Keasbey & Mattison Co.

Keasbey & Mattison Company of Ambler, Pennsylvania, dated its start to 1873 and made 85% magnesia pipe covering, asbestos-cement shingles, pipe and sheet, textiles, packings and sprayed Limpet asbestos from fiber dug at its own Bell mine in Quebec. Turner & Newall of England took control in the 1930s and owned it outright from 1938. In 1962 the company sold its plants to Certain-teed, Nicolet Industries and others, and it was dissolved in 1967.

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

History

The company's own advertising said that "Keasbey & Mattison has made it serve mankind... since 1873," and a 1948 catalog said the firm started that year "as a two-man business."¹² A 1948 company advertisement in Asbestos, the industry's trade journal, told the story this way: Henry G. Keasbey and Richard V. Mattison opened a small business in Philadelphia whose basic ingredient was magnesium carbonate, and in 1880 Dr. Mattison, blending asbestos fibre with basic magnesium carbonate, developed 85% magnesia pipe insulation.⁸ The same advertisement claimed for the company America's first asbestos textiles in commercial quantities, its first asbestos-cement roofing shingles and the first asbestos corrugated sheets; these are the company's own claims.⁸ A 1919 profile of Dr. Mattison, recalled by the journal fifty years later, credited him with bringing asbestos-cement shingles to this country and with making the company the first maker of molded 85% magnesia.⁹

The Bell mine came to the company in 1906, according to the mine's own centenary booklet, and in 1920 the company advertised itself in Asbestos as owner of the Bell Asbestos Mines, "Miners and Shippers of Asbestos."⁵¹⁰ In 1929 the journal reported that Mattison had bought all the stock of both companies and become their sole owner.⁵ That year Keasbey & Mattison also advertised as sales agent for asbestos mines at Bear Canyon, in Gila County, Arizona.¹¹ In December 1931 the journal noted new officers at the company and the merging of the sales of the Ambler Asbestos Shingle Company into Keasbey & Mattison.¹² In 1933 A. S. Blagden, president of Keasbey & Mattison, sat on the industry's Asbestos Committee for the asbestos-cement products division.¹³

The U.S. Bureau of Mines reported for 1934 that Turner & Newall, Ltd., of Great Britain had "acquired controlling interest in Keasbey & Mattison Co."⁵ The federal appeals court in Hargrave v. Fibreboard later found that Turner & Newall owned 100 percent of the company's stock from 1938 to 1962.⁶ After the takeover, a 1971 history in Asbestos says, the brake lining department moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey, as Ferodo and Asbestos, Inc., and a few years later to Montreal.¹⁴ In 1935 and 1936 the company advertised as sole United States distributor for Ferodo brake linings.¹⁵¹⁶ The 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, a compilation by plaintiffs' attorneys, describes the relationship differently: it says Keasbey & Mattison went into receivership and was for a while managed by Turner & Newall, and it does not mention Turner & Newall's ownership of the stock or give a date for the receivership.⁴⁰

The company kept building. In 1937 it announced asbestos-cement pressure pipe plants at Ambler and St. Louis, to employ about 350 men, and its president, Ernest Muehleck, wrote that both were finished in 1938.¹⁷¹⁸ Textile work moved from Ambler to a plant at Meredith, New Hampshire, where operations began in 1951.¹⁹ In 1954 Asbestos put a Keasbey & Mattison plant at Santa Clara, California, on its cover.²⁰ Muehleck retired as president in 1957, and by 1960 Robert R. Porter was chairman and president.²¹²²

Asbestos products

The company advertised its "Featherweight" 85% magnesia pipe covering for decades: in 1922 as "The Less it Weighs, The Better it Pays," and in the 1950s as "the most efficient and practical insulation up to 600° F."²³²⁴ An insurer's 1981 list of asbestos products gives its 85 Magnesia pipe covering, block and cement as 15 percent asbestos.²⁵ Advertisements of the 1940s and 1950s listed asbestos-cement siding and roofing shingles, wallboards, corrugated and flat sheets, acoustical material, asbestos and magnesia pipe and block insulation, electrical materials, packings, textiles, paper and millboard, marine insulation, and "Century" asbestos-cement water pipe; a 1951 advertisement called the company the "original manufacturers of asbestos-cement roofing shingles in this country."³²⁶ In 1932 the company told buyers of its raw fiber that it was the same quality "as that used by Keasbey & Mattison Company in the manufacture of its own products."⁴

Two products had notable wartime and later histories. Sprayed "Limpet" Asbestos, introduced in 1936, was described by the journal in 1954 as "the first asbestos acoustical product in this country," and it was sprayed in tankers of the Gulf Refining Company.²⁷ "Century" Apac asbestos-cement sheet was supplied in "tremendous quantities" for the doors of the Navy's airship hangars during the war, the journal reported in 1946.²⁸ Around 1960 the company was advertising "K&M" asbestos-cement pressure pipe with its Fluid-Tite coupling.²⁹

What the documents show

Keasbey & Mattison was among the companies tied to the asbestos dust research of Dr. Leroy U. Gardner at the Saranac Laboratory.³⁰³¹ In January 1937 W. C. Scott, a vice president, wrote to Sumner Simpson of Raybestos-Manhattan asking whether the memorandum agreement with Dr. Gardner "has finally been executed, and how many parties there are to the agreement," and in February he wrote again to Simpson's secretary, M. N. Garvey.³⁰³²

Letters from Ernest Muehleck to W. W. F. Shepherd of Turner & Newall carried Gardner's work across the Atlantic.³³ In March 1943 Muehleck enclosed Gardner's outline of a monograph on asbestosis and wrote that "we feel that reference to the question of cancer susceptibility should be omitted from the report since it is inconclusive"; Gardner's own letter said the question "now seems more significant than I had previously imagined."³¹ In June 1943 Muehleck forwarded a Gardner letter saying that "the question of carcinogenic action from asbestos is by no means settled" and that "I shall maintain the same attitude and say nothing about our observation."³³ In May 1946 Muehleck wrote that "it is high time we received something definite from Dr. Gardner and that we start bringing pressure to bear so that he submits his final report to us."³⁴

The company also took part in the Asbestos Textile Institute.³⁵ Leon Horowitz of Keasbey & Mattison reported to A. W. Spedding on the Institute's Air Hygiene and Manufacturing Committee meeting of September 1960, when members discussed dust counts, compensation claims, X-rays and respirators.³⁵ His confidential report of June 1961 records Dr. Kenneth Smith of Johns-Manville telling the committee of studies linking lung cancer with asbestosis, and Smith's view "that too much irresponsible writing on this subject would harm the industry since the legal profession uses it for their own purposes."³⁶ Horowitz's September 1961 report records Smith's argument for inviting a U.S. Public Health Service study and his statement that "irresponsible reporting must be eliminated to avoid the high cost of compensation and product liability litigations."³⁷

Keasbey & Mattison products later came up in asbestos lawsuits. In 1984 the insulation contractor ACandS listed Keasbey & Mattison among the makers whose products it had used.³⁸

After 1962

In 1962, the Hargrave court found, Keasbey & Mattison sold its plants and other assets as part of a plan of dissolution, and the Pennsylvania Department of State issued its dissolution certificate in 1967.⁶ Turner & Newall's chairman, R. M. Bateman, wrote in 1971 that the pipe plants went to Certain-teed Products and "the remaining manufacturing operations to Nicolet," and that the Meredith textile plant was sold to American Asbestos Textile Corporation.⁷¹⁹ The Sourcebook says that Keasbey & Mattison was liquidated in 1962 and its divisions sold off, with Certain-teed taking the asbestos-cement pipe division and Nicolet acquiring the Industrial Products Division.⁴⁰ By January 1964 Asbestos was listing a "Keasbey & Mattison Division, Nicolet Industries, Inc." at Ambler.³⁹ In the data sheets The Travelers Insurance Company compiled for a 1980 asbestos seminar, mostly from defendants' answers to interrogatories, two buyers described what they took. Nicolet said it bought Keasbey & Mattison's assets "but did not assume its liabilities," and a Nicolet answer filed with its sheet says it sold asbestos products under the "K & M" brand from September 28, 1962 through December 31, 1964, and not afterward.⁴¹⁴² Amatex, an asbestos textile maker at Norristown, Pennsylvania, said it bought the assets of Keasbey & Mattison and of Pacor and "Assumed certain limited liabilities"; it listed a plant at Meredith, New Hampshire, "Since 1962," the year of the Meredith textile plant's sale described above.⁴³ In Hargrave, decided in 1983, Nicolet tried to hold Turner & Newall liable for Keasbey & Mattison's asbestos as its alter ego or successor; the court held that Turner & Newall's control was that of a sole shareholder and ruled for Turner & Newall.⁶ Turner & Newall sold the Bell mine to a Quebec government agency in 1980.⁵

References

1. Asbestos magazine, February 1943, p. 11
2. Keasbey & Mattison Company: "Century" Asbestos-Cement Pipe with "Century" Simplex Couplings (1948), p. 1
3. Asbestos magazine, September 1946, p. 11
4. Asbestos magazine, May 1932, p. 11
5. Bell Asbestos mine, Thetford Mines, Quebec
6. Hargrave v. Fibreboard Corp. (5th Cir. 1983)
7. Keasbey & Mattison Co. / Nicolet Industries, Inc. plant at Ambler, Pennsylvania
8. Asbestos magazine, April 1948, p. 11
9. Asbestos magazine, December 1969, p. 67
10. Asbestos magazine, February 1920, p. 15
11. Asbestos magazine, November 1929, p. 11
12. Asbestos magazine, December 1931, p. 6
13. Asbestos magazine, November 1933, p. 5
14. Keasbey & Mattison (Brake Lining Department) / Ferodo and Asbestos, Inc. plant at New Brunswick, New Jersey
15. Asbestos magazine, February 1936, p. 11
16. Asbestos magazine, February 1935, p. 11
17. Keasbey & Mattison Company plant at St. Louis, Missouri
18. Asbestos magazine, December 1937, p. 5
19. Keasbey & Mattison / American Asbestos Textile Corporation plant at Meredith, New Hampshire
20. Asbestos magazine, February 1954, cover
21. Asbestos magazine, April 1957, contents
22. Asbestos magazine, July 1960, p. 50
23. Asbestos magazine, August 1922, p. 33
24. Asbestos magazine, August 1953, p. 5
25. 85 Magnesia (Keasbey & Mattison)
26. Asbestos magazine, March 1951, p. 9
27. Limpet (Keasbey & Mattison)
28. 'Century' Apac (Keasbey & Mattison)
29. Asbestos magazine, April 1960, p. 5
30. W. C. Scott of Keasbey & Mattison to Sumner Simpson Asking About the Saranac Agreement (1937)
31. Ernest Muehleck of Keasbey & Mattison to W. W. F. Shepherd of Turner & Newall Enclosing Gardner's Monograph Outline (1943)
32. W. C. Scott of Keasbey & Mattison to M. N. Garvey Asking Again About the Saranac Agreement (1937)
33. Ernest Muehleck to W. W. F. Shepherd Enclosing Gardner's Letter on Tuberculosis and Cancer (1943)
34. Ernest Muehleck to W. W. F. Shepherd Enclosing Vandiver Brown's Letters on Gardner's Final Report (1946)
35. ATI-31: Memo from Leon D. Horowitz to A. W. Spedding on the Asbestos Textile Institute Air Hygiene & Manufacturing Committee Meeting of Sept. 8-9, 1960
36. Leon B. Horowitz's Report to A. W. Spedding on Dr. Kenneth Smith's Asbestosis and Cancer Talk at the Asbestos Textile Institute (June 1961)
37. Leon B. Horowitz's Report to A. W. Spedding on the Asbestos Textile Institute Meeting of September 1961
38. ACandS's Answers to Plaintiffs' Master Interrogatories in Bellows v. Fibreboard (1984), p. 10
39. Asbestos magazine, January 1964, p. 25
40. 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. 159.
41. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Nicolet Industries Product Information, p. 3
42. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Nicolet Industries Product Information, p. 2
43. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Amatex Product Information, p. 2

Asbestos products

76 products our documents name Keasbey & Mattison Co. as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

Plants

Plants where asbestos products were made that the documents say Keasbey & Mattison Co. ran.

• Keasbey & Mattison (Brake Lining Department) / Ferodo and Asbestos, Inc. plant at New Brunswick, New Jersey
• Keasbey & Mattison / American Asbestos Textile Corporation plant at Meredith, New Hampshire
• Keasbey & Mattison Co. / Nicolet Industries, Inc. plant at Ambler, Pennsylvania
• Keasbey & Mattison Company / Asbestos Manufacturing Company plant at Lachine, Quebec
• Keasbey & Mattison Company plant at New Orleans, Louisiana
• Keasbey & Mattison Company plant at St. Louis, Missouri

Mines

Asbestos mines the documents name Keasbey & Mattison Co. as running or owning.

• Bell Asbestos mine, Thetford Mines, Quebec

Court cases

1 court decision in our case-law library name Keasbey & Mattison Co. as a defendant.

• Hargrave v. Fibreboard Corp. (1983)

In our library

27 documents in our library name Keasbey & Mattison Co., by collection.

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Keasbey & Mattison Co., OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Keasbey & Mattison Company · Keasbey & Mattison Company, Ambler, Pa. · The Keasbey & Mattison Co., Ambler, Pennsylvania.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names Keasbey & Mattison Co., across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.