Fibers of Freedom

Johns-Manville Corporation made this film, undated on screen and thought to be from the 1940s. It tells the company's history from H. W. Johns in New York in 1858 through asbestos roofing, the Quebec mines and the company's plants, and sets it within a general account of American enterprise. The narration describes asbestos textiles, cement products, Transite pipe and Marinite for ships, and lists the J-M plant towns.

What it says about asbestos and health

Nothing about dust or disease. It mentions the working conditions the company offered, such as minimum hiring wages and the 40-hour week.

About this copy

Our copy is a transfer of a print from Johns-Manville's own film archive (box 04-03393), shown in full, 30:45 long.

Transcript

A machine transcript of the soundtrack, not yet checked against the film; names and technical words may be wrong.

And this trademark on the pay station, few pause to reflect that a major epic of American enterprise and industrial advance is actually summed up in each of these symbols. When they see the J-M symbol, how many realize that here, too, is the stamp of that unrivaled initiative that has made this country, in so many ways, the number one nation of the world? To most people, Johns-Manville means asbestos, a non-burnable suit to protect the firefighters on our carriers, or a colorful roof that won't burn or wear out. Yet these are only two of the products whose total sum would show us wide- flung webs of men and manufacturing facilities, natural resources, and native resourcefulness, all of them animated in every fiber by that dynamic American drive that developed on this continent an arsenal of democracy and a source of sustenance for the needy of many lands. In the case of the J-M symbol, more than 400 lines of products can scarcely reflect the far-reaching organization of plants, warehouses, research facilities, sales offices, and mines that combine with the labor of of some 20,000 people to form a living entity, which is Johns-Manville Corporation. Now, corporation is a word that designates such a combination of factories, mines, and people, especially people.

For unless corporation makes you think primarily of people, people pooling their efforts to achieve a common purpose, then it's a poor word to describe an industry that has grown in characteristic American manner from the humblest beginnings to a position of leadership in the field of asbestos and allied products for here home spun from the very fibers of freedom and woven into the fabric of our national life is a truly typical manifestation of individual and group American enterprise of course we know the J-M organization didn't just happen it wasn't created by imperial edict nor nor was it solemnly legislated into being. Actually, here was but another human enterprise born of man's ageless desire to earn a better livelihood. So let's go back to New York in 1858, a year that brought this nation to the perilous brink of war between the states. Yet pioneering Americans were still pushing on to Oregon and blazing their iron trails into the untamed West. men were taking long chances with new ideas in a country alive and moving with energy but not all the pioneers took the westward trail one remained in a dim basement on William Street he was 21 and his name was H.W. Johns had anyone called him capitalist or rugged individualist chances are he'd have left and resumed his labors after all he was just another energetic young young American who, despite rumors of war, was determined to set up his own business, be master of his own destiny. But in addition, H.W.

Johns had imagination, and this took fire when he read in an 1859 encyclopedia, asbestos, a mineral of the hornblende family. Cloth made of this mineral is not affected by heat. The mineral is abundant in this country and on Staten Island in New York Harbor. It is found in bundles of fiber resembling slips of dry wood. Asbestos is used for lining fireproof safes and as a filter for chemicals. It is, however, in very little demand.

Many people read that quaint description and did nothing about it, but not H.W. Johns. He obtained samples, took them to his gloomy basement, and worked far into the flickering New York nights how often he failed is not known but by the time the war between the states had come to its costly end Horace Greeley wrote in his Tribune H.W. Johns' improved roofing is strong and flexible unaffected by the sun's heat practically fireproof and is really an article of the first order of merit young Johns realized the importance of of the great editor's opinion. This is amply attested by an advertisement in an 1871 edition of the American Agriculturist. And because Johns' asbestos roofings were as advertised, the public responded, and his business prospered.

Soon he was experimenting with asbestos papers and other innovations, for it is an axiom of a successful business that it cannot stand still. It must expand by adopting new ideas, producing new products, and investing new capital, or it must ultimately close its doors. Discovery of extensive asbestos deposits in Quebec enabled Johns to expand into the manufacture of asbestos twines, rope, paper, mill board, cloth, and cements. Meanwhile, another business was becoming known in Milwaukee, where Charles B. Manville began mixing blue clay, paper pulp, and animal hair into an insulating material. With his three sons, he established the Manville Covering Company, advancing a new conception of the conservation of industrial heat by insulation.

But as higher temperatures were required in industrial operations, these men eventually realized they had to use asbestos fiber to withstand these temperatures. So it was only natural, and in the progressive American tradition, that the Manvilles, father and sons, would presently find their way to the doorstep of H.W. Johns. A few years later, in 1901, the H.W. Johns-Manville Company was formed with its its main office in New York City. The company's development from this time on is a classic example of American industrial growth.

In the middle 1920s, however, a new industrial cycle was in full swing. Industries were called upon by the demands of an increasing population and America's ever-rising standard of living for greater and greater services and production. private fortunes were seldom adequate to finance the new plants new machinery and the many new facilities needed thus public ownership through the savings of millions of people who bought stock in corporations became the means of providing the necessary capital for these expansions such a transition was taking place in 1926 and a year later stock in the newly newly formed Johns-Manville Corporation was offered to the public. Professional scientific management took the place of family control, and a healthy expansion has been a dominant keynote from that day to this. As a measure of the steady progress of this representative American enterprise, annual sales have increased from 44 million to around 200 million. From From less than 1,000 stockholders, Johns-Manville is now owned by more than 13,000 stockholders. Now it's often a mistake to use the dollar as a measure of size.

You will find a truer yardstick of a company's progress in its employment figures, the number of jobs created directly and indirectly. during this period the number of employees has increased from 6,000 to 20,000 and the annual payroll is six times as great or 50 million dollars more than a quarter of a century ago but when it stated that J-M makes about 20,000 jobs that's only a start other jobs are created in the many firms from which the company buys materials and services still more in all the the organizations to whom the company sells. In the old days, a worker's effectiveness and his earnings were limited by inadequate tools. Nowadays, with modern tools and other mechanical aids, his efforts are multiplied a hundredfold, and a man doesn't have to work nearly as long or as hard to earn much more. That hand shovel we saw a moment ago cost a dollar fifty cents. This huge power shovel cost Johns-Manville over $200,000, obviously much more than individual workers could afford. But corporations, which are cooperative enterprises created by many persons who risk their savings, can and do provide such costly equipment.

The more capital, the more tools. The more tools, the more each man can turn out. And the more each man produces, uses, the more prosperous are the communities in which he and his family can enjoy their lives. Here is the secret of the industrial success of the modern democratic society and the high standard of living in those nations which maintain a free competitive business system. It would seem extraordinary that a great organization of men and machines is based primarily on such a tiny silk like fiber as this but such is the case for this is asbestos the magic mineral it is the raw material that forms the foundation of many Johns-Manville products resembling cotton or wool at first glance asbestos is actually a fiber of stone yet it's amazingly flexible its greatest renown rests rightly enough on its resistance to heat and the fact that it will not burn surprisingly too these fragile looking fibers are extremely strong what fierce prehistoric forces veined this serpentine rock with asbestos withering volcanic heat perhaps plus tremendous geological pressures science isn't completely sure more than 20 centuries ago men knew the magic mineral existed yet only in the latter part of the last century did the new human needs of an awakening industrial age transformed these fibers into more than a mere curiosity. Then, through invention, intensive development, and the vision and initiative found where free enterprise prevails, men began making asbestos a basic part of modern civilization.

Deposits of asbestos dot the planet. In In South Africa, Italy, Cyprus, Russia, Australia, China, India, the United States, and here in Canada is the biggest deposit in the world. High above this huge hole in the ground once stood a rocky hilltop, the old Charles Webb Farm. farm. In 1881, with the town of Asbestos Quebec yet to be named, a wealthy farmer, W.H. Jeffrey, decided to risk his savings and develop the asbestos deposits. The mining was primitive.

Asbestos ore was blasted and dug out by hand chisels from three shallow pits. Jeffrey operated operated the mine for 14 years. Then came the money panic of 1893. Jeffrey had not put aside enough money from earnings to meet the emergency, and his impending failure menaced the financial security of every family in the growing village. Just in time, Jeffrey sold out to a group of men who managed to keep the mine going another 21 years. World World War I found the mine again in difficulty, again jobs were threatened, fear of a business collapse hung over the community.

Every home would be affected. Then T.F. Manville appeared on the scene, bought the mine property, formed a new company, and the town of Asbestos, again saved from disaster, began a new period of prosperity. Today, both open pit and underground mining methods bring out the asbestos fiber. Here in the open pit mine, great masses of richly-veined rock are blasted by dynamite. Power shovels load the loosened rock into mill-bound cars.

Down in the underground mine, as elsewhere, modern machines take care of the toughest parts of the job, turn them into push-button operations. You will search here in vain for the grimy underground worker of an earlier era. These modern miners come to work well-dressed in their own cars and change clothes in spacious locker rooms. Years ago there were jobs for only 25 men. Now there are 2,500 jobs. The work is much easier and the men are on duty eight hours instead of 12.

Of course there are other ways of of getting a mineral out of the ground, one would be to use slave labor, driving the men to the limits of endurance, pouring in replacements from political prisons and concentration camps. But that kind of system doesn't result in the kind of town found at Asbestos Quebec. Nor does that kind of system house its miners in homes like these. Give them a choice between town or farm life. And it isn't likely to erect a modern industrial clinic such as this providing workers with the last word in scientific medical care in this J-M mine as the annual payroll has risen from a few thousand to more than six million dollars the yearly yield of asbestos fiber has soared to approximately 400,000 tons in the mill crushers pulverize the ore and machines Machines like huge vacuum cleaners suck up the fiber, reject the waste rock. Fibers vary in length from a fraction of an inch to more than two inches, the longer ones lending themselves readily to spinning and weaving.

Bagged for shipment, the graded fiber goes out to J-M factories in Canada and the United States to be made into an amazing range of useful products for industry, farm, and home. home. The variety of products of which asbestos is a vital component is truly remarkable. Johns- Manville plants manufacture a more varied group of asbestos products than any other plants in the world. Asbestos yarns and textiles that can't burn, rot, or disintegrate from heat or friction. These textiles are made into asbestos suits for laboratory workers and modern firefighters. There are products made principally from asbestos combined with Portland cement, such as convenient movable walls for commercial buildings, factories, and institutions.

Flexboard, a sheet material for bathrooms, kitchens, and other home and farm uses. Asbestos roofing and siding shingles to to protect homes against fire, weather, and wear. In an entirely different field, asbestos and cement are joined in Johns-Manville's Transite Pipe for water, waste disposal, and irrigation systems, and as a conduit for electrical and distribution systems. Asbestos fiber and diatomaceous silica are formed into fireproof sheets of J-M Marinite and marine sheathing, which which help prevent disastrous fires at sea. The first major installation was made in the S.S. America following the tragic Morro Castle fire.

It is now used on practically all the passenger and crew accommodations of America's merchant marine, the safest fleet afloat. To protect both pilot and plane from the intense heat of jet engines, blankets of felted asbestos are used. thousands of people walk every day on floors made of asbestos combined with asphalt and with vinyl resins that make these durable resilient floor tiles and millions more are the unconscious beneficiaries of other hidden asbestos uses the car that stops at an intersection for a red light is safely brought to a halt by brake lining made with asbestos and other substances which are also to use for clutch facings in autos and there are other asbestos friction materials for the control of heavy industrial machinery. Another hidden use of asbestos is found in the countless types of thermal insulations, refractory cements, and insulating brick in which asbestos plays a vital part. Combined with magnesia and other materials, asbestos fiber makes large-scale power control efficient and economical saving millions of dollars in heat and power costs in another behind-the-scenes role asbestos alone and in combination with other materials is used for industrial packings and gaskets practically all power machinery is made with movable parts which require packings to seal in the highly compressed steam, gas, or air which drive the machinery. Another important manifestation of the magic mineral is in the form of asbestos papers and felts. Papers as fine as only one ten-thousandth of an inch thick, important in insulating the coils of electric motors and in other electrical equipment.

Asbestos felts, saturated with asphalt, resist all sorts of weather to protect all manner of structures from modest garage to towering skyscraper. This extraordinary machine is applying asbestos felts to the now historic Big Inch pipeline so important to the oil industry for the rapid transportation of petroleum products. But Johns-Manville's varied business does not depend on asbestos fiber alone. Quick to perceive the truth of the old maxim that to stand still is to die, Johns-Manville's management has over the years added new enterprises involving other raw materials. One of the most important of these is diatomaceous silica, mined at the company's quarries in Lompoc, California. Celite is the trade name used by J-M to market its diatomaceous silica products, which include insulations and insulating cement filter powders for clarifying liquids and mineral fillers which improve the quality and reduce the cost of hundreds of manufactured products wood pulp is also a vital raw material in Johns-Manville's operations from southern pine at Jarratt Virginia and Natchez Mississippi J-M manufactures insulating board products for home and industry interior wall paneling ceilings and exterior sheathing.

Rubber, too, is important in J-M's lines of products. At the Van Cleef Factory in Chicago, J-M manufactures a variety of rubber products for home and industry. Carefully selected slag obtained from the refining of metals should not be overlooked either, for Fromiter made rock wool insulations for new and existing homes to keep them warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Other forms of rock-wool insulation are used in refrigerators, railroad cars, automobile bodies, and other mechanical equipment. In order to keep and improve its competitive position and thus assure jobs for its present workers and create new jobs, Johns-Manville provides the world's largest and most modern facilities for research in building materials, insulations, and allied industrial products. This huge research center is located near Manville, New Jersey.

Eighty years ago H.W. Johns, one of the founders of the company, laid down a fundamental policy. It was, we promise and claim less than many others but shall endeavor as heretofore to furnish the best materials of the kind and to make every resource available for their improvement. This is the tradition of Johns-Manville research and the principle upon which it has been built. Today, countless new developments in Johns-Manville's many fields are beckoning. Other fields of services and products as yet undreamed of are awaiting discovery.

But to achieve such results, it is necessary to keep many men on payrolls and give them steady work. And that means, to continue in business, it is imperative that each contributing enterprise make a profit. For profits put back to work in the form of additional investments enable corporations to improve their products, expand, replace worn-out tools and machinery, and create more steady jobs. How much in profits does it take to do all this? Actually, much less than most people think. On the average, industry's profits amount to five cents out of each dollar taken in.

Asbestos is truly termed the magic mineral, for certainly there would seem to be no walk of life. Be it the great industries, our battle fleets in peace or war, our railroads with their luxury stream liners, the vast network of globe girdling airlines or a permanent comfortable home in which these silky fibers do not make a major contribution to economy protection and long life thus have free business enterprise and unrestricted imagination developed asbestos into one of the world's most valuable natural resources taking its place with oil wood and metal as an almost fabulous servant to man. From the busy mine at Asbestos, from the forests, quarries, refineries and other sources, flow the raw materials to J-M factories in Canada and the United States to be made into more than 400 lines of products to shield man from heat, cold and noise and help protect him from fire, weather and wear. These products are made not only here at asbestos, but here at Toronto, here at Manville, New Jersey, here at Tilton, New Hampshire, here at Waukegan, Illinois, here at Marrero, Louisiana, here at Watson, California, here at Natchez, Mississippi, here at Jarratt, Virginia, here at Alexandria, Indiana, here at Billerica, Massachusetts, here at Here at Lompoc, California. Here at Los Angeles, California. Here at Nashua, New Hampshire.

Here at New Brunswick, New Jersey. Here at Pittsburg, California. Here at Redwood City, California. Here at Richmond, Indiana. Here at Zelienople, Pennsylvania. Here at Chicago, Illinois.

And here at Munro, in northern Ontario's newly discovered asbestos deposits, is the the Johns-Manville mine which assures a supplementary source of certain types of fiber not found at Asbestos Quebec more than keeping pace with physical expansion has been the company's continuing progress in other fields Johns-Manville was a leader in improving the living and working conditions of its employees was among the first companies to establish minimum hiring wages and one of the first corporations to introduce the 40-hour week on a national scale and so we've seen how these fragile looking fibers of a remarkable mineral with their amazingly manifold uses have enlisted the energies of enterprising men through many decades and resulted in a significant symbol one that represents an important corporation with its factories mines warehouses offices laboratories and people pooling their toil and treasure to achieve a common goal and now we can see too that this major industry itself is actually but one of the symbols of something bigger and more basic still our native way of doing things that inspires and makes possible such dynamic progress and development for the J-M symbol is representative of many others that serve as index to the complete industrial scene when the J-M mine offered regular worthwhile wages that a man could depend on it drew hundreds of farmers away from unrewarding backwoods drudgery and this local shift of population was a miniature mirror of the major drift of population throughout the United States away from the farms to the cities less than a century ago more than half our workers toiled at farming or forestry today less than one-fifth yet more than than half our land area is still in farms which account for some six million independent business enterprises still rooted in the American soil. That sweeping exodus from a rural to an urban existence was made possible of course by industry's invention and production of more effective tools. Substitution of the machine for human toil and long dreary hours. Still more significant is the the increase in the output of goods and services for each man hour of labor. Its average value has risen from a quarter to a dollar and a quarter. So it would seem in the final analysis that the free enterprise way of getting things done is perhaps not the system that has been described by certain groups as faulty.

It is not boasting but bald fact to state that this country now has the highest standard of living ever attained. This means that the average American earns more money, eats better food, has a better house, better clothes, schools, theaters, and more conveniences than the average citizen of any other country anywhere at any time. And no conceivable end has yet appeared in the unfolding contours of the foreseeable future. We continue to launch new enterprises, manufacture more more goods, introduce new products, to create new jobs that make money, money that makes new jobs, and tirelessly weave from the tough fibers of freedom new patterns that point to still better ways to serve mankind. And many of us realize that therein lies the secret of our past achievement and the key to progress yet to come. So from our survey of the Johns-Manville asbestos story, and from the other major industries it so fittingly symbolizes, one inescapable fact becomes apparent.

We move into the American future at the throttle of the most productive economic machine in all human history, and it is a machine that free men know how to run.