United States Asbestos Company (Manheim, Pennsylvania)

The United States Asbestos Company was an asbestos textile maker founded in 1906 at Manheim, Pennsylvania, which grew on woven asbestos brake lining and clutch facings, later sold as Grey-Rock, along with yarns, tapes and packings. In 1929 it merged with the Raybestos Company and Manhattan Rubber to form Raybestos-Manhattan, and the Manheim plant ran for decades as Raybestos-Manhattan's U. S. Asbestos Division. Papers in Raybestos-Manhattan's files record dust problems at Manheim from 1930 and, by 1974, cases of mesothelioma among its workers.

Draft. The history on this page was written from the documents in our library and has not yet been reviewed by a person.

History

In 1924 the trade journal Asbestos told the company's story. It said that in 1906 Chester L. Hill, who had worked at the Keasbey & Mattison Company's asbestos textile plant, "headed a small group of men and organized the United States Asbestos Company," and that "A small plant was secured at Manheim, Penna., about ten miles northwest of the city of Lancaster," with capital of $35,000.¹ At first the company made commercial asbestos yarns and fine tapes, but it was, the article said, "among the first to take up the weaving of asbestos tape for brake linings," and it later added steam packings, sheet packings and gaskets.¹ By 1924 the article described a group of buildings covering five acres and "the production in enormous quantities of every kind of asbestos textile known to man."¹ S. R. Zimmerman, a corporation lawyer from Lancaster, became its president in October 1910.⁵

The company's offices were in Lancaster until September 1922, when it moved its executive offices to the Manheim plant.¹⁰ Its advertisements in 1923 listed brake lining, clutch facings, fabrics, listing, packing, tape and yarns, with sales offices and warehouses in New York, Pittsburgh, Boston, Lancaster, Chicago and San Francisco.² It issued a folder on its Durabestos brake band lining in 1922, and in 1927 John D. Rohrer of Manheim received a patent on a friction lining, assigned to the company.^11,12

In 1929 the United States Asbestos Company, the Raybestos Company and the Manhattan Rubber Manufacturing Company were combined into Raybestos-Manhattan, Inc., by an exchange of shares; the merged company reported their earnings together from September 16, 1929.⁴ According to the 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, Raybestos-Manhattan was formed in New Jersey on July 5, 1929, and the consolidation took in a fourth company, the General Asbestos & Rubber Company of Charleston, South Carolina.²³ Zimmerman and the treasurer, George R. Weber, who had joined the company in 1921 and, Asbestos later said, took an important part in creating the merger, became vice presidents of the new company, and the Manheim business continued as its United States Asbestos Division.^4,5,13 In 1935 the division absorbed the United States Asbestos Company of Illinois, its Chicago branch.¹⁴ By the 1950s it was called the U. S. Asbestos–Grey-Rock Division; S. R. Zimmerman, Jr., became its general manager in 1958, and Dr. Eugene P. Stefl held that post by 1968.^6,15

Asbestos products

Brake lining was the company's best-known line. In 1932 Asbestos described the new Grey-Rock Eagle, made by the United States Asbestos Division for cars with free-wheeling, which its makers called semi-molded.¹⁶ In 1935 the division was advertising Grey-Rock brake linings in the Saturday Evening Post and on garage posters.³ The library's product records list Grey Rock, Grey Rock Eagle and Hyco brake linings, VeeLock clutch facing and Pyrotex felt under the U. S. Asbestos name.¹⁷ In December 1969 Raybestos-Manhattan announced that it was buying an asbestos textile plant at Marshville, North Carolina, to be run as part of the Manheim division; the division's general manager, Dr. E. P. Stefl, said it would augment "the Pennsylvania division's requirements for asbestos textiles and friction materials" for clutch facings and brake linings.¹⁸

What the documents show

The library's Sumner Simpson Papers and related Raybestos-Manhattan files hold many letters about dust at Manheim. In February 1930 the Industrial Health Service of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company studied dust conditions in the Manheim plant, the third in a series of studies of the asbestos industry, and this one included physical examinations of employees.⁷ After a later Metropolitan Life survey, George R. Weber, writing from the U. S. Asbestos Division in September 1935, told Sumner Simpson that he agreed the report was unfavorable, that the division would start improvements in the preparing room, with the card room to follow, and that he hoped to learn from Turner Brothers' experience in England.⁸

In January 1957 B. W. Luttenberger of the Manheim plant, answering an inquiry from U.S. Rubber, wrote that Manheim had had an asbestos dust problem for many years but believed it was now well under control, with its carding and other departments hooded and ventilated.¹⁹ He wrote that Pennsylvania treated asbestosis as an occupational disease, that the plant had had many cases, and that it had seen a marked reduction since installing modern dust removal equipment.¹⁹

In July 1963 S. R. Zimmerman, Jr., wrote to Dr. Lewis J. Cralley of the U.S. Public Health Service about its proposed study of the asbestos products industry.²⁰ He said Raybestos-Manhattan's part should be limited to the U. S. Asbestos Division at Manheim, and that the company wished to withhold a decision on the study's medical phase because of its possible effect on employees; he noted that the Manheim plant held medical records and several thousand X-rays going back twenty years or more.²⁰

In October 1974 John H. Marsh, Raybestos-Manhattan's director of environmental affairs, wrote to Dr. J. C. Gilson of the Medical Research Council's Pneumoconiosis Unit in Wales that the Manheim textile plant had processed substantial quantities of amosite during World War II, and that there had been a number of cases of mesothelioma among Manheim workers.⁹ He contrasted this with the company's Charleston, South Carolina, textile plant, which he said had never processed amosite, and wrote that dust surveys in the early 1930s showed dust levels at Manheim far higher than at Charleston.⁹ He listed dust surveys of Manheim by Metropolitan Life, the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Industrial Health Foundation.⁹

A table headed "Types of Asbestos Used by R/M," with notes, filed in the Raybestos-Manhattan section of the binder The Travelers Insurance Company compiled for a 1980 asbestos seminar, gives more detail on Manheim, as does the product list beside it.²⁴ They say Manheim processed about 150 to 300 tons of amosite a year from 1941 through 1944, much of it under high-priority defense contracts for the U.S. Navy, made amosite insulation blankets for the Navy from the 1920s to 1944, and made amosite insulating tape intermittently from about 1940 to 1970.^24,25 They say Manheim made crocidolite packings from the 1920s, up to 10,000 pounds a year from 1939 to 1967 and about 5,000 pounds a year after that with much lower dust exposure, until all processing of crocidolite stopped in June 1972.^24,25 The Travelers data sheet in the same section lists Manheim among the plants of Raybestos Friction Materials Co.²⁶

Raybestos-Manhattan's later history

From 1929 on, the United States Asbestos Company's story is part of Raybestos-Manhattan's; see that company's page for its lawsuits and documents.²¹ Raybestos-Manhattan changed its name to Raymark Industries, Inc., in June 1982, according to the same book,²³ and its successor, Raytech Corporation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1989. The library does not yet have a trust page for Raytech.

A California company also called the United States Asbestos Company, whose chairman Asbestos listed in Santa Rosa, was scheduled to bring a new asbestos mill at Coalinga, California, into full production in September 1964; it is a different business from the Manheim company.²²

References

1. Asbestos, June 1924, pp. 16–17
2. Asbestos, January 1923, p. 49; May 1923, p. 53
3. Asbestos, March 1935, p. 12
4. Asbestos, June 1929, p. 30; August 1929, p. 15; December 1929, p. 52
5. Asbestos, October 1944, p. 36
6. Asbestos, July 1955, p. 58; February 1958, p. 58
7. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, A Study of Dust Conditions in Raybestos-Manhattan's Manheim Plant (1930), p. 2
8. George R. Weber to Sumner Simpson on Dust Improvements at Manheim (1935)
9. John H. Marsh to Dr. J. C. Gilson on Mesothelioma at the Manheim Plant (1974)
10. Asbestos, October 1922, p. 54
11. Asbestos, March 1922, p. 55
12. Asbestos, December 1927, p. 50
13. Asbestos, February 1953, p. 50
14. Asbestos, December 1935, p. 6; June 1935, p. 36
15. Asbestos, September 1968, p. 50
16. Asbestos, February 1932, p. 28
17. Product records: Grey Rock, Grey Rock Eagle, Hyco, VeeLock, Pyrotex
18. Asbestos, December 1969, p. 47; see also the Manheim plant record
19. B. W. Luttenberger to Frederick W. Sands of U.S. Rubber on Manheim's Dust Control and Asbestosis Cases (1957)
20. S. R. Zimmerman to Dr. Lewis J. Cralley Limiting Raybestos-Manhattan's Part in the Public Health Service Asbestos Study (1963)
21. Raybestos-Manhattan, Inc., company page
22. Asbestos, September 1964, p. 10; March 1967, p. 24
23. Barbara J. Peters and George A. Peters, Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases: Medical, Legal, and Engineering Aspects, vol. 2 (New York: Garland Law Publishing, 1986), p. 171.
24. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Raybestos-Manhattan Product Information, p. 8
25. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Raybestos-Manhattan Product Information, p. 4
26. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Raybestos-Manhattan Product Information, p. 5

Units and subsidiaries

United States Asbestos Company (Manheim, Pennsylvania) was part of Raybestos-Manhattan.

Asbestos products

5 products our documents name United States Asbestos Company (Manheim, Pennsylvania) as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Grey Rock (U.S. Asbestos)
• Grey Rock Eagle (U.S. Asbestos)
• Hyco (U.S. Asbestos)
• Pyrotex (U.S. Asbestos)
• VeeLock (U.S. Asbestos)

Plants

Plants where asbestos products were made that the documents say United States Asbestos Company (Manheim, Pennsylvania) ran.

• United States Asbestos Company and later owners plant at Manheim, Pennsylvania

Mines

Asbestos mines the documents name United States Asbestos Company (Manheim, Pennsylvania) as running or owning.

• Todd Industries mine, near Coalinga, California

In our library

11 documents in our library name United States Asbestos Company (Manheim, Pennsylvania), by collection.

Sumner Simpson Papers (11)

• George R. Weber to Sumner Simpson on Dust Improvements at Manheim (1935) (publisher)
• George R. Weber to Sumner Simpson Returning Gardner's Report (1938) (publisher)
• O. H. Cilley to Sumner Simpson Asking for the 1939 Manheim Dust Survey (1939) (publisher)
• O. H. Cilley to Sumner Simpson on Manheim Dust Counts for 1935, 1938 and 1939 (1939) (publisher)
• O. H. Cilley to Sumner Simpson on Attending the New England Health Institute (1940) (publisher)
• O. H. Cilley to Sumner Simpson Acknowledging the Aluminum Dust Article (1944) (publisher)
• O. H. Cilley to Sumner Simpson Enclosing the Pennsylvania Survey of the Manheim Textile Mill (1944) (publisher)
• O. H. Cilley to Sumner Simpson on Improving the Manheim Textile Equipment (1944) (publisher)
• O. H. Cilley to Sumner Simpson on the Pennsylvania Dust Survey at Manheim (1944) (publisher)
• R. L. Moore to S. R. Zimmerman Sending J. Wronski's Comments on the Public Health Service Dust Report (1965) (publisher)
• S. R. Zimmerman to R. L. Moore Sending the Public Health Service's Manheim Dust Results (1965) (publisher)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for United States Asbestos Company (Manheim, Pennsylvania), OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: United States Asbestos Division · U.S. Asbestos.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names United States Asbestos Company (Manheim, Pennsylvania), across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.