Kilmer House

To help everyone cool down in the end-of-summer heat, Kilmer House brings you ten cool things from our archives.  Enjoy!

1. A 1927 price list that belonged to Earle Dickson, inventor of the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage.  The pages inside have handwritten notes by Dickson and, yes, his invention is listed, on page 11.  Here’s the page that was most meaningful to Earle Dickson, with his handwriting.

2. A Zonweiss ad from 1887, the year after Johnson & Johnson was founded.  This one shows figures from Ancient Roman mythology discussing the merits of Zonweiss tooth cream, the Company’s first consumer product.

 3. Perhaps the earliest ad for JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder, from the 1890s, the decade the product was first introduced.

4. A wire mesh splint designed by Revra DePuy, the founder of our operating company DePuy, Inc.  DePuy, Inc., founded in 1895, was the world’s first-ever orthopaedics company.  Before Revra DePuy’s fitted splints, doctors used the staves from barrels, among other things, to splint broken limbs.  This one was designed for an arm.

5. A tin from Seabury & Johnson, Company founder Robert Wood Johnson’s partnership before Johnson & Johnson.

6. Two very old LISTERINE® Antiseptic bottles, circa the very early 1920s.  These bottles are small — only about four inches in height.

7. Fred Kilmer’s analytical balance, which he used in our laboratories starting in 1889.

8. The Johnson & Johnson factory whistle from 1901, when all of the Company’s operations were in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  It’s said that the whistle could be heard for miles in the towns surrounding New Brunswick.

9. The Company’s secretary and head of sales A. R. Lewis (L) and scientific director Fred Kilmer (R) getting creative by posing for a medicated plaster ad over 100 years ago.

10.  And finally, how did Johnson & Johnson employees stay cool before air conditioning was invented?  Fans!  Here’s a picture of some of our, well…biggest fans from earlier years.

Does anyone out there collect Johnson & Johnson vintage memorabilia?  We’ve shared some of the coolest items in our Company archives.  Which one do you think is the coolest?  And what cool things do you have in your collections?  Let me know!

General Robert Wood Johnson

Investor’s Business Daily just did a feature article called “Johnson & Johnson’s Big Shot” – about none other than General Robert Wood Johnson.  The article is drawn from two interviews, one with Larry Foster, the author of Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel, a frequently quoted source on this blog; and one with David Morse, the head of communication for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Larry Foster worked with General Robert Wood Johnson:  he was hired by him to start the Company’s Public Relations department.   Here’s the link to the article:  http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=543441&p=2

Robert Wood Johnson II as a teenager — about the time he started full time work at Johnson & Johnson

The feature article highlights the very different path to success taken by Robert Wood Johnson II.  The son of one of our founders, Johnson could have started at the top.  Instead, he chose to come to work full-time at Johnson & Johnson as a teenager…working side by side on the manufacturing floors with the Hungarian immigrants who at one time made up about 60 percent of our workforce in New Brunswick.  As Robert Wood Johnson worked his way up through the ranks, he developed a very different way of thinking that resulted in our philosophy of decentralized global expansion, and in the writing of Our Credo.

For blog readers who have visited Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters in New Brunswick, the former power house building in which the teenaged Robert Wood Johnson started his first full time job is still here.  Does anyone know which building it is today?

In recognition of the 100th anniversary of the passing of Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson in 1910, this is one of several posts looking at the earliest years of Johnson & Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson as our first president, and the Company’s first senior management transition.

It’s 1887 and Johnson & Johnson has grown in just one year from 14 employees in one building to 125 employees in several buildings.  Our original building from 1886, the four-story former wallpaper factory, is now the plaster mill, filled with machinery designed by founder James Wood Johnson to mass produce medicated plasters.  Now, for the first time, we have an opportunity to see what it looked like inside that building. Let’s take a short walk through.

Artist’s Rendition of the First Johnson & Johnson Building from 1886

So how can we go back to 1887 and see inside our first building?  We can do that because we’re fortunate to have in our archives the second article ever written about Johnson & Johnson.  (In case you’re wondering, the first article was a single paragraph in the March 3rd, 1886 edition of The New Brunswick Times, announcing that the three Johnson brothers had rented a building and would soon start operations.)

The Second Article Written About Johnson & Johnson, from 1887

In April of 1887, a publication called The Detroit Pharmaceutical Era did an article on the manufacture of medicinal plasters (another name for medicated plasters, the popular medical product of the day).  Since the Johnson brothers changed the way in which those products were made and improved their efficacy, the article focused on how Johnson & Johnson manufactured them.

A Medicated Plaster

Medicated, or medicinal plasters delivered medicine directly through the skin.  They were made of rubber infused with a medication – commonly to generate heat or pain relief – and they were sticky on one side.  You peeled off the backing and stuck the plaster, or as big a piece of the plaster as you needed, directly over the part of the body needing the medication, and removed it when you were done. 

The Johnson & Johnson buildings in 1887.  Our first building, the former Janeway and Carpender wallpaper factory, is the building on the left.

Here’s a detailed eyewitness description of Johnson & Johnson in 1887, from the writer at The Detroit Pharmaceutical Era who came here to do the article:

“The factories of the house of Johnson & Johnson stand back from the depot of the Pennsylvania Railroad at New Brunswick, N.J. about 150 feet.  They are large and extensive, including, as they do, three handsome brick buildings and covering an area of 8,00 square feet, or about two acres of land.  In the neighborhood of 35,000 square feet of flooring are used in the manufacture of all the products of the firm…The main building, which is devoted entirely to the manufacture of the rubber plasters, is of brick and is four stories high.  In its basement is a 200-horse power engine which furnishes power for all three of the buildings.  Back of the main edifice is a smaller one, devoted exclusively to the manufacture of mustard plasters, while on its side is still another brick building five stories in height, devoted to the manufacture of the numerous other pharmaceutical preparations turned out by the house.”   [Detroit Pharmaceutical Era, “The Manufacture of Medicinal Plasters, April, 1887] 

The products made in the five story building would have included sterile surgical dressings, sterile sutures, and adhesive tapes.   If anyone’s wondering what that basement engine room might have looked like, it probably looked a lot like this:

From our archives, photo showing the Engine Room, Old Mill, from 1894.

Here’s an employee in the drying room in our first building, hanging the flattened sheets of rubber that would be used to make medicinal plasters. 

According to the article, the drying room was directly over the boiler room, and the temperature of the drying room was never allowed to fall below 100 degrees.  Despite the heat, the drying process took a full week.  Also interesting is the fact that the employees in the illustrations are depicted wearing hats.  None of our plaster mill employees from the 1800s photographed in our archives are wearing hats in the photos; perhaps the illustrator (or the employees) felt that a hat would be more formal and proper for the important occasion of being depicted in an illustration for an article in 1887.  

Here’s an illustration of the plaster mixing and spreading room in our original building.  The machinery was designed by Company founder James Wood Johnson, who was a skilled and creative engineer.  His machinery improved the methods of mass producing medicated plasters. 

Plaster Mixing and Spreading Room, 1887, from the original Johnson & Johnson building. 

Here’s another corner of our first building, with an automatic perforating machine, for the manufacture of porous plasters — like the Belladonna Plaster shown in this post.  (Porous plasters got their name from the rows of small round holes, or perforations, in them.)  Interestingly enough, James Wood Johnson didn’t invent this complex machine.  So who did?  Here’s what The Detroit Pharmaceutical Era said:  “The machine is a complicated one that works automatically, and is the invention of Mr. R. W. Johnson.” 

The Automatic Perforating Machine, in our original building

The article described the manufacturing process in detail, and the writer was clearly impressed by the number and variety of products the new company manufactured, because he took an entire paragraph to list them.  The writer wrapped up with an overall appreciation of the entire medicated plaster industry.

“In the entire output of the country fully 160,000 pounds or 80 tons of rubber is used yearly; and when it is considered how small the quantity of rubber material necessary for a single plaster of almost infinitesimal thickness, the full extent of the enormous number made yearly and the magnitude of the industry can be appreciated.”  [Detroit Pharmaceutical Era, “The Manufacture of Medicinal Plasters, April, 1887] 

Readers of Kilmer House can certainly appreciate the opportunity to see inside our first-ever 1886 building in 1887, just a year after Johnson & Johnson started, and the glimpse of some of our early innovation in improving one of the most popular health care products of almost 125 years ago.

Kilmer House salutes Richard B. Sellars, retired Johnson & Johnson Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (he served from 1973-1976), who passed away this week at age 94. Though only chairman for three years, Mr. Sellars had a 40-year career with the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies, and he had an impact that continues to be felt today.  Two of the things we owe to him are successfully steering Johnson & Johnson through the tough economic times of the early 1970s, and committing the Company to stay in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where it was founded in 1886.  

Richard B. Sellars during his tenure as Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson

Richard Sellars joined Johnson & Johnson 71 years ago, at the tail end of the Great Depression in 1939, as a junior salesman for the newly formed Ortho Pharmaceutical Division and 40 years later, he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Company.  From 1941 to 1945, Sellars was president and general manager of the Canadian Ortho affiliate company, after which he helped establish the manufacturing and sales divisions for Ortho in England and Scandinavia.  In 1949 he joined Ethicon, Inc., which had just been formed out of the Company’s historic suture business that dated back to 1887; remarkably, he was chairman of the boards of both of those operating companies at the same time.  In 1950, he was elected to the Johnson & Johnson Board of Directors (General Johnson was Chairman), and he became a member of the Executive Committee in 1957.  In 1970 he was named president of Johnson & Johnson International, the organization that oversaw the Company’s international affiliates at that time.

Mr. Sellars was a member of management when General Robert Wood Johnson wrote Our Credo in 1943, and he was a strong believer in Johnson’s ideas about the social responsibilities of business as outlined in that document, especially as they related to the Company’s responsibilities to the community.   

Richard Sellars talks with then-National Urban League executive director Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. at the 1973 National Urban League Conference

When Philip Hofmann became Chairman in 1963 – succeeding General Robert Wood Johnson – Mr. Sellars was named President and Chairman of the Executive Committee.  When Philip Hofmann retired in 1973, Richard Sellars succeeded him as Chairman.

Mr. Sellars in 1962

In the decades following World War II, New Brunswick – the Company’s home since 1886 – had suffered a visible economic decline.  Discussions had begun among members of the Company’s management about relocating the Johnson & Johnson corporate headquarters outside of the city.  Mr. Sellars, citing the third paragraph of Our Credo, which talks about responsibility to the community, guided our board of directors to make the decision to remain in New Brunswick, build a brand new world headquarters building here, and help revitalize the city. 

Richard Sellars (left), Former New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne (center) and former Johnson & Johnson Chairman and CEO James E. Burke (right) inspect a model of the Company’s proposed World Headquarters at a 1978 press conference announcing its construction. 

Here’s what Richard Sellars said about that decision, as quoted in Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel:

“‘I looked at the Credo’s commitment to the communities where we work and live…and I reminded myself of General Johnson’s deep sense of loyalty to New Brunswick, his birthplace.  Those two factors influenced the decision to remain in New Brunswick, but I also knew that we would have to work to revitalize the city to make it worth staying here.’”  [Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, Lillian Press, 1999, p. 614]

Among his other activities after he retired, Mr. Sellars led the revitalization effort for ten years, putting together local business, university, hospital and civic leaders to form New Brunswick Tomorrow, the organization that led and continues to be a leader in the revitalization.  This partnership between all of the various public and private groups in New Brunswick initiated by Richard Sellars came to be held up as a national model for successful revitalization in other cities.  The centerpiece of the effort was a new world headquarters for Johnson & Johnson designed by the internationally renowned architectural firm of I. M. Pei. 

Mr. Sellars at the 1976 Johnson & Johnson Annual Meeting, greeting a shareholder

Because of Mr. Sellars’ foresight, Johnson & Johnson employees in New Brunswick can still literally walk in the footsteps of their colleagues from 1886, and Johnson & Johnson remains an integral part of the city in which it was founded by three brothers over a century ago.

In recognition of the 100th anniversary of the passing of Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson in 1910, this is one of several posts looking at the earliest years of Johnson & Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson as our first president, and the Company’s first senior management transition.

Illustration of Johnson & Johnson from an April, 1887 article in the Detroit Pharmaceutical Era, from our archives.  Our first building is on the left.

Johnson & Johnson opened its doors in 1886 with fourteen employees.  By 1887, that number had grown to 125, and the Company had expanded from the original four-story former wallpaper factory building into several surrounding buildings, overseen by James Wood Johnson, who was in charge of manufacturing.  We also had a sales office managed by Edward Mead Johnson in downtown Manhattan. (It was at 32 Cedar Street, in case anyone’s curious.) 

Robert Wood Johnson

Company founder Robert Wood Johnson initially spent a lot of his time in the New York office, notifying his many friends and acquaintances in the medical products field that he had joined Johnson & Johnson, and helping get the new business off the ground.  In 1887, Robert began spending more and more time in New Brunswick.  The original fourteen employees knew him from Seabury & Johnson, but the newer employees, used to the quieter and more laid back style of James Wood Johnson, were initially in awe of Robert Wood Johnson, who created a flurry of energy and activity wherever he went.  Their first impression of R.W. – as he was known – was that he was authoritative, opinionated and had a quick temper, but once they got to know him, they liked what they saw.  Johnson had the ability to rally and inspire his employees and get them excited about the work they were engaged in – making products that would help save patients’ lives.  “’He injects his enthusiasm, his grit and his faith into everyone else, and when ‘R.W.’ says ‘It’s a go!’ we push forward with all of our strength,’” said Fred Kilmer, who ended up so inspired by Johnson that he sold his business and came to work for the Company.  [Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, Lillian Press, 1999 p. 69] 

One of the Company’s early benefits:  subsidized employee housing on Morell Street in New Brunswick

Johnson enacted a wide range of benefits for employees that made them fiercely loyal to the new company.  When R.W. wasn’t at Johnson & Johnson, he was walking downtown to talk to the local merchants about business.  He also stopped into the New Brunswick pharmacies to make sure they carried Johnson & Johnson products.  One of those pharmacies was Fred Kilmer’s Opera House Pharmacy, right down the street from Johnson & Johnson, and he and Kilmer struck up a friendship that led to Kilmer joining Johnson & Johnson as our scientific director in 1889. 

Fred Kilmer’s Opera House Pharmacy

Kilmer was a gifted writer, and he left some vivid eyewitness descriptions of his friend and employer.  Here’s one of Kilmer’s descriptions of Company founder Robert Wood Johnson that paints a picture of what Johnson was like:  Kilmer described Johnson as tall and stout, with dark hair and eyes, and a forceful, outgoing personality.  “‘If you see him you will always remember a peculiar roll of the head which accompanies his laughter and his arguments.  It is performed by dropping the chin, and ascribing there a small circle, of which the spine is the center.  It is a family roll.  He has it and all of his brothers have it…If you get into an argument with him, he will soon utter some dogmatic statement with a determined air and branch off into something else, as if he had settled the subject.  While he is undecided he is willing to listen, but when his course is once settled, I would not care for the job of turning him in another direction.’”  [Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, Lillian Press, 1999, p. 69] 

Johnson & Johnson office in 1895, with R. W. Johnson in the window looking out at the main office.

Robert Wood Johnson involved himself in every facet of the new business.  He opened the Company’s mail every morning.  He would gather a few of his managers in a room, and when the sacks of mail were brought in, they opened all of it, sorted it and responded personally to customer orders, inquiries and suggestions.  Johnson had a very good memory, and could rattle off detailed up to the minute sales figures.  He could tell you which products sold in which markets and how much they sold, how much inventory the Company had and how much could be produced and shipped in any time period, and he could recite a wide variety of economic information about the various countries in which we sold our products.   

Another facet of the business Johnson involved himself in was advertising.  Johnson & Johnson worked with a young advertiser who had bought a small agency for $500 and renamed it after himself:  J. Walter Thompson.  He and Robert Wood Johnson had been friends for several years, and Thompson personally handled the Johnson & Johnson account.  Johnson didn’t hesitate to write to Thompson with minutely detailed constructive suggestions about how to improve his ads.  (A trait his son, the future General Robert Wood Johnson, would inherit.)  Here’s an example:  “‘I return the sketch and hardly see how you can make an advertisement out of it.  It needs to have a very black background in order to throw out the white letters.’”  [Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, Lillian Press, 1999 p. 51]  (If anyone’s interested, here’s an ad campaign that Thompson worked on for us in 1910.)

Grey Terrace, Robert Wood Johnson’s New Brunswick, New Jersey House

As Kilmer House readers may know, Robert Wood Johnson lived in a big house on the corner of Hamilton Street and Easton Avenue in New Brunswick.  Every afternoon, he walked home to have lunch with his wife and three young children, relaxed for a bit in his library, and then he walked back to Johnson & Johnson to resume his business day.

The site of Grey Terrace today — a Rutgers University parking lot.  Although you can’t have lunch with Robert Wood Johnson the first, you CAN buy lunch from the Rutgers University food trucks that park on the site of Johnson’s former house.  The stone wall and short wrought iron fence that surrounded the house and property are all that remain.

One hundred years later, there are still traces of Company founder Robert Wood Johnson here in the traditions that he started:  disaster relief, support for our employees who serve in the military, and a wide range of employee benefits, not to mention three out of the four pillars of the Company’s operating model:  our broad base in human health (if there was a need in society for particular products to save lives or help people, Johnson saw to it that we developed or made those products), management for the long term and the Company’s value system that would see its full expression in Our Credo, written in 1943 by Johnson’s son.

Here are some quotes from Robert Wood Johnson the first:

“The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his courage.”

“Hire men, buy machinery and keep the wheels moving and everybody busy.”  

“We are all fortunate, in that we are engaged in manufacturing products to be used throughout the world for the relief of pain and suffering.”

And, of course, when he liked an idea and wanted to move forward with it: “It’s a go!”

A Design Classic!

1.  What do BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages have in common with the @ symbol on your computer keyboard?  They’re both part of the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Here’s the link to the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage entry on the MOMA design collection website.  (By the way, because the product is in the collection of an art museum, Earle Dickson, the inventor of BAND-AID®, is listed as the artist on the site!)

2.  There was a fourth Johnson in the early days of Johnson & Johnson!  William Johnson, a relative of Company founders Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson, was listed as being in charge of the Company’s facilities in Highland Park, New Jersey – right across the river from New Brunswick.  Here’s a photo from our archives of one of the Highland Park buildings he managed:

The Old Suspensory Mill in Highland Park, New Jersey

3.  Decades ago, we built a plant in Texas that was completely underground.  Here’s a photo.

Strange But True:  We Have an Underground Plant

4.  Two very popular consumer products from the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies started out as surgical products.  Can you name them?  LISTERINE® Antiseptic and the K-Y® Brand of products.  LISTERINE® was first formulated in 1879 as a surgical antiseptic, and the K-Y® Brand — originally including an analgesic (K-Y® Analgesic) and a surgical lubricant (K-Y® Lubricating Jelly).  What else do they have in common?  They both joined the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies as part of an acquisition:  LISTERINE® was part of the acquisition of Pfizer Consumer Healthcare in 2006, and K-Y® was part of our acquisition of a small company called Van Horn & Sawtell in 1917.  Van Horn & Sawtell made sutures and other surgical products.

Early LISTERINE® Bottles and K-Y® Analgesic

5.  We once had a building in New Brunswick that had stained glass windows representing the different departments in Johnson & Johnson.  The windows were created especially for the Company, and each window pictured a different employee selected to represent his or her department.

6.  Johnson & Johnson has something in common with the Empire State Building and the Louvre. And that would be…architects.  In the 1930s, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the architectural firm that had just finished building the world’s tallest building when it was completed in 1934 – the Empire State Building, was hired to build the one-story Personal Products Company plant in Central New Jersey.   So what about the Louvre?  I.M. Pei, the architect who built the modern glass and steel entrance to the Louvre, also designed and built our World Headquarters in New Brunswick, and the headquarters of our Consumer operating company, also in New Jersey.

Charles Heber Clark:  Board Member and Humorist

7.  In the early days of Johnson & Johnson, a member of our Board of Directors was ranked alongside Mark Twain as a writer and humorist, and he even may have inspired Twain to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.   That Board member was Charles Heber Clark, who wrote under the pen name Max Adeler.

Joyce Kilmer: Poet, Author, Soldier…and writer for Johnson & Johnson

8.   And while we’re on the topic of writers, Joyce Kilmer, the famed World War I poet and son of Company scientific director Fred Kilmer, wrote articles for some early Johnson & Johnson publications.  It would have been hard for him to refuse…his father was the editor!

Dr. Grosvenor’s Bellcapsic Plaster:  if the package looks like a cigar box, that’s because it was originally a cigar box!

9.  The Johnson brothers were very resourceful when it came to packaging the Company’s early products.  In our early days, Johnson & Johnson bought cigar boxes from the local cigar box manufacturer in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to use as packaging for some of our medicated plasters.

And if observant blog readers have noticed that these jars look like fruit jars, they would be absolutely correct!  There was also a fruit jar manufacturer in New Brunswick, and we bought jars from them to package some of our sterile dressings.  Why?  Because the jars could be hermetically sealed to keep the dressings sterile.  Besides reinventing existing packaging over 100 years ago, we also were one of the very first to use a strange new packaging innovation from another local manufacturer that’s now a standard — collapsible tubes.  Here’s JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap in a collapsible tube.

It’s getting towards the end of April –  time for the Johnson & Johnson Annual Meeting of Shareholders.  Since we went public in 1944, you might be forgiven for thinking that our Annual Meetings started on a spring Thursday at the end of April 66 years ago — but they didn’t.  In fact, we’ve had Annual Meetings since 1888, they used to be in the winter, and the first one was held on a Saturday.  By special request, I’m reposting a post from last year: read on to find out how much you REALLY know about our Annual Meeting.  

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 (L), James Wood Johnson (Center), Edward Mead Johnson (R)

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 perform the thankless task of 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 (at right) next to the clock.

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 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 our current meetings, which report on the state and the progress of the Company 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 122 years ago. 

[Many thanks to 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 digging through his memories of past Annual Meetings.]

One of Our Early Employee Volunteers

Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies employees all over the world have a long tradition of volunteering in the community.  It reflects their feelings of responsibility to the communities in which they live and work, and it forms the basis of the third paragraph of Our Credo.  One thing that very few people know is that our tradition of employees volunteering in the community goes back over 100 years…and our earliest records show that it was started by women employees.  So, how did it start?

Another Early Employee Volunteer

Early Johnson & Johnson Volunteers in the Community
The earliest records we have of employee volunteers are from the Laurel Club, an organization of women employees that was started in February of 1907.  The Laurel Club Charter stated:  “The object of the club is to create a center where all may find opportunities of enjoyment and education.”  [Laurel Club Charter, from our archives, 2/14/1907]  From the beginning, volunteering and philanthropy were mentioned.  Nellie R., the Laurel Club president, noted that fundraising in the first year raised money to buy a bed for the General Hospital in New Brunswick, and that proceeds raised from a variety of club activities also paid for a holiday party and gifts for the 100 children at St. Mary’s Orphanage and the Industrial Homes in New Brunswick. 

Besides toys, the Laurel Club volunteers also bought the children hats, mittens, sweaters and other warm clothing.  Nellie R. noted that “All bills for this affair are paid and a balance of $23.00 invested in the J. & J. Savings Bank, to start another of the same nature or perform any act of kindness the club members may deem advisable.”   [Laurel Club Charter, from our archives, 2/14/1907]

The Laurel Club Building – on the corner of Hamilton and Nielson Streets in New Brunswick  – site of volunteer well baby clinics.

Well baby clinics were another early volunteering effort from the Laurel Club members.  The clinics were held for New Brunswick mothers every Thursday from 4:30 to 6:30 pm, and the idea was to keep babies well in a population that included many recent immigrants who may not have had access to regular medical care.  The Thursday clinics had a doctor and a nurse on staff.  The babies were weighed and measured every week, and the doctor advised the mothers about feeding, clothing and more.   It was stressed in the July 8, 1919 club correspondence that “NONE except the DOCTOR will be permitted to give medical advise [sic].”  [Laurel Club correspondence, July 8, 1919].  While the doctor advised the women who brought their babies to the clinic, Laurel Club members sat and talked with the mothers and kept the babies amused while they waited to see the doctor.  Viahnett S., the Laurel Club manager in 1919 wrote:  “…to save even one tiny baby will be a splendid reward for the summer work.”  [Laurel Club correspondence, July 8, 1919]. 

Laurel Club Members with wounded soldiers in rehabilitation, 1919

In 1919, after World War I had ended, women employees in the Laurel Club volunteered their time to help wounded soldiers who were being rehabilitated at the U.S. Hospital in Colonia, New Jersey.   Club members brought a number of the soldiers who were able to travel to New Brunswick, took them to a vaudeville show and a huge dinner at the Laurel Club.  (If anyone’s interested, they had a turkey dinner with mince pie and ice cream.)   THE RED CROSS MESSENGER noted that it would be the first of many outings to cheer up the soldiers during their extended stay at the hospital.  During the war, Laurel Club volunteers, combined with the Company’s male employee Glee Club (a singing group), had entertained the soldiers stationed at Camp Raritan with singing and dancing.

Member of the Laurel Club, Early 1900s

Employee Volunteers inside Johnson & Johnson
Employees also volunteered to help their fellow employees in the areas of health and safety.  One hundred years ago, Johnson & Johnson had volunteer first aid squads and fire brigades made up of trained employee volunteers – both men and women.  (Since Johnson & Johnson pioneered the first-ever First Aid Kits and First Aid Manuals, it was a given that the Company would train its own employees in first aid techniques.) 

Fred Kilmer, employee volunteer

Even scientific director Fred Kilmer volunteered, using his expertise in science and public health to teach classes for employees on health, hygiene and other topics.  Kilmer’s classes on hygiene focused on contagious diseases and the means of combating them.  In the days before antibiotics and many vaccines, that was crucial knowledge.  The class even had a written exam that participants had to pass. 

Fred Kilmer’s written exam: you had to study if you took his volunteer classes

Some of the topics covered were germs, disinfection, isolation and antiseptics, as well as the role of house cleaning, fresh air and sunshine in preventing the spread of disease.   Employees had to answer an essay question on how they would prevent contagious disease in their homes (they could choose from scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles or typhoid).  They had to name at least two disinfectants made by Johnson & Johnson (in those days, the Company made a wide variety of public health products), distinguish insect-borne diseases from those spread by animals, and discuss how frequently a person should be vaccinated to guard against smallpox.  The exam was very serious business, as was the class.

Close up of bottom of the Laurel Club hygiene class exam, with handwritten comment from Robert Wood Johnson 

Volunteerism was encouraged by the Company at the highest levels.  Company founder Robert Wood Johnson encouraged his children to give back to the community, including taking flowers to patients in New Brunswick hospitals, and co-founder James Wood Johnson’s family members helped employees make and roll bandages to help wounded soldiers during World War I. 

Another way employees volunteered was through military service and in my next post, I’ll talk about how that started, and led to a tradition that we still have today.

Here’s another special behind the scenes video tour of some lesser known items from Johnson & Johnson history.  If you’ve ever wondered where the last loading dock for horse drawn wagons at Johnson & Johnson is located, which unusual 1960s fashion was made by one of our operating companies, why we once made doll clothing, and how we got from medicated plasters to JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder, you’ll know the answers to all of those questions after you watch this post.   You’ll also be able to see — for the first time — letters from two of our founders written in 1887, just a year after the Company was founded.  Enjoy!

Today we take new technologies like high-tech videoconferencing, instant messaging, Twitter and video chats for granted.  But that wasn’t always the case.  Ninety-three years ago (on May 29th, 1916, to be exact), Johnson & Johnson took part in a demonstration of the latest cutting-edge technology:  the opening of the first transcontinental telephone line opened between New Brunswick, New Jersey and San Francisco, California.  The demonstration was such a big deal that it was held at a special Transcontinental Dinner at one of the leading hotels in New Brunswick, New Jersey. 

The Hotel Klein, Courtesy of Ken Lew’s online postcard collection

The demonstration of the new American Telephone and Telegraph Co. transcontinental line was organized by the New Brunswick Board of Trade, with the cooperation of Johnson & Johnson.  Since it was one of New Brunswick’s leading industries, and it had sales offices in San Francisco, Johnson & Johnson was chosen to participate in the event, while leading citizens “listened in” to the conversations, as Scientific Director Fred Kilmer put it, using a term so new that it was in quotation marks.  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. IX, No. 1, September, 1916, p. 25]

James Wood Johnson was on the New Brunswick side of the call.

Among those representing the Company were President James Wood Johnson, and — in his first public appearance representing Johnson & Johnson — Robert Wood Johnson, who was 23 years old and had become a department head the previous year. 

Robert Wood Johnson was also on the call.

There were 200 attendees, including New Brunswick mayor (and Robert’s close friend) Edward F. Farrington, and Rutgers president William Demarest – who had attended the Rutgers Grammar School (Now Rutgers Prep) as a child, graduated from Rutgers College as a student, and was now its president.

The dining room in the Hotel Klein, courtesy of Ken Lew’s online postcard collection

The tables at the Hotel Klein were outfitted with individual telephone receivers for each of the guests.  Attendees listened to local dignitaries and sat through a talk on “preparedness” by a leading speaker of the day.  Shortly after 9:00 p.m. New Brunswick time, when the speeches were concluded, the attendees picked up their receivers and put them to their ears.  There was a roll call of wire chiefs from Pittsburgh to Chicago to Omaha to Denver to Salt Lake City and on until the connection finally reached San Francisco at 6:14 pm. 

A Candlestick Telephone  – the kind of phone that would have been used at the dinner

The new transcontinental connection was crystal clear.  Fred Kilmer was amazed that the participants didn’t have to shout into the telephones to be heard all the way across the country:

“Those who talked over the telephone did not raise their voices above the usual conversational pitch, and the replies came back from across the continent clear and instantaneous.  There was no more effort, delay or indistinctness than in talking across a table.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. IX, No. 1, September, 1916, p. 25]

For the next hour, greetings were exchanged between the two cities.  Robert Wood Johnson had been chosen as one of the greeters, and he spoke with the Company’s San Francisco sales agent H. D. Dietrich, of Waldron & Dietrich fame.  Unlike the New Brunswick gathering, which was made up only of men, Mrs. Waldron and Mrs. Dietrich attended on the San Francisco side.

H. D. Dietrich, of Waldron & Dietrich, was on the San Francisco side of the call

The attendees in New Brunswick marveled at the new technological achievement.  Here’s what Fred Kilmer said:

“When Mr. James W. Johnson, president of Johnson & Johnson, at the New Brunswick end of the line, talked with Mr. H. D. Dietrich, at the San Francisco end, the most blasé of business men at the tables felt something akin to uncanniness at the thought that his voice had gone across thirteen states, shot over prairies and through forests, hurtled through cities, climbed the Rockies, skimmed across the desert and reached the Pacific coast, and the answer had come back in an eye-wink.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. IX, No. 1, September, 1916, p. 25]

After the greetings were over, the attendees in San Francisco sent the sound of the Pacific Ocean eastward, from a transmitter placed on Seal Rocks.  New Brunswick, having no natural water resource that was loud enough to be heard easily over a transcontinental phone line, did the next best thing and responded by singing “On the Banks of the Old Raritan.”  (Rutgers alumni, of course, STILL know that song by heart…but did you know it originally had five verses, not two?) 

A Victrola 

San Francisco followed that by transmitting the sound of a Victrola playing “Little Grey Home in the West” and, after taking that in, the dinner guests in New Brunswick finished the evening by enthusiastically singing the following:

“Good Night, Frisco!
Farewell, Frisco!
So long, Frisco!
We’re going to leave you now.
We’ll annex you by and by,
Do not sigh!  Don’t you cry!
We’ll annex you by and by,
Although we leave you now.”

With that, the Transcontinental banquet attendees on both coasts, New Brunswick and San Francisco, signed off and hung up their telephones.  Interestingly enough, transcontinental dinners seemed to be a bit of a mini-trend in 1916, with MIT and the National Geographic Society hosting them as well.  The MIT dinner guests included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone) and airplane inventor Orville Wright. (The MIT gathering was not necessarily the most academic or high-minded of the transcontinental dinners: they sang a song about drinking beer as their sign-off.)   Here’s a partial transcript of the National Geographic Society’s 1916 Transcontinental Dinner, in case anyone is curious as to exactly how these things went.

Johnson & Johnson Circa 1916 — Now Just a Transcontinental Telephone Call Away

So, why was this such a big deal for Johnson & Johnson?  Because the New Brunswick, New Jersey office was now within voice distance of the Company’s San Francisco office – the U.S. office that was the furthest away.  This meant that all of the branch offices of Johnson & Johnson were now in voice contact with the home office.  That gave Johnson & Johnson the ability respond more quickly to customer requests and questions, it put the sales offices and sales agents in closer and more immediate touch with New Brunswick, and made it possible for the Company to get its products where they were most needed far more rapidly.  Before the transcontinental line was completed, communication was either by letter (which was slow) or by telegraph – which had to be brief and not very detailed.  Just ten years earlier, after the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, Waldron & Deitrich, the Company’s west coast sales agents, had received special permission to telegraph an urgent appeal for medical supplies from San Francisco to Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick; just a short ten years later, through the marvels of modern technology, Waldron & Dietrich and New Brunswick were now in speaking distance.