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Show I An Enterprising Utah Industry By BRIANT S. YOUNG ! The Utah Bedding and Manufacturing Co. ' I junA Commencing business in 1897 I W ''AAj on E'Ellth South, between Main and H (ts. State streets, modest in dimensions I $r Sttkj V hut great in push and energy, the V tHrfL Ox Utah Bedding and Manufacturing H fScVBFV Company now finds itself-occupying H kBMS 30 huildings of huge dimensions, and H 5 waABI with an annual business of over I p VxSm Tlle buildings at present occu- H TZJv'f v Pied hy this plant arc situated .on rj, f vy Third West between Fourth and Q4KF CVi Fifth North streets. They have a V.H frontage on Third West of 225 feet, I with an average depth of 80 feet, built of brick and three stories in H height. I During its first years the plant made mattresses only. . It then I added a department for the making of woven wire bed springs, then H comforts. Later it manufactured pillows, upholstered couches, steel H sanitary couches and all steel qoil bed springs. But now the industry H makes practically everything for a bed, and is making preparations to H include in the factory a full line of iron and brass beds, and will job H all those things and articles required for the making of a bed, from H castor to down pillow. H But as it stands to-day the plant is the largest west of Chicago, H employing approximately fifty men and turning out products which H supplies the entire intermountain section. H Over one hundred thousand dollars are invested here, in this H dtolid looking building, with machines and appliances installed that H are of the most modern and up-to-date types. H To get a comprehensive idea of this vast industry, we will make H an explanatory tour. H So we go out back of the building. Here we see an immense pile H of native mountain quaking-asp. This wood is cut in the summer and H peeled when the sap is up, then brought to the factory and cut into H blocks one and one-half feet in length. These blocks are then taken H into the excelsior room, where immense knives, running in a vertical H movement in grooves, slice it, easy, graceful; slash, cut, and the fine peelings, thinner than Saratoga chips and just as crisp, come out and H pile up, then arc baled arid carted away to be sold to the candy manu- H facturcrs or others who need it or is used for certain grades of cheap mattresses. Two hundred cords of wood are used each year for excelsior. Then we go into the cotton room. Here the cotton is brought H from where it is stored in the upper stories. The cotton has been H shipped right from the cotton fields, right from the hands of the H darkey cotton pickers, and as you look at the shreds of white, fluffy H stuff floating about you in the air, the plaintive melody "Suwanee H River" keeps jogging through your mind, and you see the old black 1 mammysand the "brack niggahs" and the drone of the whirring mall ma-ll chincry sings woeful songs of hope, sung so many miles away. H You learn there, then that this plant uses between seven and H eight hundred bales of cotton a year. There being five hundred 1 pounds to the bale, it may be imagined that it keeps a number of H darkies busy picking cotton for just one plant away off in the wild and cottony West. H You see the cotton go through the picking machine. Then you H go into another apartment and you see the cotton come out of the H' huge vaults in which it has been stored as it comes from the picker. is now placed in a machine, a human-like piece of mechanism that takes the cotton and just seems to cat it. Then you notice a long, 1 soft, pretty rug-like string of cotton come stringing out one end, and it H is the cleaned and refined cotton. It is caught by infinitesimal combs H and framed into a large wide belt, just the width of the mattress that is to be made. It rolls out and then another part of the machine Hi cntches it and presses and squeezes it and another piece folds it and Hi lays it out, and it comes out a beautiful clean piece of pure felt, the "stuffing" for the mattress. Then it is taken into another machine, cut into the proper lengths, I a mattress casing is shoved over one end; presto, a whiz, and the Hj casing or "tick" is filled and is ready to have its edges tucked in. Now it goes to another room. Here the ends arc sewed, and the com- Hj pleted mattress, fresh and almost smiling, is taken upstairs to the I reserve room, where is kept sufficient stock so that the plant can f"l any order the day the order is received. But you arc finished with nattresses, that is until you go home and sleep on one and dream. ( This plant has all the machinery and appliances for making woven wire mattresses, steel spring mattresses, "sanitary" couches and davenports and all accessories. You see, in the wire mattress department, a string of wire buzzing around a spool. You stand and gaze, and you see a little streak of white sparkling wire pass down a table. It is coiled, waiting for the next string. That comes and another and so on, and while you are watching, the spongy, springy wire for an ordinary mattress is made. You see, over in another corner, the men at work making the frame for these mattresses. Going into another room you find a f regular saw and planing mill, where every month over 10,000 feet of lumber goes to the making of the frames for them. Then you go back again and watch the machine grind out the spiral springs. This machine grasps the heavy steel wire; there is a whir and a "snip" and the spring is made. Then into the other department de-partment where the wire mattresses and couches are assembled. You see the men making the coil wire springs and you are told that this firm buys its own rough iron for the making of all the sanitary sani-tary couches. After the springs are made they are japanned, then taken to the furnace where they arc cooked with several hundred degrees de-grees of temperature, to temper the steel in them. Then they are stored away with their friends and comrades the mattresses. Now you go upstairs and see how comforts are made. Here is the frame on which is stretched the covering, now filled with the soft cotton. It is stretched tight. Then the girl at the machine presses a button or starts a wheel of some kind, and you see the frame gyrate around like a boy does after smoking his first cigar. Now up then down, in and out, and when it is done you find out that a needle has been sewing all this time and that the comfort is tightly sewed together, with designs in flowers and arabesques and tomodils and all kinds of fancy things. Then the trips to the sample rooms and the store rooms and the sewing room, where a machine making 3,000 revolutions a minute sews the casings for the mattresses and comforts; over to the pillow ' room, where the dirty feathers are washed and dusted and cleaned and come out looking as if they knew Easter was almost here. This firm makes thirty styles of upholstered couches, all of latest designs and in a first class, workmanlike manner. The company also turns out eight styles of comforts of full size, which, in common with the rest of the output of this industry, is shipped all over the territory embraced in the states pictured herewith in their famous "Five-Leaf Clover" trade mark Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Oregon and Nevada, j which is on every mattress or product they make. Watch for it In bed springs and sanitary couches the trade is now mostly I running to metal goods, so the managers are preparing especially to cater to it, and in this the "patent fabric" sanitary couches and the "Eureka Spring" which is guaranteed not to sag, are taking the lead. 1 The merchants of this and other cities arc nobly responding to the advances made by the industry and with one exception every store in Salt Lake handling furniture, is selling the products of this factory. Mr. J. R. Valentine, the president of the company, is the pioneer in mattress making in the West. In Denver in 1879-80 he started the m first factory west of St. Louis. Both Mr. Valentine and Mr. M. Stockman, the secretary and treasurer, are practical men, who are bringing the results of years of experience to bear in the growth and 1 upbuilding of this institution. j |