Kilmer House

One of the most frequent questions generated by a recent post (10 Things You Didn’t Know About J&J) is “Did Johnson & Johnson REALLY have a swimming pool for employees?”  And the answer is:  yes, we did, in the Nineteen-teens.  (No, we don’t still have the pool.  That’s the next most frequently asked question.)

Here’s a picture of the pool:

Swimming Pool for Employees in the Cotton Mill, 1913.

It was located in the Cotton Mill, and had separate hours for male and female employees.  (This was the Nineteen-teens, you know.)  In addition, there were showers and baths with hot and cold water and Synol Soap, which was an antibacterial soap that the Company made.   The Laurel Club, an organization for the Company’s female employees, conducted swimming classes there.  After learning to swim, Laurel Club members could then use the pool whenever they wanted.

So why on earth would the Company — almost a hundred years ago — put in a swimming pool for its employees?  Back then, working conditions at many companies left much to be desired, with long hours, unsafe working conditions, and few if any benefits.  

Unlike most employers, Johnson & Johnson provided a number of benefits for its employees, including meals, a medical department with doctors and nurses, a fund to help employees in medical or financial emergencies, educational classes, some company subsidized housing, social clubs and more.  In 1906 this had been formalized and expanded by the creation of the Employee Welfare Department.

Recreation Room and Gymnasium in The Laurel Club building, before 1912.

As part of these benefits, the Company provided indoor facilities and exercise classes to help keep employees physically healthier.  Employees formed teams – including a women’s basketball team, a men’s baseball team, and a hiking club.  In the days before air conditioning, summers in New Jersey could be uncomfortably hot and humid.  So the swimming pool was a way for employees to cool off as well as get some exercise.

The Company’s founders and management believed that since employees were engaged in an important mission — making the first sterile surgical dressings, sterile sutures and more, they should be treated well so that they could focus their energy on making products that helped save lives and improve public health.

By the way, if anyone’s interested in what kinds of bathing suits employees would have worn in the Nineteen-teens, this site and this site have pictures.

Two posts ago, I wrote about how the very first seeds of our disaster relief program can be traced back to 1898. My last post talked about how this philosophy — of providing products when a need arose — led Johnson & Johnson to donate products and aid to help the survivors of the deadly Galveston hurricane in 1900. In 1906, another natural disaster struck, and Johnson & Johnson responded again. This response marked the official start of the Company’s disaster relief program…one of the oldest corporate disaster relief programs in existence.

Panoramic photo showing Johnson & Johnson and railroad bridge in New Brunswick. The Johnson & Johnson buildings are those closest to the bridge. This proximity helped the Company rush products to San Francisco.

In 1906, six years after the Galveston Hurricane and 20 years after its founding, Johnson & Johnson was doing well. Business was expanding and so was the Company. From its location in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Johnson & Johnson sold products across the U.S. and overseas through a combination of “travelers” (salespeople, as they were called back then) and local sales agents. In San Francisco, this was handled by the Company’s Pacific Coast sales agents, a firm called Waldron & Dietrich at 144 Second Street in San Francisco.

Bookplate from Waldron & Dietrich, from our archives, circa 1914. The address reflects their new location after the San Francisco Earthquake.

At 5:13 in the morning of April 18th, 1906, when most residents of San Francisco were still asleep or just waking up, the city was struck by an enormous earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale. The earthquake devastated the city, leveling large portions of the downtown, destroying homes and businesses and rupturing gas lines, which caused massive fires that burned for days.

Collapsed houses in San Francisco after the earthquake, 1906. Picture courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration by way of About.com.

San Francisco City Hall after the earthquake. Picture courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration by way of About.com.

Hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless, and many needed medical attention that the overwhelmed city was struggling to provide. Dazed survivors wandered in the streets or quickly gathered possessions as they fled from the advancing fires. Here’s a good account from the April 18, 1906 edition of The New York Times. With the city’s water mains broken, firemen were hard-pressed to fight the huge fires. Buildings in the path of the fire were dynamited in the hope of creating firebreaks, and this added to the city’s devastation. If anyone’s interested, eyewitness descriptions of the earthquake, fleeing the fires and recovery efforts can be found at the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco.

Fires at Market Street between Third and Fourth Streets. Picture courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, by way of About.com.

By 10:00 am, the raging fires destroyed what remained of the Company’s warehouse and the offices of the Johnson & Johnson sales agents in San Francisco. Their stores of product gone, Waldron & Dietrich received special permission from the Red Cross to telegraph an urgent appeal across the country to Johnson & Johnson for emergency medical supplies. The Company mobilized its employees and, within hours, rail cars filled with Johnson & Johnson products were on their way from New Brunswick to San Francisco, among them gauze, sutures, bandages and more. Later, when the city took stock of the earthquake and its aftermath, it was found that Johnson & Johnson donated the largest amount of medical supplies sent to San Francisco after the disaster.

Some of the Company’s early medical products

But sending medical supplies wasn’t all the Company did. Here’s what Fred Kilmer said about the complete relief effort:

“Johnson & Johnson sent a cash contribution of one thousand dollars to the San Francisco sufferers; at enormous expense they sent by express, within thirty hours, a supply of goods for emergency use in the field. To all druggists and hospitals who had suffered by the earthquake they extended their sympathy in a substantial manner – all accounts under one hundred dollars were receipted in full, larger accounts were adjusted by extension of time, new stocks were supplied with which to commence business…” [RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. V, No. 8, January, 1913, p. 228]

Since then, Johnson & Johnson has provided products and aid to help the victims of natural and man-made disasters all over the world. In 2006, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake, Johnson & Johnson made a large contribution to the San Francisco Fire Department’s Neighborhood Emergency Response Training Program (NERT for short!), donated a disaster relief module to the city for use in a future emergency, and made a donation to the San Francisco Boys and Girls Clubs. This was in recognition of the Company’s historic tie to the city it helped in 1906.

My last post traced the very first seeds of our disaster relief program to the production of dressings to help wounded soldiers in 1898.  Even though the costs of making these dressings turned out to exceed the price received for them, Johnson & Johnson supplied them because they were urgently needed to treat battlefield injuries.  Two years later, Johnson & Johnson went a step further and donated products because of another immediate need…this time due to a natural disaster.

Aftermath of the Great Hurricane of 1900 in Galveston.  Photograph courtesy of The 1900 Storm, Galveston Island, Texas (www.1900storm.com), Galveston Newspapers Inc.

The earliest recorded incidence of Johnson & Johnson providing disaster relief was in the aftermath of the huge hurricane that devastated Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900.  Galveston was a prosperous port and one of the wealthiest cities in the United States when it was destroyed by what would be classified today as a Category 4 hurricane.  The city was built on an island, it was barely above sea level and it had no seawalls or other protections.  The Weather Bureau existed back then and it did issue warnings.  But without modern ways of measuring the storm, no one realized how severe the situation would be.  As a result, the citizens of Galveston were unprepared for the magnitude of the hurricane when it changed course and hit the city. 

An example of the storm’s destruction in Galveston.  Photograph courtesy of The 1900 Storm, Galveston Island, Texas (www.1900storm.com), Galveston Newspapers Inc.

Besides the destruction from the rain, heavy winds and flooding, a wall of debris two stories high was forced through Galveston by the storm surge, destroying everything in its path.  Twenty percent of Galveston’s population (it’s estimated between 8,000-12,000 people) lost their lives and many more were injured, making the hurricane of 1900 the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.  The city never fully recovered, and the local economic base shifted to Houston.

Buildings destroyed by the hurricane in Galveston.  Photograph courtesy of The 1900 Storm, Galveston Island, Texas (www.1900storm.com), Galveston Newspapers Inc.

With telegraph and telephone lines down and trains unable to get through, the city was cut off from communication with the rest of the world.  This caused The New York Times to report on September 9, the day after the hurricane, “Galveston May Be Wiped Out By Storm, Fear that the Island City Has Met with Great Disaster.”  (To read that Times article, please go here.) Richard Spillane, the editor of the Galveston Tribune, was commissioned by the Mayor and citizen’s committee to commandeer a boat (the only way out of Galveston at that point) to get out of the city and appeal for help.  He did, sending a telegram to President William McKinley.

Johnson & Johnson Offices and Shipping Department, circa 1900

As soon as word started to get out about the scale of the disaster, Johnson & Johnson sent immediate help.  Fred Kilmer wrote:  “…in the Galveston flood, all drug stocks were destroyed, and Johnson & Johnson immediately forwarded emergency supplies by express at their own expense.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol 5, No. 8, January 1913]   The Company also offered aid to Galveston physicians, druggists and their families.  The medical supplies donated by Johnson & Johnson were used by relief workers in Galveston to treat the injured and help survivors.

 Some of the Company’s medical products circa 1900

Just six years later, the Company would increase the scale of its donations in the aftermath of the San Francisco Earthquake.  To read about that, stay tuned for my next post.

(If anyone’s interested in reading further about the Galveston hurricane, there are eyewitness accounts here.  There are photographs and even films of the damage — by one of Thomas Edison’s assistants — the films are here.)