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Home : Quarterly Archives : Volume 26 |
Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society |
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Source: April 1988 Volume 26 Number 2, Pages 71–78 "A Proper Concern" : The PQ Corporation In the summer of 1973 the Philadelphia Quartz Company moved its corporate headquarters from the Public Ledger Building in Philadelphia to a new building in Valley Forge, on Swedesford Road between Old Eagle School Road and West Valley Road in Tredyffrin Township. It brought with it a heritage of almost 150 years. It was on July 21, 1831 that a small "manufactory" for the production and sale of soaps and candles opened for business at 377 South Second Street in Philadelphia. The founder and proprietor of the new enterprise was Joseph Elkinton, a trained silversmith, who was apparently moved to engage in a simpler and more basic trade because of his deep-seated spiritual and religious conviction. A diligent and God-fearing Quaker (the fifth generation of his family in America), Elkinton had already devoted 15 years of his life to the Society of Friends as a missionary among the Indiansin Tunessassa, New York. From all indications, Joseph Elkinton's Philadelphia business prospered from the start. Less than two years after he made the first entry in his day book (with typical exactness) showing that he started business with $1,697.33 3/4, the company was making periodic shipments to Pittsburgh, New York and New Orleans, as well as trading with local residents and the masters of brigs and schooners from distant ports. Within a decade, Elkinton was exporting goods to Europe, Haiti and other points. By 1842, expansion was required and a three-story brick factory was erected on the rear of the Second Street property. The business was very much a family enterprise, and early records reveal many a letter between Elkinton's daughter and sons and their father as he traveled on business. It was on one such trip, in 1851, that he wrote to his eldest son Joseph expressing the simple philosophy that continues to be quoted to this day: "Thy account of the business is very satisfactory and I may say to thee my son I have entire confidence in thy intention to do the best thing thou canst, and have no doubt thou will be able to get along to thy own satisfaction and mine also, as thou continues to dwell under a proper concern for the best things." Four years later, the founder took Joseph into the business as a partner. A younger son, Thomas, became the third partner in 1859. This new generation would see the company through the remainder of the century and Thomas Elkinton, in particular, would prove to be one of the most important figures in the company's history. This younger Elkinton was an innovator, a man whose interests and skills ever led him down new paths. His hand could be seen in the impressive array of basic and fancy soaps that bore the Elkinton name in the 1880s. More significantly, however, just as the candle making industry began everywhere to fade out, due to the advent of the much brighter kerosene lamps, his attention was caught by an item in a German scientific journal-- an item concerning soluble or "water" glass, silicate of soda. Soluble silicates were not new; they had been known for centuries, as far back as the ancient alchemists. But they had no industrial significance until a German scientist began working with them in the 19th century. That work revealed a truly fascinating product, a substance with many properties whose uses appeared virtually endless. These silicates were made then, as now, by fusing sand with soda ash, an alkali not unlike baking soda. These two ingredients were melted in furnaces, allowed to cool, and solidified into a clear transparent glass that looked like window glass but which could be dissolved in steam under pressure to form sticky liquids of varying consistencies, depending upon the proportion of alkali, silica and water in each mixture. Thomas Elkinton began his experiments with soluble silicates in 1857. His initial efforts were to determine the use of silicate to replace rosin as a detergent agent in soap-making. His timing was, to put it mildly, fortuitous. The Civil War, which began within a few years, would cut off the supply of basic rosins from the South to soap-makers in the North, and drive the cost of other raw materials dramatically upward. But Elkinton's silicate-based soaps could still be produced at a reasonable price. They had already found favor in the marketplace, and other soap manufacturers took notice. The first recorded sale of silicate to another manufacturer appears in the company books on January 21, 1861, some thirty years after the company's founding. For all practical purposes, Joseph Elkinton & Sons had begun the silicate industry in the United States.
Philadelphia Quartz Company's first sodium silicate plant at Ninth and Mifflin streets, Philadelphia, in a 1884 woodcut A major expansion was undertaken shortly thereafter with the construction of a manufacturing plant at Ninth and Mifflin streets in Philadelphia. Then, in 1864, a partnership was established with John Greacen Jr. and Samuel Booth, forming a new company which would manufacture and trade in silicates exclusively -- the Philadelphia Quartz Company. The name derived from the fact that high-grade quartz sand is the basic source of silica. Within four years the Elkinton brothers bought out the interests of Greacen and Booth, and conducted the new enterprise under complete family ownership. The soap business carried on under its earlier name at the original location, but hardly flourished in the years after the War. As Joseph wrote to his brother at one point, "of soap the unwashed seem to require but little or none". Thomas, meanwhile, was continuing to expand his knowledge, delving into new processes and additional uses for silicate of soda. As a result of his efforts, Philadelphia Quartz Company soon began producing as many brands and types of silicates as the original business had soaps. Still growth, while steady, remained slow over the next decade. So it was that in 1876, the Elkinton brothers turned their attention toward amore forceful marketing of the products they made. A soap maker in Marshalltown, Iowa, Charles W. Goudy, had regularly been buying unusually large quantities of silicate to put into his soaps. Upon investigation they found that Goudy possessed unique sales skills to go along with his entrepreneurial expertise, and they quickly hired him as their first sales representative. It was a brilliant move, because Goudy turned out to be a natural, a born salesman. Goudy's efforts soon resulted in increasing sales figures to soap manufacturers. Meanwhile, the discoveries of Thomas Elkinton were also beginning to bear commercial fruit, as more and more industrial uses for silicate became apparent. By the last decade of the century, the use of silicate as an adhesive was showing particular growth, and its use in laminating fiber sheets in box board and wall board was increasing markedly. By 1892 the annual output of the Philadelphia Quartz Company was just shy of 15 million pounds. Soap manufacture was finally abandoned in 1904, and the total interest of the Elkinton family was now committed to the development of the silicate industry. Philadelphia Quartz Company was incorporated in the same year, and a new generation of management stood ready to take over the reins as the new century began. In 1879 William T. Elkinton, son of Joseph and a grandson of the first Joseph Elkinton, had come to work in the Philadelphia Quartz Company factory in Philadelphia, at the munificent wage of $4.50 per week. His brother Alfred followed soon afterwards. George W. Goudy, son of Charles Goudy, also joined the company in 1896 as a general sales manager and assistant to his father. They were the start of a new generation, young men who would guide the company through the early part of the new century and solidify its position in the industry their forebears had helped to create, laying the groundwork for the changes and achievements to come. The younger Goudy was one of the moving forces in the establishment of silicates as binding agents in the fiber box industry, and helped expand the company's international markets with his travels in Europe and South America. William T. Elkinton became president of the company in 1907, a post he was to hold until 1929 when he assumed the post of chairman of the Board. During the twenty-three years he served as president, Philadelphia Quartz Company established new plants in Buffalo, New York; Kansas City, Kansas; St. Louis, Missouri; and other locations in the East and Midwest. His brother Alfred, whose interests leaned toward plant development and construction, oversaw much of the company's physical expansion in the early years and then, in 1917, assumed the presidency of the Philadelphia Quartz Company of California, a joint venture established in partnership with the Stauffer Chemical Company. He was to hold the top position in this new venture until 1934. In 1930 Thomas W. Elkinton, son of William T. Elkinton and a great-grandson of the founder, became president. He was the man at the helm when the company celebrated its 100th anniversary the following year, in the midst of the Great Depression. Research and technical advancement were the keys to company growth during the 1930s. Chief among the new products which emerged were highly alkaline, crystalline forms of sodium metasilicate pentahydrate and sodium sesquisilicate, stable and free-flowing detergent additives that attracted many new customers to the company's ranks. The war years put tremendous strain on the company, of course, but it also opened some new avenues. For example, silica gels, made from soluble silica, were discovered to be an excellent base for the catalysts used to crack crude oil, and sales volume leaped to proportions undreamed of in earlier times. One customer built huge silicate storage tanks across the Delaware River from the company's Chester plant, and huge barges shuttled back and forth carrying sodium silicate. As the national emergency dramatically increased the demand for silicates, a PQ fleet of well over 100 tank cars crisscrossed the country regularly to meet the company's contracts with major customers. One of the key figures throughout those times -- indeed, one of the most important figures in the entire history of the U. S. silicate industry -- was Dr. James G. Vail, who had come to Philadelphia Quartz Company as a laboratory chemist back in 1905. Vail, whose commitment to his Quaker faith was reminiscent of that of the founder Joseph Elkinton, and whose research brilliance matched that of Thomas Elkinton, had become a director of the company and chemical manager in 1938. He contributed mightily to the company's technical advancement and came to hold, both jointly and alone, numerous patents in the silicate field. He was an accomplished lecturer, and wrote more than a score of technical articles and a comprehensive volume which remains to this day the very "bible" of the silicate industry. The post-war years brought with them new challenges for the company and its people. They were to develop new markets and new uses for its products -- Dotassium silicate, developed for use with cathode-ray tubes for radar installations, for example, became a popular material for settling and affixing phosphors on television picture tubes -- but competition in the newly revitalized American economy was fierce. PQ was a small, privately-owned firm -- sales did not reach $10 million annually until 1950 -- and several large public firms, such as Allied Chemical, DuPont, Diamond Alkali and Stauffer Chemical, had come into the silicate chemicals field. Nor was all the pressure from major companies; smaller, regional producers were being created almost daily. The times, as a songwriter of the period pointed out, were "a-changin'". Philadelphia Quartz Company would continue to change with them. The company's management began to take a serious look at the company's position and where it might be leading. Tentative talks about mergers with larger firms had been held, and at least one offer was seriously considered. A new direction of some sort was in the wind and, as so often had happened in the firm's history, it was a young new management team that would spearhead the change. Thomas W. Elkinton announced his retirement as president and his assumption of the post of chairman of the Board on February 20, 1958. His son Thomas (Tim) Elkinton was elected president, the fourth direct descendant of the founder to hold the post. Tim Elkinton came to the presidency with definite convictions about the future of the company. "We have felt with increasing urgency during the past year," he observed, "the need for our Company to expand its studies of existing uses and new uses for soluble silicates, and also the need for diversifying our products." He was also convinced that the company had to "shift from being a manufacturing-oriented company to become a marketing-oriented one". The new company management turned its attention initially to an internal restructuring-- "breaking down the barriers", as one put it - that would improve communication and cooperation among the various departments of Philadelphia Quartz. A new kind of Philadelphia Quartz Company was emerging over the 1960s. Not that the company was turning its back on the commitment to technical excellence that had served it so well. Far from it. Chester L. Baker, the new vice-president for research and development, for example, conducted research into the production of metasilicate as a dry, free-flowing product that was a major factor in that product's development as a basic industrial detergent alkali, and his contributions to the manufacturing side of the operations became a part of the company legend. Management also decided that the company must become an international one, extending its U. S. leadership into world leadership. It needed actively to pursue new markets for its products; past procedure had to be reversed so that PQ would learn what the market needed and demanded, rather than merely providing it with new products developed in isolation. Further, the company would look to acquire other firms that fit specific technical or marketing strengths deemed to offer the most synergistic growth potential. As part of the new management approach, PQ undertook the full integration of its affiliated companies into the corporation, buyinq out its partners in California and Canada. Tim Elkinton became president of both affiliates in 1958 to strengthen the relationship. The first steps toward growth through acquisition were made with the purchase of a line of formulated laundry products from the Ohio-based Keever Company in 1968, and the acquisition of a silicate plant in Butler, New Jersey from American-Esna Corporation gave PQ an additional production facility and new products. The basic organizational restructuring was virtually complete in the early 1970s. Decision-making authority now rested with the senior managers of the firm's functional divisions rather than almost entirely in the hands of the Board of Directors. After fifteen years at the helm, in 1973, Tim Elkinton stepped down as president and top officer of the company, taking a post as vice-chairman of the Board, withdrawing from the active management of the company. Morris Evans, a fifth direct descendant of the company's founder, became the new chairman of the Board and chief executive officer, with responsibility for long range planning and the establishment of corporate policies; and Paul Staley became the first person outside the founding Elkinton family to hold the office of president and chief operating officer, with responsibility for the management and day-to-day operations of the company. The Board's role hence forth would be to direct rather than to manage.
Corporate headquarters of the PQ Corporation on Swedesford Road in Tredyffrin Township in 1981. This modern company, which officially changed its name to PQ Corporation in 1978, was divided into two chemical divisions under the new structure. Industrial Chemicals Division products consisted principally of the commodity soluble silicates that had sustained the company through most of its existence. Special Chemicals Division products were formulated materials and three classes of specialized silica-based items: sols, gels, and hollow microspheres. Sodium silicate has changed little from the basic chemical that Thomas Elkinton began to experiment with back in 1857. It is still used primarily to supply the detergent industry, and to make catalysts for petroleum refining and as a chemical intermediate. Still, as Paul Staley has observed, "It is truly a fascinating product. We are a world leader in its technology and even we still don't fully understand all of its physical properties. It has a multitude of characteristics, and every time one market for it fades away, another seems to develop." The Specialty Chemicals Division produces silica sols (used as polishing aids by the semiconductor industry and as high temperature bonding agents, among other things), silica gels (used as selective adsorbents to clarify beer and other beverages), and hollow microspheres (tiny glass bubbles which can be used to reduce the weight of plastic parts). Increased attention is also being paid to crystalline sodium aluminosilicates, or synthetic zeolites, downstream derivatives of sodium silicate which show promise in areas from phosphate-free detergent formulation to refinery catalyst manufacture. In 1977, PQ made a major acquisition when it acquire Potters Industries, Inc. of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, a company that produces fine, solid glass beads for reflective highway striping, shot peening, and other industrial end uses. The Potters acquisition immediately changed the overall PQ picture, particularly in the international arena. Although Potters had seven plants in the U. S., it did about 40% of its business overseas, with manufacturing facilities in Great Britain, West Germany, Japan and Australia. PQ now had 40 plants, twenty in this country and twenty abroad. (The company has since added twelve more, for a total of fifty-two.) "We are what management theorists like to refer to as a threshold company," Paul Staley observed at the time of the company's sesqui-centennial in 1981. "We established ourselves on a basic product and market thrust and now have the potential to break out of that somewhat limited situation into a company which is larger, more diversified. We have the people, the resources and the technology to do just that, and we're in the transition stage right now. We've come a long way in a very short time recently, and yet we have established traditions and values that stretch back 150 years." It has been a long journey from Second Street in Philadelphia. A major international corporation has grown out of the diligent efforts of a single Quaker entrepreneur and his family. A privately held company has survived national and world turmoil, economic upheaval, and the vagaries of the marketplace. PQ has prevailed because, at each crucial point in its history, management and employees have manifested the "proper concern for the best things" that the founder wished, and so have crossed each new threshold with faith in themselves, their company and their products.
1912-1927
1927-1965
1965-1973
1973-1979
1979 Logotypes used by the Philadelphia Quartz Company and PQ Corporation |
