Jake and the Old Gent

One night in 1940 Jake Sparling of Bay City, Mich. sat down and wrote a letter to the President. Things hadn’t been going too well for Jake. Always a good mechanic, with a natural-born feel for machines, he had made the mistake of branching out into contracting. His contract to build the Bay City waterworks proved disastrous—he lost his home, his machine shop, and all his possessions. Now he had only a small wooden shack near the railroad tracks where he was making pulleys. Even that business had gone sour. Jake modestly asked the President for some defense work.

The letter found its way to the then Council of National Defense, and a reply came back over the signature of Bill Knudsen suggesting that Jake go to Michigan Pipe Co. in Bay City. Jake got a contract for making steel flanges for wooden pipes. On an old and almost outmoded lathe he started turning out the flanges—slowly, laboriously. Jake was happy; he had his self-respect.

Then his faithful fox terrier got sick, and Jake hired a handy man named Percy Fogelsonger to care for the dog. Oldtimers in Bay City remembered Percy as one of the lumberjacks who used to come into town in the ‘903 birling logs down the Saginaw Bay. For the last 40 years he had lived from hand to mouth. When Jake’s dog recovered, Percy kept hanging around and finally Jake got another lathe and put him to work. Once more Jake was in the contracting business.

Finally Jake thought it was time to write another letter to the President: “In the last 18 months we have turned out approximately 18,000 flanges. We work on an average of 15 hours per day, seven days a week. I am 60 years old and my assistant is 79. He handles all flanges from 12-in. down, and I take them from 14 up to 30. Some of the castings weigh 365 Ib. We feel that owing to our age and the amount of work we are doing we are entitled to a pennant. . . .”

Last week Donald Nelson had the tiny plant put at the head of the 1,300 plants enrolled in the Labor-Management War Production Drive, sent out an honor flag poster and a congratulatory letter.

“I don’t pay the old gent any salary,” said Jake, discussing his labor relations. “When we run out of money, I go over to the pipe company and get what we got coming. We take out what we need for grub and living expenses and buy war bonds with the rest.

“I caught the old gent out here one day at 5 o’clock in the morning cutting weeds around the outside of the place. . . . What was I doing out here that early? Why, I was going to work.”