SPRINGFIELD -- Poet Robert Frost might not be the first name to come to mind in connection with the machine tool industry. But William Moeser, former patent attorney for Jones & Lamson, said Frost put his finger right on an essential ingredient that brought local machine tool companies to preeminence throughout the world.
As Moeser guided Frost through the Jones & Lamson plant, a machinist showed the poet a piston he was making.
"These have to be good to .0005 inch," the machinist explained. "We make one of these a minute. It used to take two minutes." "Young man," asked Frost. "What do you plan to do with the minute?" It is essential to the American character to want to make things fast, Moeser said. The British made a Rolls Royce with deliberate, time-consuming labor. But Americans made Model T Fords by mass production at the rate of one an hour. "A Model T wasn't a work of art, but everybody had one," Moeser said. Moeser reminded an audience of 50 people at the First Congregational Church in Springfield last week that Springfield's impact on the world through its machine tool products was way out of proportion to the size of the town. He said Jones & Lamson's mission had not changed in the century since the company was chartered in Windsor in 1876: "It was to do good, make money and make machine tools." The company moved to Springfield by ox cart, and in Springfield gave birth to Fellows Gear Shaper Co., Bryant Grinder Corp. and Lovejoy Tools.
Automobiles were born out of the machine tool industry's perfection of standardization of parts and control of dimension. "If you make 8 million automobiles, you need to have 8 million crank shafts," Moeser said, and pistons have to fit anywhere. He said a beaten path developed between Springfield and Detroit: "That's where the money came from, and that's where our tools went." The money the plants made sustained the town, supporting 75 percent of its budget. "All of us who lived here had a very nice ride," said Moeser, who worked for Jones & Lamson from 1946 until 1964 and said the taxes on his house in the early years were $125. "In the 1950s, Springfield was preeminent in the industry. We had the world at our feet. The registry of visitors showed people came from all over the world." He said people came to learn and stayed six months to a year.
"We were the teachers of the world," said Moeser, who has a degree in electrical engineering and graduated from the University of Wisconsin law school. "Our little town loomed all out of proportion to our size." In 1934 and 1935, 60 percent of the local products were exported overseas, and one year half of that amount went to the Soviet Union.
Moeser said in 1953 or 1954, there was a detente in the Cold War, and Jones & Lamson was able to get export licenses to ship machines to the USSR. The machines were made to grind bearings, which could be used in a dental drill -- or in guidance systems. During the time the machines were in production, the Cold War got colder, and the Defense Department canceled the export license, saying machines that could be used to make automobiles could also be used to make tanks. Help from Cotton A team from Jones & Lamson went to Washington and, backed by Sen. Norris Cotton, R-N.H;, persuaded the federal government to buy the ma- chines, which were already made.
"They knew they were wrong," Moeser said of the Defense Department. "I was reminded what a terrific thing we were doing, and how important we were." The impact of war on local industry was illustrated by shipping orders rising to $32 million in 1943, early in World War II, and dropping to $6 million in 1946, w en the war was winding down. "We had come to depend on some kind of activity beyond our control," said Moeser, who spent one week of every month in Washington and often traveled abroad for Jones & Lamson.
To illustrate war demand, he told of a single mission in 1944 when 1,000 B-17 airplanes flew in a raid over Germany. The planes carried 4,000 engines, and each engine carried 18 pistons, Moeser said. Moeser told of an agent in Switzerland in 1935 who sold machines throughout Europe. He said every business letter the man received or wrote came or went to Springfield, Vt. The town's name was on every crate he received and cast into the base of every machine he sold.
At one point, the agent came to the United States by ship and docked in New York. He was met by two Jones & Lamson officials, and as the agent looked around the huge city, he exclaimed, "If this is New York, what must Springfield be like?" Moeser said documents cap- tured after World War II showed Springfield was on a list of desirable targets for bombing.
"Quite an achievement -- all these gnomes up in the woods making tools," said Moeser, who admitted on his first train ride to Vermont from New York in 1946 he and his wife felt they were going far away from everything -- and their first look at Springfield confirmed it.