Category: Historical Accounts
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Thanks to Our Pilot
From 1919 to 1930, the tat-tat of pneumatic riveters resounded from Coast to Coast and border to border as tens of thousands of buildings rose all over the land. In New York, that city of skyscrapers, there was added to the Woolworth Tower (767′ 6″) and the Metropolitan Tower (657′), the New York Life Insurance…
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Kaleidoscope of Twenty Years
In the year 1920 the world “turned another corner.” The events, “movements” and problems—mechanical, economical, political, spiritual, ethical and intellectual, which have crowded each other on and off the American scene have been too many, too rapid, too far-reaching, too intensely controversial to be analyzed in this record. Furthermore, each event as it occurred has…
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First National Convention
In 1911,” said Warren Webster, “our Company held its first national convention. For this event I engaged quarters at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, Philadelphia. Pretty nearly everyone connected with the Company attended and we had a great time. “There were a great many questions which we wished to discuss and settle and we spent three busy…
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From Taft to Harding
William Howard Taft was one of the ablest men ever to occupy the presidency, but he was no politician. His administration was marked from first to last by a series of controversies. The first of these arose when he supported his Secretary of the Interior, Richard A. Ballinger, against the attacks of Chief Forester Gifford…
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Adoption of “Sylphon” Bellows
I will go five hundred miles to investigate anything said to be equal or better than ours,” my father once told me. “So one day when I was in Chicago,” he continued, “Charlie Foster, of the American Radiator Company, told me that The Fulton Company, of Knoxville, Tenn., had a thermostatic element that would beat…
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Affairs in London
“In 1903,” recounted my father, “Warren Webster & Company made a deal with the Atmospheric Heating Company, of London, England. We licensed them under our patents. They could sell as they wanted and we guaranteed the validity of the patents. The Atmospheric Heating Company agreed to pay a flat sum per foot for each installation…
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The Kane Affair
Early in the 1900’s I made arrangements with the New Bedford Engineering Company to represent us,” said Warren Webster. This concern was owned by Thomas B. Kane, of Boston, and a man named White. White ran the New Bedford Engineering Company and Kane was manager of the Mooretown Company. “There was an acquaintance of theirs…
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The “Turn of the Century”
At Midnight on the last day of the 19th Century, pistols barked, fire-crackers exploded, horns tooted, factory whistles shrieked and bells chimed solemnly—just as on other New Year Eves. But—though unrealized at the moment, this was no mere marking of the end of one man-fixed division of time and greeting a new. It was the…
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Work and Growth
For Warren Webster and his Organization, the “Gay 90’s” were years of hard work and growth. Said my father: “I did most of the selling out in the field from 1888 to 1912 or 1914. And how I loved it! I used to take all the problems and trouble which arose and work them out…
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The “Gay 90’s”
Looking backward over the trail of American life, one decade stands out in fascinating glitter and has very appropriately been labeled the “Gay 90’s.” It seems that all the ugliness, scandals and sufferings of these years have been forgotten and only the joys and laughter survive. This glare and fanfare enveloped all classes of society…
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Warren Webster Enters the Heating Industry
In THAT busy, pushing, turbulent year of 1888, Warren Webster was doing well with his profitable ventilator and brass casting business, but on every hand new enterprises were on the way and he, like all his world, was on the lookout for Opportunity. And Opportunity did come—in the guise of a man whom we shall…
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The Years 1876 to 1888
The year 1888 is the key-year in Warren Webster’s business career. His handling of his affairs in that year—at the age of twenty-five, establishes beyond question the quality of his foresight and judgment. To really appreciate this, one must go back to 1888 and realize the conditions and facts on which this foresight and judgment…
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He Goes to Work
On April 23, 1881, two months before his eighteenth birthday, Warren Webster graduated from Union Business College, now Pierce’s Business College, in Philadelphia. His first thought was to get a job. He had always dreamed of the time when he would be in business for himself, but he realized that he must first have some…
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Back in Philadelphia – Growing Up
In the latter part of 1876, the Webster family moved back to Philadelphia, occupying a home at 1709 Columbia Avenue. During the next few years Warren Webster attended the George G. Meade Grammar School, at 18th and Oxford Streets, and Central High School, at Broad and Green Streets. “When I was about sixteen years old,”…
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1876 — The Centennial
Modern America—mechanical America as we know it, with machinery and devices to facilitate practically every action in life, is a matter of evolution. Generally founded on theories, discoveries and inventions of earlier date, the advances in all fields began to show definite form and practicability between the years 1860 and 1876. These advances were not…