The Anderson Company of Indiana
We take for granted the genius of the people who invented the things we use daily. No one thinks about who created the stop light every time they have to be governed by one. You’d be hard-pressed to find a human who honors the legacy of the people who invented the technology behind the microwave oven or the cell phone.
When one has to work on a rainy morning, one of the first things you do after starting your vehicle is to reach over to the left (usually) and activate the windshield wiper blades. No one thinks about the technology behind such mechanics as the rubber-tipped booms swish back and forth, smoothly removing water droplets out of the way.
In the Midwest, wiper blades are hardly paid attention to until the winter, when we have to defrost or deice our cars. How many minutes of our lives did we spend lifting blades off the window to clear ice and snow? The intricate design of the wiper blade is not thought about until they get replaced. Yet, wipers are vital safety equipment, just as critical as brakes and headlights.
One company stood above all in the wiper blade industry: The Anderson Company of Indiana.
Mary Anderson
In the winter of 1902, Miss Mary Anderson visited New York City. While riding a trolley, she noticed how the operator’s front view got constantly obscured by ice and water. They had to stop frequently to clear the ice off the windshield with napkins or tissue or, in some extreme cases, stick their heads out the window to see.
When she returned to Alabama, Anderson came up with an idea for an invention. A squeegee-like contraption attached to a spring-loaded arm with a rubber blade. The component was operated by hand via a lever inside a vehicle. The lever would move the arm, and the operator would clear the windshield. This was the birth of the world’s first windshield wiper.
Mary got her invention patented in 1903, but it would be ten years before the automobile industry would widely adopt the idea. By then, her patient was up, but companies would take it during the advent of personal car ownership.
John W. Anderson
The Andersons (no relation to Mary) were a pioneer family, settling in Maryland in the early 1700s. Each generation of Andersons pushed further west until settling in Indiana in 1830. The Andersons were hard workers; employed as lumber millers, sawmill owners, and home construction contractors.
John W. Anderson was born on a farm in Iroquois County, Illinois, in 1883. He worked at his grandfather’s sawmill and the cow farm at nine. After boarding school, he traveled the Midwest with Wallace Manufacturing Company, working in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, achieving a management position.
He was a tinkerer and was always coming up with inventions. At 23, he filed his first patent for a bullet casing mold. Next, he invented a kerosene-burning car engine, but it was inefficient. He later went to work for the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, which owned a carriage manufacturing facility in South Bend, Indiana, with John working as superintendent of machinery.
While at Studebaker, John helped improve the company. He was an innovator, coming up with new engineering feats that boosted production. Finally, in 1902, Studebaker began producing automobiles.
In March 1918, John founded the Anderson Company in South Bend, Indiana. Armed with a contract with the Ford Motor Company, ANCO built ignition timers and engine manifolds.
In December 1922, the company announced that ANCO would relocate to Gary. They would build a brand new plant at 1075 Grant Street. In addition, the company had another facility at 957 Garfield Street. Finally, in 1925, ANCO and Industrial Products Company, another Gary auto parts manufacturer, merged.
By 1927, ANCO was a major, world-recognized windshield wiper manufacturer. The company had at least 50,000 dealers of ANCO products in the US and foreign countries.
John himself became a prominent figure in the Region. He was the president of numerous industry-related associations and committees, including The Gary Chamber of Commerce. He continued to invent and patent innumerable products, including several generations of windshield wiper blades, all manufactured in the heart of Gary.
In 1945, Anderson was the first to develop special blades for curved windshields. The Anderson Company also manufactured blades, other equipment, and associated chemicals for military vehicles, including aircraft.
John Anderson constantly donated large sums of money to The Gary Boys Club, located at the old Moose Lodge at 7th & Adams Street. As a result, it got named in his honor (John Will Anderson Boys Club). This club would later move to 5th Avenue, at the former location of The Gary YMCA, and change its name to The Boys and Girls Club of Northwest Indiana. Anderson resided at The Gary Hotel, 578 Broadway.
The Anderson Company gets remembered for being a force. Many worked there, including minorities with heavy machinery and industrial assembly skills. In addition, the company designed, developed, and patented its products.
CHANGES
John Anderson died in 1967. Soon after his death, the company changed for the worse.
Although ANCO did not suffer the same economic devastation as other inner-city industries, in 1977, ANCO was bought by Champion Spark Plugs. By the 80s, it still employed around 1,200 workers. In 1984, Champion was purchased by Cooper Industries.
Cooper subsequently sold all its assets to Federal-Mogul Corporation in the early 90s. The company consolidated all of its regional assets into one location — and that location was not Gary. Instead, the consolidated company sat at Royal Road in Burns Harbor, Indiana.
All saw this move as bogus. Champion/Cooper got criticized for attempting to break up unions. The racial factor also seemed to catalyst the move to Burns Harbor. People spun some story about it being “cheaper” to move than to expand operations in Gary.
In 1993, Federal-Mogul, what was left of ANCO, laid off workers when its original contractor did not renew. Finally, in 2000, the company took most of its operations to Juarez, Mexico. It was amongst the first major American manufacturers to ship their operations “overseas,” as the saying goes. Allegedly, this occurred because of NAFTA.
Ultimately, everybody in the Region lost to vulture capitalism and outsourcing.
This timeline comes from CityByTheLake.org. In addition, I corrected some grammatical and spelling errors (which were innumerable).
- 1918: The Anderson Company got founded by John W. Anderson in Gary, IN
- 1967: John W. Anderson passed away in 1967. The Anderson Company was a Trust when he passed away.
- 1977: The federal government said that ten years was the maximum that ANCO could operate as a Trust. Its controllers then put it on the market.
- 1978: Champion Spark Plug purchased The Anderson Company. John W. Anderson got inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame
- 1980: A claim was filed with the Federal Trade Commission that Champion’s 1978 purchase of The Anderson Company violated anti-trust laws and would create a monopoly if Champion was allowed to continue to own ANCO.
- 1983: On May 19, 1983, the Federal Trade Commission’s anti-trust claim was denied, and Champion was allowed to keep ANCO.
- 1984: Champion consolidated its Gary, Valparaiso, and Burns Harbor ANCO Windshield Wiper plants and located its operations at 402 Royal Rd. Michigan City, IN
- 1989: Cooper Industries purchased Champion and all its subsidiaries (including ANCO) (a bidding war between Cooper and Dana Corp)
- 1993: General Motors announced that it would no longer purchase its original equipment ANCO wiper arms from Cooper and instead buy them from ANCO’s long-time competitor TRICO. This announcement put ANCO out of business. As a result, ANCO laid off 300 workers from its Michigan City plant.
- 1998: In April of 1998, Cooper announced that it would sell its automotive products division.
- 1998: In August of 1998, Federal-Mogul purchased Cooper’s Automotive division. Federal-Mogul bought several companies in the United Kingdom that held multiple asbestos liability litigation claims against them.
- 2000: On March 5, 2000, Federal-Mogul announced it would relocate ANCO’s assembly, finishing, and packaging operations to Juarez, Mexico but continued to manufacture its aftermarket wiper components in Michigan City and export them to Juarez. ANCO laid off an additional 600 workers in Michigan City.
- 2002: Due to its massive Asbestos Liability Litigation Payout in the United Kingdom, Federal-Mogul filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. CEO Dick Snell left Federal-Mogul but still got paid. ANCO continued to lay off workers from its Michigan City facility.
- 2008: Federal-Mogul emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy. ANCO still gradually continued to lay off workers from its Michigan City facility (including myself) as overseas distributors began to infiltrate and subsequently devour ANCO’s aftermarket share.
- 2012: Federal-Mogul announced that it would cease operations at the Michigan City facility and relocate to Juarez, Mexico ending 95 years of Windshield Wiper manufacturing in Northwest Indiana.
- 2013: John W. Anderson will roll over in his grave for the 100,000th time.
LEISURE CURL
In 1985, a new product hit the market. Dr. Earnest Daurham of Moline, Illinois, was the creator of Leisure Curl. Leisure Curl is a line of hair care products formulated for African-Americans. He went to different salons to demo his formulas. Eventually, the company established a factory in Chicago.
Finally, in 1989, business got so good that he purchased the former Anderson Company plant in Gary and converted it into a manufacturing/distribution facility for Leisure Curl. The company operated under D’orum or D-orum. In 1993, D’orum, one of America’s largest black-owned businesses, made $20 million. The next year the company made $22 million.
In addition to selling their products worldwide, the Gary facility had a beauty salon where products could be tested.
The salon was an extension of a beauty school founded at 325 W. 103rd Street in Chicago. The Gary salon was a school that taught students the beauty care trade. Tuition was free and catered to mostly poor and indigent mothers.
In 1997, Earnest Daurham got in trouble for evading tax laws. It owned $715,000 in property taxes. D’orum shut down its operations in 1998.
Andy’s Truck and Equipment, owned by slumlord Andy Young from Wadsworth, Illinois, bought the property and turned it into a junkyard.
In 1999, a fire gutted a portion of the building, partially demolishing it.
Today it is still a junkyard owned by Andy Young, owner of Region Growth Capital, LLC, a spawn of the controversial joint venture project, MaiaCo, apartnership between wealthy politicians/businesspeople and the City of Gary.
