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Show History of Pleasant Grove Major Industry present board of directors are W. S. Chipmau, president; Governor Geo. H. Dern, Vice-President; J. R. Halliday, Halli-day, James H. Walker, A. L. Culli-more Culli-more and Albert Anderson, directors, with C. L. Wright, Secretary and Manager. The company is noy on a good financial bases and will really amount to somihing for the community. Governor Geo. IT. Dern and W. S. Chipman take a keen interest in the development of this industry and make personal investigation very often. The policy of the canning company is to put up the highest quality products. They have gained a reputation for real quality merchandise. The ambition of the operators is to put up 200,000 cases of the finest quality of fruits and vegetables in the coming year. They want to begin be-gin in June with cold pack strawberries straw-berries and strawberry products, then beans, cherries, apricots, peaches In the year 1914 a number of progressive pro-gressive citizens of Pleasant Grove incorporated in-corporated for ?20,000 for the purpose of erecting a canning factory. J. R. Halliday, always an ardent supporter of "the canning company, sold most of the stock. The present site was purchased pur-chased from Lyde Brown and the prjesent building, without the ' ware house, was erected. A year later the warehouse was built. The first board of directors were: A. E. Cooper, Alex Thornton, J. D. Wadley, C. B. Harper, J. R. Halliday, with IT. W. Jacobs as secretary. All of the equipment was soon added. Joseph Miner of Oregon, was employed to take charge of the factory. The .ambition of the company at that time was to can 4,000 cases of tomatoes in a year. In' the year 1918, on Armistice day the board of directors met with Salt Lake men to discuss raising funds to erect a factory at Orem. The Salt Lake men proposed that if half of the tomatoes, tomato puree and catsup, pumpkin and apples. The policy is to always pay fully and promptly both growers and employees. em-ployees. With full support of Pleasant Grove citizens, together with the fruit and vegetable growers from outside of this community a much larger pack can be ,iad. There are a great many vacant lots and valuable land that could be used for canning crops. More strawberries, beans pumpkins and tomatoes could be raised. There should also be trees planted, such as red sour and royal ami cherries, apricots, peaches, etc. These crops have been very profitable to thoso who have been interested in planting and raising these products. The value of this industry to this community cannot be over estimated. amount needed be raised locally, they would raise the balance of $40,000 needed to erect the plant. These men were John Dern, James Chipman, John C. Sharp, James Mclutyre and James Smart. In the year 1919, the following board of directors were in charge: C B. Harper, J. D. Wadley, James Chip-man, Chip-man, John Dern, C. G. Johnson, J. R. Halliday and Alex Thornton with H. W. Jacobs as Manager and Secretary. Soon after the Orem plant was built the canning company received some of the large contracts from the government, for tomatoes and other canned goods. The factories were able to run at full capacity, to supply the orders. After the army had demobilized de-mobilized the government cancelled the. contracts and put all stock on the market in competition with the new stock at. a reduced price, This caused a heavy loss to the local concern and threatened the canning industry of the State of Utah. For several years afterward the over production made the canning business slower than usual. A tomato pool was formed by canners to market mar-ket their pack. For a number of years the canning industry has been a community project. pro-ject. Growers and employees have always been paid fully and paid promptly, though .stock holders received re-ceived no dividends. The last few-years few-years the local plan has been doing a business of nearly half a million dollars dol-lars each year. The debt caused by the war deflation of price is about cleared up and things are looking j brighter for this industry. The The amount of money distributed to the growers and employees each month is the financial life of this city, The pay roll pl.nrta in June and every month thereafter, a substantial pay roll is distributed. The past year's run endi-d December 13 with 125 employees. em-ployees. It is quite a sight in early summer lo notice the children hauled by cannery trucks to fields at. 5 a. m. for the b"an picking season. Children taught to work early in life make valuable citizens in later life. The coming season promises employment for all as the canning company intends in-tends to enlarge their pack each year. A number of repairs and improvements improve-ments have been made from time to time, and new and -up-to-date machinery machin-ery bought as needed. A number of new features will be added next. year. |