Kilmer House

2009 is a big year for anniversaries at Johnson & Johnson.  For instance, it was 70 years ago (in 1939) that Dr. Philip Levine, working in our laboratories, discovered the human Rh factor.  It’s been 60 years (1949) since we opened affiliate companies in Portugal, France and Colombia.  It was 50 years ago (1959) that we formed our operating company Ethicon, Inc. out of our historic suture business.  It was 50 years ago that we acquired McNeil Laboratories.  And it was 90 years ago this year – in 1919 – that Johnson & Johnson opened its first affiliate company, and its first plant outside of the U.S. – in Canada.
 
Let’s go back to 1919.  Dial telephones were introduced in the United States, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution (Prohibition) was adopted, and in Europe, the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I, was signed.  The U.S. Congress passed legislation giving women the right to vote (however, it didn’t take effect until 1920, the following year). The Chicago Black Sox scandal of the 1919 World Series was making headlines, as was the Boston Molasses Disaster.  During the war, Johnson & Johnson had dramatically increased its production capacity to meet wartime demand for its products, and in 1919 demand was still high, though the Company was starting to shift back to its regular production schedules. 

Part of the Johnson & Johnson complex of buildings, late 1800s

Although 1919 was the year we incorporated an operating company in Canada, it wasn’t the start of our presence there:  the Company had already been represented in Canada for 30 years by sales agents in Montreal called Gilmour Brothers and Company, going all the way back to 1889 – just three years after the beginning of Johnson & Johnson.

W. B. Gilmour,  from our first affiliate company in Canada

The Company shipped product from New Brunswick, New Jersey to Gilmour Brothers and Company, who then distributed the product throughout Canada.  By the Nineteen-teens, the relationship was so long and close that a 1918 issue of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, listed the Gilmour brothers’ company as the Johnson & Johnson “Canadian Office” on the “J&J Honor Roll” of Company employees who were in the armed forces during World War I.  J. L. Gilmour, who’s pictured below, was one of four members of the Gilmour family from our “Canadian Office” on the Johnson & Johnson Honor Roll for the war.    He served as a captain in the Canadian military.  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. X, No. 3, 1918, p. 304]

J. L. Gilmour, from our first affiliate company in Canada

So how did we get from sales agents to an operating company?  I’ll let General Robert Wood Johnson, who witnessed the transition, describe it: 

“Trade grew steadily in volume, and by 1909 Gilmour Brothers began to manufacture certain Johnson & Johnson products at their plant in eastern Montreal.  Ten years later a further step was taken.  It was decided to establish a Canadian plant, to be operated by our old friends and associates, the Gilmours, and organized as a separate company within the family of Johnson & Johnson.  In fact, the new organization purchased the Gilmour plant for use as its factory.  John Manley and I went to Montreal to help remodel the building and install additional machines.  This company was incorporated in 1919; it bleached its first surgical gauze in 1927.  From the first there was teamwork on both sides, with the Canadian staff making final decisions while our people from New Brunswick gave all the help they could.” [Robert Johnson Talks it Over, by Robert Wood Johnson, Johnson & Johnson, 1949, p. 121]

Our Canadian affiliate company, Johnson & Johnson Inc., in 1965

The fact that the Canadian management made final decisions foreshadowed the philosophy of decentralization that Robert Wood Johnson – and Johnson & Johnson – would adopt as the Company continued expanding globally.  Our first affiliate company in Canada 90 years ago this year proved to the Company’s management that decentralized affiliate companies outside of the United States would work, and it set the stage for the Company’s later global expansion.

It’s appeared in episodes of The Simpsons and in a James Bond movie.  Legendary pilot Amelia Earhart had one…and so did General Robert Wood Johnson, who used it during the 1930s.  What was it? 

It was an autogyro.

Robert Wood Johnson’s autogyro in flight, from our archives, 1930s

So…now you know what it was, but still, what on earth is an autogyro, anyway?  An autogyro is a forerunner of the modern helicopter, and it looks like a very small plane with a propeller and big rotor blades on top.  If you’re interested in how autogyros work, there’s information at this site.  And this site has a great old vintage British Pathe film from the days of Robert Wood Johnson’s autogyro, showing an autogyro taking off and flying (the flying part is about four minutes in).  The old film gives you an idea of how noisy they were – and how maneuverable, as the autogyro buzzes riders on a horse-jumping course and a man riding a bicycle.  Autogyros are still around today, but are used mostly for exhibition flying at airshows. 

Robert Wood Johnson’s autogyro drawing the attention of a crowd, from our archives

So how did one of our former chairmen come to have an autogyro?  It stemmed from his interest in aviation, and his constant search for new ideas.  Robert Wood Johnson was so interested in aviation that at one point in the 1920s he even bought a biplane and flew it around the New Brunswick area.  [Robert Wood Johnson, The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, p. 183] 

Robert Wood Johnson

If the biplane raised some eyebrows, then no doubt Johnson raised many more when he said in a newspaper interview that he was thinking of providing airplanes for all of the Company salesmen, so they could save time and improve their performance. [Robert Wood Johnson, The Gentleman Rebel, p. 182]  (In case you’re wondering, that idea never came to pass.) 

Johnson had actually developed a prototype amphibious biplane, which was tested but ultimately did not work out when the prototype landed badly on its second test, taking off from the bay at Keyport, N.J. and flying to New Brunswick for its first runway landing.  A wheel strut snapped during the landing, the plane skidded down the runway, flipped onto its back, and skidded some more before crashing to a stop.  Miraculously, the pilot was unhurt, but the plane was destroyed, ending Johnson’s hopes of bringing a new industry and aviation jobs to New Brunswick.  [Robert Wood Johnson, The Gentleman Rebel, p. 184-185]

Johnson soon became interested in autogyros, which were brand new, and he began taking lessons on how to pilot them.  He was awarded an autogyro pilot’s license – the first nonprofessional autogyro pilot’s license in the region (he had License #1), and the first one in Middlesex County, N.J.  Johnson eventually bought a Pitcairn autogyro and was soon using it for business travel, because it was a quick and efficient way for him to get around.  (Many executives at the sites he visited probably felt that it got him there a little too quickly and efficiently for their liking.)  Johnson’s autogyro was small, with short wings that angled up at the tips, with two open cockpits.  It had a propeller in front and four huge rotor blades like a helicopter.  Although the only photos we have of it are black and white, our records tell us that the autogyro was green and white.  In 1932, Johnson used his autogyro to visit Montreal, where Johnson & Johnson had had an operating company since 1919.    

This was during the depths of the Great Depression, and the Company was looking for ways to increase its business.  So in 1931 Robert Wood Johnson announced that he would visit 16 midwestern cities in which there were major wholesale drug customers.  And to save time, because the Company’s Sales Department had given him a very full schedule, he would use his autogyro.   According to an article in Sales Management, he planned to visit druggists in Fort Wayne, Chicago, Indianapolis, Terre Haute, St. Louis, Kansas City, Wichita, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Joplin, Springfield, Fort Smith, Little Rock, Memphis, Evansville, Louisville and Atlantic City, all in a little over two weeks.   Here’s what The Wichita Beacon said:

“In order to cover the territory as rapidly as possible, yet spend sufficient time in each city, Mr. Johnson is making the entire trip by air, using his auto-gyro so that landings can be made in places ordinarily inaccessible to the regular type plane.”  [The Wichita Beacon, "Surgical Dressing Expert to Visit Here in Auto-Gyro," Sunday, October 11, 1931]

While autogyros may seem quaint or archaic today, in 1931 they were considered “…the most modern means of transportation at the command of the civilized world…” [The Wichita Beacon, "Here's How He Checks Up on Business," Thursday, October 15, 1931]   Not only was Johnson’s mode of transportation on his economic fact finding tour considered cutting-edge and modern, so were his ideas and opinions.  “Modern business…demands action and a first-hand knowledge of what is going on throughout the country.  The day is past when you can run a business from behind a desk,” he told a Kansas newspaper.  [The Wichita Beacon, October 15, 1931]

A rare photo from Hadley Field, NJ. showing the lighter side of General Robert Wood Johnson.  Johnson (R) pretends to read a newspaper while sitting with pilot Ken Unger (a famous former WWI flying ace and former air mail pilot) on the frame of an autogyro waiting to be rebuilt.

Johnson’s love of aviation gave rise to one of the most famous General Johnson stories in the history of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies.  In his later years, Johnson was known for making surprise inspections at Company facilities.  Many times, the local manager would receive advance word of the surprise inspection, and employees at the facility would race around hiding clutter and making sure that everything was up to Johnson’s exacting standards.   The manager at one site decided to store some materials on the roof to get them out of sight during General Johnson’s visit.  Unfortunately, Johnson came in by air that day.  And the first question he asked the nervous manager was…you guessed it: what is all that stuff doing on your roof?

Let’s say you’re a Johnson & Johnson employee who wants to take better care of your health. You could visit the medical department for some advice, an exam or maybe a quick checkup, or attend a Company lecture on health and hygiene, or pick up one of the many pamphlets the Company publishes, or even get some exercise in one of the on-site facilities for employees – the swimming pool, or maybe the tennis court.  Maybe you would consider joining one of the employee athletic teams.  What year is it at Johnson & Johnson?  2009?  Not quite… it’s the Nineteen-teens.

 
The Nineteen-teens?  That’s right: almost 100 years ago.  My colleague Marc at the JNJBTW blog recently posted a guest post from Fikry W. Isaac, MD, MPH, executive director of Johnson & Johnson Global Health Services, about creating a culture of health at Johnson & Johnson, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the things we offered employees in that area about 100 years ago. 

Hygiene and Asepsis

One of the aseptic rooms in 1917, used in suture sterilization

Since Johnson & Johnson made the first ever mass-produced sterile surgical dressings and sutures, the focus at the Company was on strict cleanliness and antiseptic procedures — to the extent that the Company’s germ-free manufacturing environments were cleaner and had stricter standards than those of most hospitals of the era.  Johnson & Johnson also published a number of pamphlets and bulletins on contagious disease prevention, public health, maternal and child health, and more. 

These publications were available to employees, and gave them the latest information on how to keep themselves and their families healthy.  Scientific Director Fred Kilmer also conducted classes for employees on a variety of subjects related to health and public hygiene.

The Medical Department
The Company had formed the Employee Welfare Department in 1906, which oversaw a number of benefits for employees.  Among them was a medical department with hospital and retiring rooms that could be used to treat employees in medical emergencies, or provide space for employees to lie down and rest if they weren’t feeling well.  In case of an injury, trained employee volunteers could provide basic first aid until the doctor arrived (and of course, they would have the Company’s wide range of products with which to do so).  But that wasn’t all.  According to the October, 1917 edition of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, “The company employees a woman visitor whose mission of mercy is to call upon employees who are ill and to do all she can to help them and to see that they get proper medical attention.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol X, No. 2, October 1917, p. 241]

One of the rooms in the Medical Department in the Nineteen-Teens

Employees also had ice-cooled filtered water to drink at work, courtesy of the Company’s elaborate water filtration system.  The ice was made with filtered water, too.  Here’s a picture of one of the water coolers from around 100 years ago, in the scientific laboratory:

On-Site Facilities
Johnson & Johnson had an outdoor tennis court, an indoor area in the Laurel Club for either tennis or badminton, and a swimming pool for employees that was connected to the Cotton Mill.  The pool had showers and a dressing room, with separate hours for men and women.  Among the classes given for female employees 100 years ago were dancing and calisthenics. 

Here’s a picture of our outdoor tennis court in 1917:

And the indoor court in the Laurel Club building.  The Laurel Club was an organization for women employees.

Laurel Club — indoor athletic facilities.  

1907 New Brunswick Home News article about athletic Laurel Club members at Johnson & Johnson

And here’s the swimming pool (the pool water was pure filtered water, too):

Employees also had a variety of sports teams.  Male employees formed the Johnson & Johnson Athletic Association, which had a baseball team and competed at the New Brunwsick, N.J. YMCA in early 1919.  That competition included basketball, tug of war contests, swimming races and diving.  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER Vol. XI, No. 3, 1919 p. 81]  There was a women’s basketball team, shown in the 1907 photo below.  They look like they would have been pretty tough competitors.

Don’t even THINK of messing with us on the basketball court

And here’s the men’s bowling team from 1914, made up of office employees. The bowling team had been in existence since at least 1900.

So why did we do all of that roughly 100 years ago?  According to Fred Kilmer, it was all “…part of the service which Johnson & Johnson supply to their employees with a view of securing and retaining healthy and contented operatives.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VII, Nos. 3 and 4, September, 1914, p. 88]   That same basic view continues to define Johnson & Johnson today.

About this time of year almost 100 years ago, Johnson & Johnson would have been reminding you that it was time for Clean Up Week.  What was Clean Up Week, and why was a company nagging people to clean their houses and yards?

Clean Up Week was a concept promoted by Johnson & Johnson to rally people around spring cleaning…which leads us back to the question:  Why did the people at Johnson & Johnson feel they needed to remind people to clean their houses?  It’s not as if they were planning a visit.  

The reminders were due to something else entirely:  the Company’s commitment to public health and reducing the spread of infectious diseases.  So the idea behind Clean Up Week wasn’t just to spruce up your house after a long winter or get rid of clutter, it was to really scrub any areas in which germs could be lurking.  That was critically important in the days before antibiotics and vaccines, when the warmer weather of spring all too often brought the resurgence of diseases such as polio, diphtheria, measles, smallpox, typhoid, whooping cough, and more.  The Clean Up Week campaigns were designed to educate the public so that they could help reduce the spread of these illnesses and keep their families and communities safer.

Illustration of Lister’s Fumigator, one of the Company’s early products, at work.

 Here’s what the March, 1917 edition of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER (our publication for retail pharmacists) said:

“Clean-up time means much more than it did a few years ago to most people.  Now they do not simply plan to clean-up for the sake of tidiness.  They clean to protect their homes, to make them safe for their children…to disinfect and fumigate their homes and to freshen living rooms and bed rooms and kill disease germs.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. IX, No. 5, March 1917, p. 132] 

So Johnson & Johnson ran full-page color ads in national magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Designer, Woman’s Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Pictorial Review announcing Clean Up Week.  The ads were beautiful and eye-catching, and featured a woman in full “cleaning the house” attire of that era, as well as hands holding a variety of Johnson & Johnson products that could be used for Clean Up Week.  These products included the antibacterial soaps Synol Soap and Camphenol, as well as fumigators (to get rid of disease-causing insects) and gauze (to use as scrubbing cloths). 

Black and White reproduction of a 1917 Clean Up Week ad 

The ads also promoted the giveaway of a Household Hand Book free to anyone interested.  The Household Hand Books were distributed by retail druggists, and could be imprinted with the name and address of the drugstore.  THE RED CROSS MESSENGER ran articles urging druggists to become leaders in their community with regard to public health, by distributing the handbooks and encouraging people to come to them for advice and supplies that they could use to clean up their homes and protect their families.

The Household Hand Book had a beautiful full-color cover, featuring a knight dressed in an odd combination of medieval and ancient Roman armor, with a “J&J” on his chest, ready to protect the home against germs, and standing in front of a banner with the dire-sounding quote “Men and Women are doomed constantly to combat dirt disease, and the devil.”    Naturally, Fred Kilmer was the editor of the Hand Book, and he thought of everything a family could potentially need from the publication.  The first page had space to write the contact information for the nearest doctor, druggist, hospital, police and fire station.  The introduction stated:

“The mission of this book is to assist in the war against disease and to aid in the conservation and promotion of health and life.  It is a book for every-day use by the individual, in the household, camp, shop, factory or community.  Primarily the book points out the way to prevent the spread of sickness and disease.  The teachings of the book are based upon the highest and most modern authorities in hygiene and sanitation.”  [Household Hand Book, 1917, inside front cover.]

The Household Hand Book contained advice on how to avoid contagious disease, pointers on caring for a sick patient and proper conduct in the sickroom, how to recognize the symptoms of different illnesses, how diseases are spread, how to disinfect your home, when to send for the doctor, first aid information, and more mundane things like how to care for your baby, proper daily care of the teeth, and commonsense advice on how to avoid accidents.  If you were part of a household in 1917, you would not only want a copy of the Household Hand Book, you would probably refer to it constantly.   After the national Clean Up Week ads ran, the Company was inundated by requests for the Household Hand Book from across the U.S.

Public Health Display of Household Handbooks, 1918

People would have rushed to their local drugstore to get the materials they would need, as recommended in the Clean Up Week ads.  And because Johnson & Johnson educated retail pharmacists about its products, the pharmacists could speak knowledgeably (if they had read the materials) about how the Company’s products such as antibacterial soaps and fumigators worked, how they were manufactured, and how they could help people keep their families safe. 

In 1918, during World War I, the Clean Up Week campaign was portrayed as a home-front war measure in defense of the home from germs.  Once again, the Company enlisted the help of the retail pharmacists who sold our products to inaugurate Clean Up Weeks in their towns, urging them to get the cooperation of the mayor, the town’s merchants and the schools. 

By the way, here’s a list of places in and outside the house that people were urged to clean and disinfect during Clean Up Week.  Inside the house:  ceilings, floor, doors, closets, garrets, windows, baseboards, cupboards, stairways, cellars, window frames, sashes and glass.  Outside the house, people were advised to clear brush and rubbish in back yards, clean vaults and sewers, stagnant pools, gutters, barnyards, chicken houses, drains, stables and dog houses.  

Postcard from the Nineteen Teens, addressed to “Synol Soap” (instead of Johnson & Johnson) in New Brunswick, N.J.   

Once readers recovered from the backbreaking and exhausting task of spring cleaning in the Nineteen-Teens, they could be sure that they were, as the cover of the Household Hand Book said, “The Protector of The Home Against Germs,” an important mission and a necessity over 90 years ago.

What did Johnson & Johnson have in common with Robert Livingston, one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence?

Give up?  They both ran steamboats on the Raritan River in New Brunswick.  And here’s another fact:  Livingston’s tenure as U.S. Minister to France from 1801 to 1804 would have an impact on Johnson & Johnson over 80 years later.  How, you ask?  Because Livingston teamed up with inventor Robert Fulton to invent…you guessed it:  the first working steamboat in Paris.

So…what was Johnson & Johnson doing with steamboats?  Wasn’t it enough that we had our own power plant, our own water filtration system and our own glassblowers? Apparently not, because we had our own steamboats too.  And what did we use them for?  The steamboats were used to transport Johnson & Johnson products to the ports in New York for distribution to places in the U.S. and around the world.

Steamboat Robert W. Johnson docked in front of Johnson & Johnson

A much earlier Kilmer House post pointed out that, although it was a fortunate coincidence that Johnson & Johnson came to be located in New Brunswick, the city turned out to be a very good place for a new business because of the railroad and the river.  Johnson & Johnson shipped its product by rail, but it turned out that water was a faster way to get our goods to the ships in New York that would take them to more distant markets in the U.S. and around the world.  The city of New Brunswick already had steamship docks due to shipping businesses that started with Robert Livingston and steamboat inventor Robert Fulton, and continued with Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.  So with the river right there, it was natural for Johnson & Johnson to use boats in distributing its products.  Because many of the products Johnson & Johnson made were essential items like sterile dressings and sutures, the Company wanted to ensure their constant availability.  This was especially true during World War I when the Company was producing bandages and surgical dressings around the clock to meet demand.  Having its own steamboats was a way for Johnson & Johnson to make sure that it could quickly and reliably get huge quantities of products to the ports in New York.  Having its own steamboats reduced shipping times to same-day instead of more than a day.

Steamboat James W. Johnson on the Raritan River, 1915

A 1908 edition of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER explained:

“For the most part all goods shipped from the Johnson & Johnson factories at New Brunswick are transported by the steamer ‘Robert W. Johnson,’ which navigates the Raritan River and Bay.  The steamer landing in New Brunswick being directly on the factory grounds.  New Brunswick is situated on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Philadelphia, thus in shipping by rail there is often a delay in their trans-shipment at connection points. The Steamer ‘Robert W. Johnson’ leaves the factory of Johnson & Johnson every morning and arrives in New York in less than four hours…this method obviates the numerous handlings of the goods with the constant danger of damage and insures prompt transportation.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER Vol. I, No. 3, July 1908, pp. 30-31]

The Company’s Steamboats Docked on the Icy Raritan, Winter of 1917

The steamboats were owned and operated by a subsidiary called the Middlesex Transportation Company.  Many of New Brunswick’s other industries such as wallpaper manufacturers Janeway and Carpender (alert blog readers may remember them as the former owners of the first Johnson & Johnson building), also relied on our steamboats to transport their goods.  The steamboats also brought raw materials like cotton to Johnson & Johnson to be made into products. Because the Company was so reliable, the story goes that the Johnson & Johnson steamboats also were asked to carry U.S. mail to New York as well.

Johnson & Johnson started using steamboats in 1902 and had them for 33 years, until the advent of highways and trucks reduced the time to get our products to New York from four hours by water to just one hour by highway, ending the age of the Johnson & Johnson steamboats at the beginning of 1936.

April usually means warmer weather and spring flowers, but at Johnson & Johnson it means it’s time for the Company’s Annual Meeting of Shareholders.   Everyone knows these three things about the meeting:  it has always been held on the last Thursday of April, it’s always had a huge turnout and it’s always been held in New Brunswick…right?   Well, not exactly.   And here’s an unusual fact:  our first Annual Meeting was held on a Saturday.

So…how much do you REALLY know about our Annual Meeting?  Read on to find out.

The Earliest Meetings:  Meet Our Shareholders, All Three of Them
Johnson & Johnson has had annual meetings of shareholders (or stockholders as they were called then) since 1888 – almost since the beginning of the Company.  At that time, the group of shareholders  – the three Johnson brothers – was so small that the annual meeting could have been held in a broom closet.

Our Earliest Shareholders – All Three of Them:  Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson, Edward Mead Johnson

Although Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886, it was incorporated the following year (in the fall of 1887) with capital stock valued at $100,000, with the three Johnson brothers as stockholders.  Robert held 40 percent of the shares, and his brothers James and Mead held 30 percent each.  The by-laws of the new corporation stated that the Annual Meeting of Stockholders (as it was called then) should be held on the 2nd day of January, and the Secretary of the Company was required to give five days notice in writing to each stockholder to let them know there would be a meeting.

So…When’s the Meeting?
The Company’s secretary didn’t have to write that letter for a few months.  Our first-ever Annual Meeting of Stockholders was held on January 14, 1888 at 4:00 pm in the offices at Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick.  Oddly enough, that day was a Saturday.  Stranger still, it was just a regular workday back in 1888.  (Work weeks generally stretched from Monday to Saturday, until the passage of legislation setting a 40-hour work week during the Great Depression.)  Presumably bad weather wasn’t much of a roadblock to attendance because two of the three Johnson brothers lived in New Brunswick and could walk to work.   But they may not have wanted to walk to the first Annual Meeting: the winter of 1888 was a notably cold and snowy one (the famous Blizzard of 1888 would occur later that year in March), and our first-ever Annual Meeting took place during a bone-chilling, unusually cold January.

Undated Early Photo Showing Horsedrawn Cart Stuck in the Snow at Johnson & Johnson

When the Johnson brothers were the only shareholders, scheduling was far less formal, and shareholder meetings were held when needed to elect a Board of Directors (all internal Johnson & Johnson people at that time) or when needed to discuss or consider making an acquisition or an agreement.  That was the case in March of 1892 when Johnson & Johnson held a Special Meeting of Stockholders (all three of them) to discuss whether or not to enter into an agreement with the Papoid Company.   (They voted yes.)

Since the three Johnson brothers were all roughly in agreement about the Company’s goals, the early Johnson & Johnson Annual Meetings were far smoother than those of Robert Wood Johnson’s previous partnership, Seabury & Johnson.  The Seabury & Johnson meetings (with only two stockholders) had been noted for the acerbic written comments made by George Seabury and Robert Wood Johnson in the margins of the meeting minutes, and for the fact that the long-suffering Seabury & Johnson treasurer was often called in to break voting ties caused by the deadlocked partners.

The earliest Johnson & Johnson Annual Meetings were always held at the Company’s offices in New Brunswick, starting the tradition of holding them in our founding city that we continue today.

Johnson & Johnson office, 1895, with founder Robert Wood Johnson in office window next to the clock. Our earliest Annual Meetings were held at the Company’s offices.

At the February, 1907 Annual Meeting, the date of the meeting was officially changed to the first Tuesday in February, and the meeting was held on that date until 1943.  In 1944, Johnson & Johnson became a publicly traded company and the meeting date was officially changed to the first Tuesday of March at 11:00 am.

How the Annual Meeting Ended Up in April
So how did our Annual Meeting end up in April?  It’s because of something that happened in 1946.  And that something was the Annual Report.  The March, 1946 Annual Meeting was adjourned until May 14th because the Annual Report covering 1945 (which had to come out before the meeting) wasn’t ready yet.

Inside cover of 1945 Annual Report with notification of new date of the 1946 Annual Meeting.

Our archives don’t record the reason for the delay, but 1945 was a busy year for the Company, which was shifting from a wartime production footing back to a civilian one, further decentralizing, expanding its research and manufacturing capacity, and adding new products.  General Robert Wood Johnson summarized the eventful year that had passed in his letter to shareholders, and concluded by thanking employees:

“The men and women of Johnson & Johnson have again made an outstanding contribution to the development of the Company.  1945 was the third successive year in which production and sales have been maintained at their present record levels, and the increasing efficiency of production is a tribute to the ability and loyalty of our men and women under difficult circumstances.”  [1945 Annual Report, Robert Wood Johnson's Letter to Stockholders]

From 1947 on, our Annual Meeting has been held in April…even though our modern and always on-time Annual Report comes out in March.

Location, Location, Location
But one thing about the Annual Meeting has never changed, right? The meetings have always been held in New Brunswick.  Well…not exactly.  From 1888 to 1957, the meetings were small and were held in New Brunswick at the Company’s headquarters.  But with the 1957 opening of the Eastern Surgical Dressings Plant (or ESDP, as we used to call it) in North Brunswick, it was decided to hold the Annual Meeting there, both to show off the new state-of-the-art facility, and because it had more space.

The Old Eastern Surgical Dressings Plant in North Brunswick, N.J.  Home of our Annual Meetings from 1957 to 1964.

The first Annual Meeting held at ESDP had about 30 attendees.  In his role as chairman of the Company, General Robert Wood Johnson conducted the meeting — a role that has been continued by every Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson since we went public in 1944.

General Robert Wood Johnson

It was at one of the ESDP Annual Meetings that an attending shareholder gathered up his courage and asked General Johnson why he had put shareholders last in Our Credo, the one-page statement of corporate responsibility that Johnson had written in 1943, and had printed in the Company’s 1948 Annual Report.  Johnson gave the famous reply that if all of the other responsibilities in Our Credo (to doctors, patients, customers, consumers, then employees, then to the community) were performed well, then the shareholders would be well-cared for.  (And as Johnson liked to remind people when they asked that question, at the time, he himself was the largest shareholder…which probably served to end the conversation.)

Former Chairman Philip Hofmann at the 1972 Annual Meeting.

The meetings were held at ESDP until General Johnson retired and Philip B. Hofmann became chairman.  The 1964 meeting (the first chaired by Hofmann) was held at one of the Johnson & Johnson operating company buildings in Raritan.

Our 1972 Annual Meeting

Hofmann’s meeting theme, which he continued until his retirement, was to take the audience on virtual a trip around the world and report on the progress of the worldwide affiliate companies.  This set the stage for the basic format of our current meetings, which report on the progress of the Company overall throughout the world.  The meetings remained at the Raritan location until they moved back to New Brunswick in 1983…where they continue today after starting here on a Saturday in the dead of winter 121 years ago.

[Many thanks to the folks in our corporate secretary’s office for digging through their archives, and a huge thank you to retired corporate VP of Public Relations Lawrence G. Foster, for sharing his memories of past annual meetings.]

1918 Display of free Johnson & Johnson Public Health Materials

The DrugWonks blog had a great post on the need for pharmaceutical companies to become teachers, experts and partners in advancing public health.  It’s a great idea that harks back to a time 100 years ago when some of the major public health improvements we take for granted today were at the forefront of society.  And it’s been something Johnson & Johnson has felt strongly about throughout its history.

1886: Sterile Surgical Dressings and antiseptic surgery
Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886 to manufacture the first mass produced sterile surgical dressings for use in U.S. hospitals.  These dressings helped to greatly reduce the astronomical mortality rates from surgical infections.  At the time, surgeons operated in their street clothes and used unsterilized cotton from the floors of cotton mills as dressings…and closed incisions with ordinary sewing needles and thread that they stuck in the lapels of their frock coats between operations.  Needless to say, infection rates were sky high and most patients didn’t survive surgery.

Robert Wood Johnson

Robert Wood Johnson the first heard Sir Joseph Lister – the founder of antiseptic surgery — speak in Philadelphia in 1876, and was inspired to produce the first mass-produced sterile surgical dressings.  At the time, surgeons wanting to try Lister’s methods had to sterilize gauze and cotton on their own, which was time-consuming, messy and costly.    When Johnson wasn’t able to realize his dream in his previous partnership, Seabury & Johnson, he and his brothers left and started their own company.  Johnson (who had two older brothers who fought for the Union Army in the Civil War and may have heard stories about the horrendous surgical conditions in battlefield hospitals) saw not just a business opportunity but a way to spread Lister’s discoveries, change surgery and save patients’ lives.

Early Johnson & Johnson Cotton and Gauze Dressings

Johnson & Johnson also manufactured sterile sutures and ligatures with pre-threaded needles.  In order to spread the word about antiseptic surgery, in 1888 the Company published Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment, a collection of monographs by the leading surgeons of the day and edited by Fred Kilmer…who readers of this blog will know because he was our scientific director from 1889 to 1934.

Fred Kilmer

In 1888 Kilmer was a New Brunswick, N.J. pharmacist and pharmaceutical chemist and a huge advocate of public health improvement.  His work on Modern Methods convinced Robert Wood Johnson the first that Kilmer should become part of Johnson & Johnson, and he persuaded Kilmer to join the Company the following year.

Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment, 1888

Modern Methods quickly became an important “how to” manual for surgeons wanting to try Lister’s methods, and was considered a major contribution to the advancement of antiseptic surgery, with over four million copies of the publication distributed worldwide.  With Fred Kilmer, Johnson & Johnson got a lifelong promoter of public health improvement and education.  For many years, Kilmer was the president of the New Brunswick (N.J.) Board of Health and an advisor to the New Jersey Board of Health.  He was instrumental in the improvement of New Brunswick’s public sanitation and in 1918, Kilmer served as president of the Middlesex County Anti-Tuberculosis League.  Besides being a scientist, Kilmer was a good writer and didn’t hesitate to use his talents to educate both Johnson & Johnson employees and the public on a variety of subjects, including hygiene, first aid, disease prevention and more.

1890s:  First Aid

First Aid Household Accident Case circa 1920s

Spurred on by a conversation Robert Wood Johnson had with a railway surgeon about the difficulty of treating injured workers laying track for the new cross-country railroads, Johnson & Johnson pioneered the first-ever First Aid Kits to treat injuries on-site.  The company also researched and published the first First Aid manuals, so that people could provide initial treatment for injuries and not do more harm to the patient.

1890s and beyond: Maternal and Child Health
Johnson & Johnson also made maternal and child health kits since the 1890s.  In the days when most babies were born at home, these kits contained supplies that doctors and midwives would need to make sure that births were safer for the mother and the baby.   The Company relied on the advice of physicians for what to include in the kits, and they were often named for the doctors who had contributed the ideas.  The kits contained items such as clean obstetric sheets, cotton and gauze, ligatures for the umbilical cord, nitrate of silver solution to prevent infections that often led to infant blindness, antiseptic soap and more.

One early kit contained something that would become a product line in its own right:  sanitary napkins for the mother.

Dr. Simpson’s Maternity Packet

The kits also contained detailed instructions about proper hygiene during delivery and afterward, and care of the mother and baby, specifically regarding preventing the infections that made childbirth dangerous for mothers and babies before the advent of modern medicine.   The pamphlets focused on the theme “Every Baby Has the Right To be Born Well.”

Disease Prevention and Public Health:
In the days before antibiotics, vaccines and modern medicine, the average citizen’s best tool for keeping his or her family safe from infectious disease was knowledge.  The Company made antibacterial soaps such as Synol, as well as fumigators and other products for disease prevention, but went beyond just advertising them.  They saw that the best way to combat diseases like diphtheria and typhoid in the early 1900s was to arm people with knowledge about how to kill the germs that caused them.

Cover of a 1917 RED CROSS MESSENGER Advertising “Clean Up Week” Products

Johnson & Johnson advertised “Clean Up Weeks” – usually in the early spring, that educated the public about clearing brush, stagnant water and other disease hazards outside the home, and how to do spring cleaning inside the home with antibacterial soaps and other products.   The Company published a Household Handbook that was free to the public and contained information on how to prevent the spread of infectious disease, how to keep your family healthy, and first aid and safety instruction. THE RED CROSS NOTES, a Company publication for doctors and surgeons, frequently had articles about combating diseases like scarlet fever, diphtheria, meningitis and measles.

Household Hand Book from 1916, Edited by Fred Kilmer

Even some of the more unusual historical products the Company made were designed to fight disease and improve public health.  Mosquitoons may have perhaps the weirdest product name in Johnson & Johnson history, but it was a fumigator designed to kill disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Lister’s Dog Soap Ad

Lister’s Dog Soap seems kind of funny too, but it was an antibacterial dog soap that was used to help rid dogs of fleas and other insects that could carry disease into a household.   And in 1918 the Company made gauze masks to protect the public during the deadly influenza epidemic. The Company continues this tradition today in many ways, including being a founding sponsor of a program that reduces childhood injury around the world.

UPDATE:  100 years ago, we provided public health information in print.  Now we do it on the web.  Here are some more examples:  we still provide maternal and child health information, basic first aid information, information and support for caregivers, and a variety of health information on YouTube.

So why do we do it?  It goes back to the founding philosophy of Johnson & Johnson, which was to save and improve lives with the first mass produced sterile surgical dressings and other products, and continues today as part of the Company’s responsibilities to patients, doctors, nurses, consumers and the community.

What was the most unusual job in Johnson & Johnson history?  Was it digging this tunnel?  Working a gigantic printing press? Running a huge water filtration system? Making Mosquitoons? Or quality testing our short-lived cola tonic with the sherry base?

How about…glassblower.

Huh?  We employed a glassblower? Well, actually…according to our records, we employed nine glassblowers.  And it had to do with the Company’s manufacture of sterile sutures and ligatures for surgery.

These are some of the sterile sutures and ligatures made by Johnson & Johnson almost 100 years ago, packaged in glass tubes…made by Company glassblowers.

At the time, Johnson & Johnson wasn’t just the largest producer of sterile surgical dressings in the world, it was also the largest manufacturer of catgut ligatures in the world, producing an astounding 10 million feet per year.  A retail druggist visiting Johnson & Johnson in 1917 toured the Company’s ligature laboratory, which operated under the strictest antiseptic conditions.   He watched the raw materials being cleaned and sterilized (employees in the department explained to him that full cleaning took about a week) and chromicized, which was the process of waterproofing the catgut so that it wouldn’t be absorbed by the body for a set period of time.

To insure the quality of its ligatures — because the lives of surgical patients depended on them — the Company performed every step of the manufacturing process with minute detail.  The druggist commented “…I noticed that no detail is so slight that it can be neglected in the Johnson & Johnson laboratories.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1917, Vol IX, No. 4, p. 107]

Ligatures Being Dried

After the chromicizing process, the raw material was twisted into strands by machine and then dried, after which the strands were smoothed and polished.  They were sorted by size and then tested for strength, which was important because it insured consistency – that each container of sutures or ligatures was exactly the same quality as all of the others.

“When the surgeon gets a strand of Johnson & Johnson catgut he knows exactly the pulling it will stand before it snaps.  The smallest strand, twelve-thousandths of an inch, will stand five pounds, and the largest, thirty-six thousandths of an inch, will stand fifty pounds.  They have to come up to that standard or they are rejected.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1917, Vol IX, No. 4, p. 108]

The ligatures were then cut into various lengths and sterilized again.  Here’s where the glassblowers came in.  Let’s quote our druggist again:

“In the meantime the glassblowers are busy in a nearby department.  These skillful men are blowing and shaping glass containers.  Under the influence of their deft fingers glass assumes many fanciful shapes.  It takes nine of them to keep up with the demand, and they turn out many thousands a day.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1917, Vol IX, No. 4, p. 109]

The Catgut Sterilization Room, 1917

When the ligatures came out of the sterilizer, they were placed in the glass containers by workers wearing sterilized rubber tips on their fingers, and working on glass-topped  tables – because the glass could be kept germ-free.  The tubes were corked and sent back to the glassblowers, who sealed them.  The sealed package was sterilized yet another time and was then considered “ready for the surgeon.”

When each batch of ligatures was finished, a sample package was chosen at random, opened and tested by scientists in the Company’s bacteriological laboratory.  Here’s the description of the testing given by the visiting druggist:

“The chemists open a package from each lot, using the same precautions in handling it as should be taken in a hospital.  They remove the ligature strand with sterile forceps, and then conduct a check-test to determine if the sample is sterile.  These tests run into the many thousands and are the most perfect known means to check the efficiency of the sterilization process.  The chemist not only puts a label on the batch of strands from which he has tested samples, certifying that they are sterile, but he must sign his report in the record book.  Johnson & Johnson intend that ligatures shall reach the surgeon in a perfect condition and surgeons have told me that they do. [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, January 1917, Vol IX, No. 4, p. 109]

After taking such painstaking care to make sure that every ligature was sterile, uniform and trustworthy, the Company wasn’t about to leave the packaging to chance.  It had to be done to the same exacting specifications….which is why we had such an unusual job as glassblower at Johnson & Johnson almost 100 years ago.

Sterile Suture or Ligature package — Made by Johnson & Johnson Glassblowers

Robert Wood Johnson

A recent post talked about Robert Wood Johnson and Johnson & Johnson being at the forefront of the debate about the need for higher wages and reduced hours to increase consumer spending and get the unemployed back to work during the Great Depression.  (In case you haven’t read that post, Robert Wood Johnson advocated for higher wages and shorter hours than the New Deal proposals were suggesting.)  Johnson implemented his ideas at Johnson & Johnson and, when his ideas worked, he tried in vain to interest the Roosevelt administration and other industrialists.  His frustration at the lack of response caused him to sit down late one night at his home in Princeton, New Jersey and put his thoughts on paper.  (He preferred using lined yellow pads of paper, in case anyone’s interested.)  But instead of just filing away what he wrote, he published it in 1935 as a nine-page pamphlet called Try Reality: A Discussion of Hours, Wages and The Industrial Future.

Try Reality was written from Johnson’s heart and his personal beliefs.  He sent a copy to every major industrialist in the nation, hoping for a meaningful response, and was met with…silence.  Meanwhile, Try Reality was getting widespread praise in the press because of Johnson’s progressive — and unusual for the time — ideas about corporate social responsibility.

In 1935 American industry was struggling for survival.  Although the New Deal legislation was moving forward, the Great Depression was still in full force. Many businesses were folding, increasing the already catastrophic unemployment.  Other companies were pulling back, closing operations, shedding workers and concentrating on doing only what they felt was necessary to survive.  In Europe and in the U.S., the economic dislocation gave rise to demagogues like Father Charles Coughlin and Huey Long who played on people’s fear and emotions and proposed radical solutions to the problems of the Depression.

It was in this atmosphere that Robert Wood Johnson spoke out about his belief that business had certain responsibilities toward society that went above and beyond just making a profit.

…“Private industry must solve this problem of poverty amid plenty if it wishes to remain private industry.  The people simply will not stand for a continuation of present conditions.  They demand and deserve a solution.”  [Try Reality: A Discussion of Hours, Wages and The Industrial Future, by Robert Wood Johnson, 1935.]

The italics in the paragraph above were Robert Wood Johnson’s.  He felt that this point was of supreme importance, and italicized it to make it stand out.  Most of Try Reality was about wages and hours, and set out Johnson’s familiar argument that the New Deal proposals for a minimum wage and a 40-hour work week (which most other industrialists were fighting tooth and nail) didn’t go far enough if they wanted to reduce unemployment and spur spending.  In the first section, called “Facing the Facts,” he wrote:

“The hours of employment and the problem of unemployment are two faces of the same medal.  They cannot be considered separately.  To do so ignores reality.”

At the end of the pamphlet was a section that Johnson titled “An Industrial Philosophy.”

“Out of the suffering of the past few years has been born a public knowledge and conviction that industry only has the right to succeed where it performs a real economic service and is a true social asset.

“Such permanent success is possible only through the application of an industrial philosophy of enlightened self-interest.  It is to the enlightened self-interest of modern industry to realize that its service to its customers comes first, its service to its employees and management second, and its service to its stockholders last.  It is to the enlightened self-interest of industry to accept and fulfill its full share of social responsibility.”

[Try Reality: A Discussion of Hours, Wages and The Industrial Future, by Robert Wood Johnson, 1935.]

This was the initial seed of what would become Our Credo. Johnson would think about and expand on these ideas over and over again – adding responsibility to the community, among other things – in the coming years before they found final expression in Our Credo in 1943.  Robert Wood Johnson would probably have found it interesting that, in light of recent events, many business schools are now looking for ways to increase their emphasis on the kinds of social responsibilities that he advocated and put into practice at Johnson & Johnson.

In celebration of Women’s History Month this March, Kilmer House salutes all of the women of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies worldwide, from 1886 to the present.  Here are some facts about women in the early history of Johnson & Johnson:

1.  Half of the Company’s first 14 employees in 1886 were women.

2.  Johnson & Johnson pioneered many products in women’s health, including the first sanitary protection products in the late 1800s.  Here and here are some posts about how we advertised them at a time when you couldn’t mention sanitary protection in polite society!

3.  We also made maternal and child health kits to assist in safe childbirth at a time when most babies were born at home instead of in hospitals.   Here’s one of our maternal and child health kits from the 1890s.

Dr. Simpson’s Maternity Kit, 1890s

4.  In 1908, eight out of 36 department supervisors at Johnson & Johnson were women.  Women supervised many of the departments that were central to the Company’s business, such as the Aseptic Department (which oversaw the production of sterile surgical products), the Cotton Mill’s Finishing Department, the Sanitary Napkin and Plaster Finishing Departments, the Jar Finishing Department (many of our aseptic products were packaged in jars) and more.

5.  The Company’s tradition of employee volunteerism in the community started with women employees in the Laurel Club (an employee organization) 100 years ago.

6.  In 1908 the Johnson & Johnson Scientific Department had four scientists on staff.  One of them was a college educated female scientist.

7.  In the 1950s, DePuy (which became part of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies in 1998) had a female president, Mrs. Amrette Hoopes.  Here’s an article about her.

8.  We used to have a women’s basketball team!  Here’s a picture of them in 1907:

9.  One of the most successful advertising campaigns in Johnson & Johnson history featured the work of a prominent female artist, Gladys Rockmore Davis.

One of the Gladys Rockmore Davis paintings from one of our ads

10. During World War I, one of the women employees in the Advertising Department served as a chief nurse in the American expeditionary forces Army Nurse Corps in Siberia, becoming Chief Nurse of the evacuation hospital in Vladivistok, Russia. Though she worked in advertising at Johnson & Johnson, her background was in nursing, and she was one of the first to answer the call in 1917 when the American Red Cross put out an appeal for nurses.   Here’s a postcard she sent back to Johnson & Johnson from Siberia.

Here are some photographs of women throughout Johnson & Johnson history:

Women employees in the Aseptic Department in the earliest days of Johnson & Johnson

Some of the women who worked in the surgical suture plant in Australia in 1934

One of the employees at our former Eastern Surgical Dressings Plant in 1970

A Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies sales representative in Malaysia in 1971