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Short Takes
| The History of Munson Brothers & Company: Manufacturer of Farm Drain Tile, Capron, Illinois (including "Drain the Wet Land" by International Harvester Co., publ. 1921). By Marilyn Loft Houck. Richland Center, Wis.: Hynek Printing, 2005. ix+98 pp., illus., diags. $24.95 pb.
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This volume consists of two sections. The opening section describes how a now-dead industry—terra-cotta farm drainage tile—once operated. The second half of the volume reprints a booklet published in 1921 by International Harvester on farm drainage, a publication that provides a context for the role that terra-cotta drainage tile once played in American agriculture.
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The focus of the first section is the history of a small Illinois plant that manufactured farm drain tile from 1888 to 1958, for most of its life operating under the firm name Monson Brothers & Company and often employing no more than a half-dozen workers. Terra-cotta farm drainage tile provided one of the methods by which wetlands were converted into farmland between 1850 and 1950. In the late-20th century, however, the industry slowly died, a victim of the introduction of plastic drainage tile, environmental concerns over wetlands, the labor-intense nature of terra-cotta manufacturing, and the stagnation of agricultural acreage. The author of the first half of the volume, Marilyn Loft Houck, was the child of Henry Anton Loft, son of one of the company's partners and co-manager of the factory in its closing years. Her account is heavily based on Henry Loft's reminiscences.
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| Houck's account is not so much a business or financial history as a detailed, well-illustrated, and well-diagramed account of just how a small terra-cotta factory operated. The volume contains numerous illustrations of the various stages of terra-cotta manufacturing, many based on photographs taken of Monson Brothers factory operations. Although these are, unfortunately, not integrated well with the text, they are referenced there. Combined, the volume's text, diagrams, and illustrations provide an excellent guide to the terra-cotta tile-manufacturing process. |
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