Kilmer House

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.

Rare early ad for Belladonna Plasters, from our archives, 1888.

We know Company founder Robert Wood Johnson as the ultimate businessman.  But he also had a hands-on scientific side that started with his training in the early 1860s as a teenaged apprentice in Wood & Tittamer, his maternal relatives’ apothecary in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Johnson first learned to make medicinal plasters.  Johnson went on to spend many hours with his sleeves rolled up, elbow-deep in pails full of ingredients, trying to improve the methods of making one of the 19th century’s most popular health care products — the medicated plaster.  In 1894, when Johnson & Johnson had been in business for eight years, Robert Wood Johnson wrote an article about what he had learned from his long experience.

Wood & Tittamer, where Company founder Robert Wood Johnson got his start in health care as a teenager. 

Before the Johnson brothers’ improvements, the issues with handmade medicated plasters were many.  The ingredients were hard to work with.  The plasters wouldn’t keep for long periods of time, and the methods of making the rubber flexible frequently rendered the medication inactive.  Writing elsewhere, Robert Wood Johnson said:  “‘Probably no other branch of the pharmaceutical art has been the occasion of so much toil, anxiety and failure and discouragement before any measure or success was met.’”  Describing the frustrations of his years of experimenting with plaster making to improve the product, Johnson went on to say, in his very polite fashion, “‘Expressive expletives could not be restrained.’”  [Robert Wood Johnson, The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, Lillian Press, 1999,  p. 13]

Robert Wood Johnson the first

By the time Johnson & Johnson was established, Robert Wood Johnson had solved many of these issues.  He used a different kind of rubber base and found ways to work with the properties of the ingredients, and not against them.  The machinery designed by James Wood Johnson allowed Johnson & Johnson to mass produce these products with improved efficacy, high quality and consistency.  

Some of the machinery designed by James Wood Johnson for the manufacture of medicated plasters.

Belladonna plasters in particular had led to much teeth-gritting frustration in the medical products industry, because the heat used in the manufacturing process at that time tended to render the active ingredient inactive.  The person who finally solved that problem through practical scientific experimentation was Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson.  His improvements made plasters more stable and more effective, and they were incorporated into the 16th edition of the United States Dispensatory and written up in a variety of pharmaceutical journals as a great leap ahead.  With those credentials as an expert, and a range of medicated plasters manufactured by Johnson & Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson wrote his 1894 article.

The article appeared in a Company publication called “Belladonna Illustrated, A Study of Its History, Action and Uses in Medicine” that brought together contributions from leading experts including doctors, scientists and academics.  Johnson’s contribution focused on the making of belladonna plasters, and it was titled (not surprisingly), “Making Belladonna Plasters.”  The article is interesting, both for Johnson’s practical scientific knowledge and his no-nonsense writing style.

Johnson began by recognizing medicated plasters as having a sound basis in science.  Let’s hear directly from Johnson in his own words:

“Plasters are such common articles of merchandise that we are apt to think of them as things that are bought and sold by the pound or yard; but, in the compounding and mixing room, problems arise that call for the same judgment and skill needed in all branches of scientific pharmacy.”  [Robert Wood Johnson, “Making Belladonna Plasters,” from Belladonna Illustrated, Johnson & Johnson, 1894, p. 34]

Then, perhaps influenced by his friend the writer Edward Page Mitchell, Johnson launched into a series of quotations from doctors, pharmacists and patients that give the reader the experience of reading dialogue.  Today, we’d probably call that something like “voice of the customer,” but to Robert Wood Johnson in 1894, it was a foundation of solid scientific evidence to back up the points he was making in his article, and it all focused back on the people who used the products and what their needs were.  In his usual plain speaking style, Johnson summed it up: “The patient will tell you that he does not put on plasters for fun, or as a substitute for clothing; he wants to get well.”  [Robert Wood Johnson, “Making Belladonna Plasters,” from Belladonna Illustrated, Johnson & Johnson, 1894, p. 34]

The article is highly technical and goes into great detail, but it’s easy to read because Johnson used plain language to describe the scientific properties of the ingredients and the technical processes he had perfected.  Robert Wood Johnson had learned the health care business through the 19th century career training path of apprenticeship, and his writing reflected that as well as his personality.  If you read the quotes in this post out loud, you can really get a sense of how Johnson spoke. 

“To make a good belladonna plaster with any kind of base, is not easy.  It was not accomplished in the ‘good old way,’ when belladonna juice or the leaf itself was ‘melted down’…”  [Robert Wood Johnson, “Making Belladonna Plasters,” from Belladonna Illustrated, Johnson & Johnson, 1894, p. 34]

“The National Dispensatory says ‘temperature 120-130 is required.’  In my experience this heat would greatly injure belladonna, would be disastrous, and good belladonna would be cremated in the mass so that it would never reach the spot where it could do any good as a curative.”  [Robert Wood Johnson, “Making Belladonna Plasters,” from Belladonna Illustrated, Johnson & Johnson, 1894, p. 34]

“Everything put into a plaster which is not an active medicinal agent, or has no use in promoting adhesion or absorption, is simply debris that will fill the pores of the skin with so much dirt, and stands in the way of the drugs being absorbed.”  [Robert Wood Johnson, “Making Belladonna Plasters,” from Belladonna Illustrated, Johnson & Johnson, 1894, p. 34]

“After all the study and experiment in putting rubber into every conceivable shape, one cannot with any certainty tell whether a certain piece of rubber will spoil quickly or not. If the plasters keep the rubber is all right; if the plasters spoil the rubber is not all right.”  [Robert Wood Johnson, “Making Belladonna Plasters,” from Belladonna Illustrated, Johnson & Johnson, 1894, p. 35]

And finally, Johnson’s no-nonsense practicality comes across in his description of the skills needed to make a successful belladonna plaster:

“The operation of mixing and spreading on cloth requires care and skill that comes only with thorough training, one must have quick hands, an eye on the thermometer and quick discernment as to when the proper plasticity is reached.  These with accurately adjusted apparatus guided by a good, clear-headed judgment are pre-eminent requisites in the spreading of a belladonna plaster.   [Robert Wood Johnson, “Making Belladonna Plasters,” from Belladonna Illustrated, Johnson & Johnson, 1894, p. 36]

Although the article in our archives that Johnson wrote was only three and a half pages long, it gives us the perfect opportunity to hear the voice of one of our founders, Robert Wood Johnson.

The Origins of our McNeil Business – the Mc Neil Family Pharmacy

Retail pharmacies have been important in Johnson & Johnson history for a number of reasons.  Before the days of supermarkets, they were the places that sold our products to consumers – from medicated plasters to Lister’s Dog Soap to JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder to BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages.  But retail pharmacies are also a big part of our history in another way:  if it hadn’t been for them, Johnson & Johnson – and some of its operating companies – might not be here at all.  Why is that?  Because their founders all got their start as clerks in retail pharmacies, which gave them a lifelong interest in health care.  Company founder Robert Wood Johnson the first and Revra DePuy are two examples.  A third example is the former McNeil Laboratories, which joined the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies 50 years ago this year, and helped establish one of one of the Company’s three business segments.

In the 1950s, the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies was primarily centered around consumer products and hospital products (those included sutures, dressings and dental products).  The Company also had what it called “commercial products” like non-woven fabrics that were sold to be used in industry, and other products such as tapes (duct tape among them!).   In the late 1950s, the Company’s senior management concluded that in order for the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies to continue to grow and evolve with the evolution of health care, it should expand into pharmaceutical medicines…and they started looking for a company they could acquire.  Strangely enough, General Johnson, who was usually so farsighted, initially resisted.  His resistance was due to worry that the culture of Johnson & Johnson – the emphasis on Our Credo and on responsibility to others – could be diluted by acquiring and absorbing another organization.  So the Company’s senior management began to look around for a company that not only made pharmaceutical medicines, but that had a similar value system.

The Company already had a small presence in the pharmaceutical area with the Ortho Research Foundation, starting in the 1930s.  It had led to an affiliate company managed at the time by Philip Hofmann (who would go on to succeed General Johnson as chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson in 1963).  Hofmann and others pointed to the success of the Ortho Research Foundation’s past director, Dr. Philip Levine, who had discovered the human Rh blood factor – a huge breakthrough that would eventually lead to RhoGAM®, the product that, decades later, is still the treatment for hemolytic disease of the newborn.  Finally, General Johnson agreed to go along with an acquisition, provided it was a good fit with the culture and values of Johnson & Johnson.

In 1959, the Company’s management found what they were looking for and acquired McNeil Laboratories Inc., a successful business that had started seven years before Johnson & Johnson was founded.  In 1959 McNeil was still family run company, specializing in medicines for sedation and muscle-relaxants.  Its most famous product would go over the counter just a year later.

Interior, McNeil’s Pharmacy

The McNeil family business dates back to March 17, 1879, when Robert McNeil, a 23 year old recent graduate of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, bought (what else?) a retail drugstore in the Kensington section of Philadelphia for the small fortune of $167.  McNeil’s drugstore came with furnishings, an inventory of medicines and a soda fountain, a popular addition to pharmacies since the 1850s.  (Interestingly enough, soda fountains were originally installed strictly for medicinal purposes, and their original carbonated tonic concoctions – before they morphed into harmless places to get a soft drink — would be considered quite alarming today.)

A bottle from the McNeil family pharmacy, with “McNeil” embossed on the side of the glass

The McNeil drugstore did well, and by the time McNeil’s son, Robert Lincoln McNeil, took over, it had added a small manufacturing laboratory and doctors’ supply business. In 1914 both McNeils – father and son – formed a partnership called the Firm of Robert McNeil.  For eleven years they ran it as both a retail store and a manufacturing operation, but the manufacturing side did so well that in 1925, the McNeils discontinued the retail part.  In 1933, they incorporated their business as McNeil Laboratories, Inc., and in 1955,   Robert Lincoln McNeil retired and his sons took over the business.  Just four years later, the brothers and their historic business would join the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies.

Robert Lincoln McNeil (center) and his son Henry McNeil (left) talk to an architect during construction at Fort Washington, PA

With the 1959 acquisition, the two McNeil brothers joined the Johnson & Johnson Board of Directors:  Robert McNeil:

Robert McNeil

And Henry McNeil:

Henry McNeil

Here’s what the Johnson & Johnson Bulletin said in February, 1959:

“The acquisition of McNeil is recognized as an important step in Johnson & Johnson’s long-term program for the development and marketing of medicinal, surgical, and diagnostic products for the medical profession.  McNeil’s fine management team has built research, manufacturing, and marketing organizations which greatly strengthen and complement the Johnson & Johnson corporate family.”  [Johnson & Johnson Bulletin, February, 1959, p. 7]

Early Examples of McNeil Laboratories’ Most Famous Product

That same year, the Company also acquired Cilag Chemie, a small Swiss pharmaceutical company.  And just two years later in 1961, to further strengthen its presence in this new business area, Johnson & Johnson would acquire a small Belgian firm led by one of the most creative and prolific research scientists of the 20th century: Dr. Paul Janssen.

The precedent of only acquiring companies with value systems compatible with Our Credo still remains in place today.  It’s one of the traditions started by bringing in the McNeil family’s historic business 50 years ago this year.

Click here to watch Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William C. Weldon Ring the NYSE Closing Bell

Johnson & Johnson Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William Weldon rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange this week (on Monday, August 3rd) to commemorate a big upcoming anniversary: our becoming a publicly traded company.  On September 24th, it will be 65 years ago that Johnson & Johnson went from a privately held company to a publicly traded one, with a listing on a famous institution that was started in the 1700s by a bunch of men meeting under a tree in New York City:  the New York Stock Exchange.

Pages 4 and 5 of 1944 Johnson & Johnson Annual Report – our first ever Annual Report

The year of the Johnson & Johnson initial public offering of stock – 1944 — was toward the end of World War II, the year in which the tide of the war had continued to turn, leading to the Allied victory the following year.  It was an election year, with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decisively winning re-election for an unprecedented fourth term against Thomas E. Dewey.   Kidney dialysis and sunscreen were invented that year, gasoline cost an average of 15 cents a gallon, and a loaf of bread was ten cents.  In the U.S., people were still growing victory gardens to help ease shortages in the public food supply due to the war effort, and popular films out that year starred Humphrey Bogart (To Have and To Have Not), Edward G. Robinson (Double Indemnity) and Judy Garland (Meet Me in St. Louis).

JOHNSON’S® Baby Lotion — Introduced in 1944

In 1944, Johnson & Johnson had 31 operating companies (compared with the more than 250 that we have today), with 17 of them outside of the U.S.  We had just launched JOHNSON’S® Baby Lotion, which came in a clear glass bottle.  Earle Dickson, the inventor of BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages, was on our board of directors as vice president in charge of the Hospital Division.  The Company was still involved in wartime production during World War II in 1944, and just two years earlier had invented a waterproof cloth tape that was requested by the military, as part of the products we produced for the war effort:  that tape, believe it or not, was duct tape.  (Yes, the duct tape, which I promise will be the subject of a future post.)

Wartime packaging — cardboard instead of the familiar tin

Oh, and by the way, our iconic BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage tins had temporarily given way to cardboard packaging to conserve metal for the war effort.  In the midst of all of this, Johnson & Johnson went public with an initial stock price of $37.50 per share.

General Robert Wood Johnson, in uniform

General Robert Wood Johnson, who had led Johnson & Johnson since 1932, had served for several months during the war in Washington, D.C. as head of the Smaller War Plants Corporation, and was back at Johnson & Johnson in 1944.  That year, he published But, General Johnson, a book about his experiences in Washington.  (The title referred to the most common phrase he had heard in response to his many ideas during his tenure as head of the SWPC.)  A year earlier, in 1943, Johnson had codified his philosophy about running a business into Our Credo, which still guides Johnson & Johnson today.

Signature of General Robert Wood Johnson

At a December 12, 1943, board of directors meeting, Johnson told the members of the board (back then our directors were all Company employees) that in 1944 Johnson & Johnson would become publicly traded.  But Johnson emphasized that the Company’s management philosophy – Our Credo — would stay exactly the same under public ownership:  our first responsibility would continue to be to patients, consumers and customers, then to employees, then the community and last, to shareholders.

So in 1944, as a publicly traded company, Johnson & Johnson had to issue – for the first time – an annual report.  Here’s the cover of our very first Annual Report.

Compared to today’s full-sized annual reports, the 1944 report was small, measuring just a little less than six by nine inches and, as befits a wartime publication, a little on the plain side.  The report contained a letter to shareholders from Robert Wood Johnson, a brief description of the Company and some of its major affiliate companies, financial information and a list of members of the Board of Directors and officers of the Company.  The publication started with a letter from chairman Robert Wood Johnson, that began “During 1944 securities of Johnson & Johnson were offered to the public for the first time since incorporation in 1887.  This is the first consolidated annual report published by the Company.”   [Johnson & Johnson Annual Report, 1944] The concisely worded letter mentioned new products introduced that year and highlighted the Company’s conservative financial management (which had allowed the Johnson & Johnson to weather economic depressions in 1893, 1907 and 1929).  Finally, Johnson closed with “I express for the Board of Directors and for myself sincere appreciation for the loyalty of the men and women of Johnson & Johnson.  Their performance was the significant factor in the development of the Company in 1944, as in all prior years.”  [Johnson & Johnson Annual Report, 1944]

Our 1944 Annual Report was succinct and spare, as befitting the year in which it was published.  By the following year, the 1945 Annual Report would expand its coverage of Johnson & Johnson, talking about the Company’s business philosophy, highlighting its products, and discussing the year more in depth, features that continue in our Annual Reports today, well over half a century later.

This July marks the third anniversary of the Kilmer House blog.  The first post went up on July 12, 2006 – the first-ever blog post on the first-ever blog for Johnson & Johnson.  And now, three years later, to celebrate that milestone, I thought I’d take you on a behind the scenes tour of some Johnson & Johnson history that’s hidden in plain sight…if you know where to look.  So in honor of three years of Kilmer House, here’s my first video post:

I also want to say a huge thank you to the Kilmer House community – all of you worldwide who read the blog, and everyone who has written in with comments, questions and shared their stories from their own and from Johnson & Johnson history.  I hope you keep reading!

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.

A Johnson & Johnson employee from the New York office who served in World War I

On Veteran’s Day, we remember the men and women who serve their countries, and express our appreciation and gratitude toward them.  On this Veteran’s Day, Kilmer House would like to salute the many employees in the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies throughout our history who have served in the armed forces, starting over 100 years ago with the Spanish American War in 1898.

Two soldiers in the Spanish American War, 1898, from our archives.  The man on the left was an employee in the Plaster Mill. 

Some employee veterans of World War I, from our archives 

Many of our employees served in World War I, and a number of them wrote letters to Fred Kilmer and their colleagues and sent pictures back from the front.  This post has excerpts from some of the letters our employees sent from France back to New Brunswick.  

Seward Johnson 

Seward Johnson, one of the sons of Company founder Robert Wood Johnson the first, served on a submarine chaser in the U.S. Navy during World War I.  Submarine chasers were small, heavily armed boats that were designed to pursue and neutralize the German U-boats, or submarines that caused such heavy losses to shipping during the war.
 

Joyce Kilmer 

The most famous veteran with a connection to Johnson & Johnson was Scientific Director Fred Kilmer’s son, poet Joyce Kilmer – the author of “Trees” and “Rouge Bouquet,” among other works.  Although Joyce wasn’t an employee of Johnson & Johnson, he wrote or contributed to some of the Company’s early publications.  Joyce Kilmer was killed on July 30, 1918, during a scouting mission in the final days of World War I.  He was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government.  If anyone is interested in learning more about Joyce Kilmer, this excellent site by his granddaughter has more information.

Employees standing in front of absorbent cotton products, circa World War I, showing some of the enormous output the Company produced. 

In 1918 Robert Wood Johnson (later known as General Johnson) became the General Superintendent of Manufacturing for Johnson & Johnson, and oversaw the production of the huge quantities of sterile dressings, gauze, and other medical products to treat soldiers fighting in Europe in World War I.  To keep up with demand, Johnson & Johnson was running shifts around the clock to supply the Allied forces, as well as hospitals in the U.S. and in Europe.   When demand exceeded even the Company’s around the clock efforts, a search began for a new source of textiles, which led in 1916 to the acquisition of the Chicopee Manufacturing Company of Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts.  Very quickly, the entire spinning and weaving output of Chicopee was soon on its way to New Brunswick to be made into surgical dressings and other medical supplies.
 

The War Department awarded Johnson & Johnson a special commendation for its outstanding performance during World War I, and the head of the American Food Administration, Herbert Hoover praised the Company for its support of the food conservation campaign that was part of the war effort.
 

War Bonds Rally at Johnson & Johnson, 1940s
 

The Company broke its own production records during World War II, when it again was called on to produce surgical dressings and other medical supplies to help soldiers, and other products for the war effort.  (The Company’s Industrial Tape Corporation even started producing a new special waterproof tape for the war effort.  It was initially called “duck tape”…before its name evolved into the more familiar duct tape!)
 

General Robert Wood Johnson in uniform when he was head of the Smaller War Plants Corporation during WWII
 

Company president Robert Wood Johnson entered the army as a colonel with the Ordnance Department to use his business skills in the procurement of war materials.  He was then appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to head the Smaller War Plants Corporation, and elevated to the rank of brigadier general.  (Johnson served only for several months, but the title of “General” stuck with him for the rest of his life.)
 

Aside from the few employees pictured here from our archives, many employees of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies have been veterans…and many are today.  As everyone celebrates Veterans Day today, Kilmer House salutes the men and women of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies who have served their countries throughout the Company’s history.

In 1908 Johnson & Johnson completed an addition to the “New” Red Cross Cotton Mill.  The mill had been built in 1901 and just a few short years later, it needed to be expanded due to the growth of the surgical dressings, cotton and gauze business and the need for extra manufacturing capacity.   As was its tradition, the Company held a reception and dance for employees to inaugurate the new building…on the evening of Friday, October 2, 1908 from 8:00 pm to midnight. 

Let’s step back to that evening 100 years ago and take a look.

According to Oct. 3, 1908 edition of The New Brunswick Times, the party was “one of the largest and jolliest dances ever held in New Brunswick,” and The Home News estimated that over 2,500 people attended.   The Times went on to mention: “It has been the custom of this firm to have an affair something in the nature of a housewarming in every large addition built to the plant before the machinery is installed.”  (N.B. Times article, “Two Thousand at J. And J. Dance,” Oct. 3, 1908) This was the Company’s way of celebrating its success with employees, and it had a special significance in 1908.  The U.S. had been hit by the Panic of 1907, a financial crisis and recession, but Johnson & Johnson had managed to weather the storm and even continue expanding its plant capacity due to the nature of its products and the prudence of its management.

The Cotton Mill and New Addition, 1907.  The dirt road is George Street.

So on that Saturday night in October of 1908, employees and their guests arrived at the addition to the Cotton Mill, which was located exactly where Johnson Hall stands today.  The new addition brought the Company’s campus to 40 buildings and a half million square feet of manufacturing space.  There was such a large crowd in the Cotton Mill that the dance took place on two floors of the huge addition, with Haywood’s Orchestra providing the music on one floor, and Professor Chas. Mezei’s Hungarian Orchestra playing traditional Hungarian music on the other floor for the enjoyment of the Company’s numerous Hungarian employees. Each attendee received a card marked “Refreshments,” which was redeemed for a brick of Neapolitan ice cream and cake. Robert Wood Johnson and James Wood Johnson attended along with their families, and employees received a dance order booklet and a small commemorative spoon as souvenirs.  (A dance order booklet provided space in which to write the names of everyone you danced with.)

Souvenir Booklet from 1907 Reception

Inside Back Cover of Booklet, Showing Order of Dance Listing

In keeping with the character of the Company, the booklet didn’t just contain space for social information.  It also had a letter to employees from President Robert Wood Johnson, a listing of the Company’s entire executive and supervisory staff (a number of the department supervisors were women, and there was a female scientist in the Scientific Department!), an article on the Company’s history up to 1908, and articles on the Laurel Club and the Company’s Welfare Department (the department that provided medical care and other benefits to employees).  Here are some excerpts from Robert Wood Johnson’s letter: 

Robert Wood Johnson 

“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.  We believe that each and every one of us is entitled to some credit and a certain reward for being factors in benefitting [sic] mankind.  Johnson & Johnson have been educators, teaching the world how to treat wounds according to modern methods and how to save life….Johnson & Johnson do not forget that a great part of their success has been due to the skill and care taken by their employees, you all put forth your best effort loyally and jointly, observing all the rules relating to modern wound dressing so that when the products reach the surgeon or the physician he has felt absolute confidence in them.” 
“You are carrying out every day rules of cleanliness which have always been our watch-word, and we feel proud of having a force who know and realize the necessity of such supreme care, and who realize that the use of the goods which they prepare may mean life or death to those whom they may be applied.” 
“We, therefore take this opportunity of thanking you and to express our appreciation of the good work which you have done not only for Johnson & Johnson but for the world at large.”

The letter shows the camaraderie that Johnson felt for his ever-growing number of employees, and the knowledge that they were all engaged together in an important mission to help people.  Echoes of Johnson’s words from 100 years ago can be seen today in the way we refer to the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies, as well as in our new Company description: 

Caring for the world, one person at a time… inspires and unites the people of Johnson & Johnson. We embrace research and science – bringing innovative ideas, products and services to advance the health and well-being of people. Employees of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies work with partners in health care to touch the lives of over a billion people every day, throughout the world.