TEXTILES: The Pride of Uxbridge

In New England’s depressed textile industry, it is standard procedure these days to operate on a part-time basis, filling orders if & when they come in. But last week one New England mill, Bachmann Uxbridge Worsted Corp. of Uxbridge, Mass, was so busy that it was working three shifts six days a week, had so many unfilled orders that employees agreed to postpone their annual vacations. To many a hard-hit New England textile man, Bachmann Uxbridge’s prosperity looks like some sort of dark magic. But President Harold J. (for John) Walter, 52, explains it as just the payoff of common sense.

Walter believes that any New England textile mill which keeps its machinery modern and its research ahead of the pack can compete successfully with Southern mills. Since World War II alone, Walter has spent $14 million on improving and modernizing his plant. He rebuilt his main factory, installed air conditioning, and new machinery, much of which was developed by Bachmann Uxbridge’s own research laboratory. Result: output per worker has increased as much as 75%, and Uxbridge is now considered one of the most modern woolen and worsted mills in New England.

“Woolen and worsted mill” is now something of a misnomer for Bachmann Uxbridge. While some woolen and worsted men cursed synthetics, Walter joined the enemy, became one of the nation’s first makers of wool and synthetic blends. He pioneered in the blending of wool with rayon, the wool-nylon serge now used by the Army, and the Air Force blue uniform material. After World War II, he started experimenting with such new man-made fibers as Dacron and Orion-now Uxbridge is one of the largest users of synthetics in the woolen and worsted field Says President Walter: “Wool will never be replaced as a basic fabric. But the textile industry is taking to synthetics in much the same way as the steel industry took to alloys.”

Under Wraps. Colorado-born Harold Walter went into the textile business 30 years ago against his better judgment. After graduating from the University of Colorado (21), he wanted to go into the packing business with his father, but his fiancée brought him to New England instead, to work for her father, general manager and half-owner of what was then called the Uxbridge Worsted Co. Having married the boss’s daughter, Walter took a job as apprentice mill hand on a one-year trial, liked it so well that he stayed on. He advanced to overseer, superintendent and assistant general manager; when his father-in-law died in 1932, 31-year-old Walter took over as operating boss.

Walter not only licked the Depression but added six plants (including three in the South), and in 21 years built volume from $8,000,000 to a rate of nearly $60 million a year and a six-month profit of more than $500,000 in 1953.

Drafters & Slashers. Dissatisfied with the archaic techniques of the worsted industry, Walter started experimenting with new equipment. Working alone or with machine toolmakers Warner & Swasey, Bachmann Uxbridge developed a raft of new equipment, some of which has since become standard in the worsted industry: the Pin Drafter, which is a more efficient machine for drawing wool into strands prior to spinning; a more efficient slasher which coats the yarn with a chemical to make it stronger; an automatic spray device for oiling and tinting yarn; a labor-saving tacking machine for holding fabrics together while they are being processed; an automatic fabric-marking device for identifying suppliers.

Bachmann Uxbridge also developed a new marking chalk which it sells to competitors and which pays for much of the company’s chemical research program. Early in 1951, Walter started turning out poodle cloth, which is still its biggest seller in the women’s wear field. Its latest development, still under wraps in the company’s laboratory: a revolutionary method of making worsted yarn at a lower cost.