today he is superintendent. Willard MacDowell tells how Maraj got to be superintendent. MacDowell said that when the plant moved to Troy we brought along a factory superintendent from New York. He failed to do the job properly. Then plant officials decided to develop the organization through the merit system. The officials asked the work men their choice for the job of superintendent and they selected Pete Maraj. Production increased to a marked degree. MacDowell formerly was employed as a driver and helper for a local trucking concern. He used to deliver machinery to the plant. One day he applied for a job. Now he is in charge of the tool room and receiving department. He is in charge of the Rototiller bowling team and is a moving spirit at the annual Rototiller outing when all the wives and children of workers join in a picnic. Another man on the way up is Jack Petzler. He has been with the company two and one-half years. Petzler prefers working in a small factory rather than in a large one. "In a plant like this you do all kinds of jobs and thus acquire a well rounded knowledge of mechanics. Also opportunities for advancement are apt to come faster in a small factory," he said. There is a definite spirit of teamwork at the plan. They realize that the best insurance for job permanency is this teamwork toward the end of turning out a better product at a lower cost. This teamwork is demonstrated by the annual Rototiller field day. At this time dealers from throughout the United States come to Troy. Throughout the morning the dealers wander through the factory fraternizing with the workers. They exchange ideas and an improved Rototiller is the result. Warren Huntley, the local dealer, explained how the firm happened to come to Troy. He said that George B. Cluett, 2d, several years ago, had purchased a Rototiller and had used it in the construction of the lawns that were built around the houses of his Brunswick Hills development. After he was finished with the machine, Huntley purchased it. Huntley used it in his business and shortly reported to Mr. Cluett that he was making money with the machine. Mr. Cluett relied, "If this machine is good enough to make money for you there must be a future to it. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to get this company to move to Troy. It would give employment to some people here out of work." The result was that Rototiller, Inc., moved to Troy from Long Island City. Every state in the union is buying Rototillers as the result of the development of the plant. Some are sold locally, but the largest numbers are sold in California. As these Rototillers are purchased around the nation, important dollars are attracted to Troy. A large proportion of these dollars stick. They go toward the support of Troy families. Some of the money is used to buy material used in the manufacture of Rototillers. Wheeler Brothers provide most of the aluminum and iron castings used. Others come from Adirondack Steel Foundries, Inc. The pattern work for the for the machines are made locally by O. W. Sinsabaugh. Supplies of tools and mill supplies are from J.M. Warren and Co. Thus it is seen that these strange dollars attracted to Troy go in the pay envelopes of other Troy Area firms as well as the Rototiller plant envelopes. Therefore because a few men had the courage to risk their money by investing it in Troy’s "baby industry" more jobs were provided for area workmen. These extra jobs cause more sending money to be poured each week into the cash registers of Troy tradesmen. Eventually everyone living in the area benefits indirectly from the fact that another industry came to Troy. |
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Troy Machines Serve Soil-Cement Road Builders  Soil-Cement roads are being constructed throughout the country with Troy manufactured Rototiller tractor such as pictured above: This photo was taken at Granville. So interested is the Portland Cement Company in this newer type of road-building that its engineers ordered a number of these large machines and has insisted on the use of Rototillers in the construction of the air field, Chicopee, Mass., military airport, Brunswick Maine and airports throughout the country. | |