Kilmer House

Many, many decades ago, in the Nineteen-teens, Johnson & Johnson built a huge electric sign on the roof of one of its buildings in New Brunswick.  The sign was over 31 feet high and 115 feet long.  When it was lit up in color at night, it was a local landmark…especially for passengers on the Pennsylvania Railroad as their trains reached New Brunswick.   The Company used this eye-catching sign to display a wide variety of messages, including best wishes for a Happy New Year.

So as we approach 2009, it seems fitting to have our long-vanished sign wish everyone a Happy New Year. 

The Johnson & Johnson electric sign in January of 1915

As a company that’s 122 years old, Johnson & Johnson has many traditions.  One of those traditions is having employees with many years of service, not just in New Brunswick…but as the Company grew, in operating companies across the world in locations as varied as the U.K., Mexico, Brazil, India, Australia and South Africa.  How old is that tradition?  It started in 1886, the year we were founded.

The New Additions to the Storehouse Buildings in 1912

With the opening of new storehouse buildings on Nielson Street in New Brunswick in 1912, Johnson & Johnson continued its tradition of inaugurating new buildings by having a reception and dance for employees.  This was done after the building was completed, but before the machinery was installed, so that there would be room for a celebration.  Once again, to recognize the Company’s large population of Hungarian employees, the Company brought back Prof. Chas. Mezei’s Hungarian Orchestra as one of two orchestras to play for employees during the dance.

The inside cover of the program for the 1912 reception and dance listed the “Roll of Honor,” employees who had 20 or more years of service with Johnson & Johnson…at a time when the Company itself had only been around for 26 years.  Here’s what the program book said:

“A striking feature of the conditions which prevail throughout the realm of Johnson & Johnson, is the relation between the management, their associates and employees. [sic] A long service is not uncommon in the ranks, and there are a number of persons who have been constantly employed from the inception of the business…They have virtually grown up with the business, and become imbued with the principles and the methods which govern its relationship to those with whom it comes in contact.  They are closely interwoven in the woof and warp of the business fabric.  All have conscientiously given their best efforts to the success of the enterprise, and this is what made it what it is.  Long service seems to be a distinctive feature in the history of the corporation.”  [April 20, 1912 Reception and Dance Souvenir Booklet, Opening of the New Storehouse Buildings.]

That last sentence was certainly accurate, since almost half of the original 1886 employees were still there in 1912.

In 1912 there were 35 employees who had been with the Company 20 years or more.  This included six employees (three men and three women) who had been with the Company since 1886, the year Johnson & Johnson was founded.  These earliest employees had been persuaded to leave Robert Wood Johnson’s previous business, Seabury & Johnson, and take a chance on joining a small startup business operating on the rented fourth floor of a former wallpaper factory next to the railroad tracks in New Brunswick, with the revolutionary and, to some, outlandish idea of making the first mass produced sterile surgical dressings to save lives in hospitals.  In 1912, the little startup was a constantly growing and very well respected business with several thousand employees.  (By the way, Fred Kilmer, his joining date listed here as 1888 instead of 1889, was one of those “Roll of Honor” employees.)

Early employees recommended the Company to their family and friends, and it was not unusual to find multiple generations of a family and/or multiple family members – brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins – employed here.   This was especially true in New Brunswick’s Hungarian community, where many of the city’s Hungarian residents worked for Johnson & Johnson and were fiercely loyal to the Company.

Two of the “Roll of Honor” employees, Elizabeth — (joined in 1886) and Gussie — (joined in 1892) had not only risen in the ranks to become department supervisors, but they were trained in first aid (a concept that Johnson & Johnson started) and were proud members of the Company’s First Aid staff, which provided help to employees who were taken ill or injured at work.  Joining them on the First Aid staff was a fairly new young 19-year old employee who would also go on to have a long career with the Company:  Robert Wood Johnson, the son of one of the founders.  He went on to lead Johnson & Johnson from 1932 to 1963, and made it into the decentralized, publicly-traded worldwide family of companies that we know today.

So if any readers — or their friends or family members — are long-time Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies employees, they are part of a tradition of long service that goes all the way back to the Company’s founding in 1886.

What’s the weirdest thing ever made by the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies?  Was it a tonic medicine with a sherry base?  Or sausage casings?  Or doll clothing?  (Yes, we once made that too, out of non-woven fabric.  That’s the subject of a future post.) Or maybe beauty spots?  Or duct tape?  Or maybe…it was rubber bands.

So…we made rubber bands?  Yes we actually did — or to be more accurate, one of our acquisitions did in 1910.   Readers of Kilmer House will remember that the Company made its first major acquisition in 1905 when it purchased the J. Ellwood Lee Company of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.  That company was a medical products manufacturer that made medicinal plasters, catheters and other medical equipment.   Lee, a self-made business success, became a member of the Johnson & Johnson Board of Directors along with two of his associates including Charles Heber Clark, a Lee company executive who happened to be a world-renowned humorist of the time.

Dual Johnson & Johnson/J. Ellwood Lee Company Price List from 1910

So, back to the rubber bands.   As part of the acquisition, each company agreed to list the other’s products in their catalogs.  The J. Ellwood Lee Company made products such as catheters, gloves, water bottles and medical tubing that were made out of rubber and, in 1910, Lee constructed an automobile tire factory in Pennsylvania to make tires for the new automobile industry.  (Pursuit of that market by Lee also temporarily put Johnson & Johnson in the auto tire business, until all ties between the Company and the Lee Tire & Rubber Company were severed.)

J. Ellwood Lee

Rubber bands were often given away to customers by retail druggists.   J. Ellwood Lee, ever an enterprising businessman, saw an opportunity and started packaging cards and boxes of red rubber bands in assorted sizes that could be sold by druggists.  “Jelco” rubber bands, as they were called (the name is a contraction of the J. Ellwood Lee Company name) were advertised as an improvement over standard rubber bands due to their improved elasticity and longevity, a result of the type of rubber used and an improved method of curing it during manufacture.  So as part of the agreement to list and promote each other’s products, in the 1910 issues of The Red Cross Messenger, Johnson & Johnson promoted Jelco Rubber Bands to retail druggists and listed them in its price lists.

Page from the 1910 Price List showing the listing for Jelco Rubber Bands

(By the way, Lee’s automobile tires were initially also called “Jelco” until automaker Henry Ford objected…because he didn’t want his automobiles riding around on tires that suggested “jelly” to people.  So Lee changed the name of the tires to “Lee of Conshohocken.”)

In 1934, Johnson & Johnson built a new plant in Central New Jersey for the Company’s newest affiliate company, Personal Products Company.  What did that plant have in common with the recently completed Empire State Building?  It certainly wasn’t height.  And it wasn’t part of the climax of a famous movie, either.    Give up?  The buildings had the same architect.  It was all part of Robert Wood Johnson’s “factories can be beautiful” plan. 

That architectural firm that built the plant was Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, who in 1934 had just completed the world’s tallest building, a building that’s still one of the major New York landmarks today.  Johnson’s engaging them raised quite a few eyebrows….including those of the architects, who were flummoxed when, after designing the world’s tallest building, they were asked to design a one-story building.  Johnson wanted the new plant to be expandable in four directions, and to use cutting-edge new building materials like aluminum and plastic.  He also wanted it to be on a huge, landscaped piece of land.  This building would clearly be a far cry from the typical late 19th century dingy, crowded, brick industrial buildings.

 One of the “Factories Can be Beautiful” Buildings in Central New Jersey

In the 1930s, much of American industry still manufactured goods in buildings that were drab, many decades out of date, frequently unsafe, and not very nice to look at.  So starting in the 1930s, Johnson & Johnson started designing and building plants like the one above that were sleek, modern and attractive, and would not look out of place in any community.  In fact, occasionally some of the sites were mistaken for modern college campuses.

Part of the Old Eastern Surgical Dressings Plant Complex

The typical manufacturing facility in the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies was low, often one story, with a light colored exterior, and lots of windows, and it was situated in the middle of a huge expanse of landscaped lawn and trees.  Some of the landmark “factories can be beautiful” buildings in New Jersey have distinctive blue-tinted glass windows…such as the original headquarters of Ethicon, Inc.

The original Ethicon, Inc. building…with its marble facade, terrace and distinctive windows. 

Others use design elements from local architecture, like the pointed archways on this one from 1971. 

These distinctive, beautiful and eye-catching plants and facilities that were built as part of this “factories can be beautiful” philosophy came to be a hallmark of Johnson & Johnson companies across the world.  The building’s facades were all different, and they were designed specifically so that workers could look out and see greenery and nature.  Manufacturing areas were bright and airy, and were often air-conditioned. 

Manufacturing area in one of the “Factories Can Be Beautiful” plants 

Inside the plant, machinery had specially-designed covers that matched the pastel-colored walls, and kept oil and other materials from soiling the white uniforms the manufacturing employees wore.  The lobbies and reception areas were plush and beautiful, and employees were encouraged to use the lobby entrances – not a back entrance — when they came to work in the morning, so that they would feel it was “their building.” 

The Lobby of one of the Factories Can Be Beautiful Buildings

Johnson & Johnson del Peru S.A., 1971, view of exterior with garden

When asked why he went to such great expense and effort to build these kind of plants, Robert Wood Johnson said that, in the long run, they were less expensive because employees took pride in their workplaces, had higher morale working in such a setting, and thus made better quality products.  Also, the beautiful plants were looked upon by communities as an asset.   

But because Johnson & Johnson has always operated on good business principles, the Company made sure that even though they were going the extra mile and creating something special with these buildings, it was still done in a responsible and cost-effective manner.  Here’s what Robert Wood Johnson said:

“It’s easy to plan a fine building, if you let your imagination run wild and send costs sky high; but it is far from easy to erect a good modern factory at a cost that will permit profits.  When you do that you make a real contribution, not only to your own company, but to industry as a whole.”  [Robert Johnson Talks it Over, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ, 1949, p. 50]