George Stout Shimer
GEORGE STOUT SHIMER, President of The Milton Manufacturing Company, is the younger son of Samuel Johnston Shimer and Catherine Amanda (Stout) Shimer. He was born in Bethlehem Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, March 26, 1866. His mother was a woman of singularly sweet and gentle disposition; his father a quiet and unassuming gentleman of great industry, broad mind, and Keen business instincts.
The Shimer family in two branches had for several generations been prominent residents of Northampton County, Pennsylvania, but in 1871 Samuel J. Shimer and his brother, George Shimer, removed to Milton, Pennsylvania, where with thers they engaged in the manufacture of lumber under the firm name of Applegate, Shimer cc Company. In 1872 the firm built in Milton a sawmill and planing mill, with a machine shop attached. In 1873 Samuel J. Shimer and George Shimer perfected and patented a cutter head, a woodworking device now known and used in every civilized country in the world, and began its man- -facture in their machine shop at Milton.
In 1880 there was a disastrous fire in Milton, h:ch destroyed a great part of the place, invading the mill of the company. Following this re the plant was rebuilt as a machine shop for the manufacture of cutter heads, and in 1884 George Shimer retired from the firm and the business was conducted by S. J. Shimer individ- _ally until 1888.
While these business activities, headed by his :'a:her. were developing, Mr. George S. Shimer as obtaining his education in the public schools Milton, and was graduated from the High ".aool there in 1885. Besides the sound preparaing in the school-room, he was getting a more training for business life by devoting his ,.rs before and after school and his vacation rriods to work in the shops of S. J. Shimer & company, and after his graduation put in his en- re rime at the plant under his father's direction, .earning to run the machines, familiarizing himself industrial operations, and getting a firm a upon the mechanical details of the industry which the plant was devoted. In 1887 he was
Elected superintendent of the plant, and in 1888 was admitted to the firm of S. J. Shimer & Sons as a partner. In that same year the firm took over The Milton Manufacturing Company, manufacturers of cold punched nuts, hot pressed nuts, and refined bar iron, and devoted to the rolling of steel bars. In 1901, when S. J. Shimer, his father, died, Mr. George S. Shimer was elected to succeed him as president of The Milton Manufacturing Company, which position he has ever since held, and in 1906 the affairs of the two companies were completely separated, his brother taking over the business of S. J. Shimer & Sons and Mr. George S. Shimer taking full control of The Milton Manufacturing Company.
Under Mr. Shimer's management The Milton Manufacturing Company has enjoyed a remarkable growth during the past seventeen years, and is now a business of very large volume and international scope. It has also borne a prominent share in important war work, including the manufacture of gun shells, first for the Government of Great Britain and later for the United States. The development has included a considerable enlargement of the plant, which is now the leading employer of labor in that section.
Mr. Shimer, in 1887, married Miss Libba Moore, who had graduated with him from the Milton High School in 1885. They have three children, George S. Shimer, Jr., first vice-president of The Milton Manufacturing Company; Mrs. Florence (Shimer) Krise, wife of Raymond W. Krise, second vice-president of The Milton Manufacturing Company, and Mrs. Miriam (Shimer) Hemminger, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Mr. Shimer and his family are faithful and active members of the Presbyterian Church and take, an interest in all church movements.
Mr. Shimer is chairman of the Industrial Com-mittee of the Council of National Defense of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania; a director of the Young Men's Christian Association, and a director of the Milton National Bank. He has served as a member of the Borough Council of Milton for about twenty years and has always taken an active and influential part in any plan for the betterment of Milton.
THE State of Pennsylvania has long held precedence not only in the aggregate volume but also in the great diversity of its activities in the various departments of iron manufacture, and its preeminence in this respect is very largely upheld by firms of old established prominence which have come to their present leadership by the processes of gradual but solid development.
One of the notable enterprises of this kind is The Milton Manufacturing Company, of Milton, Pennsylvania, who are manufacturers of cold punched nuts, hot pressed nuts, wrought washers, and refined bar iron. It was established and or-ganized in 1886 by S. J. Shimer, S. W. Murray, John Jenkins, and John Lauth, for the purpose of developing specialties in the iron trade. In 1888 it was taken over by S. J. Shimer & Sons, and in 1893 it was incorporated as The Milton Manufacturing Company.
S. J. Shimer & Sons, which was organized in 1888, conducted a machine shop which had been established in 1880 by S. J. Shimer for the purpose of manufacturing a cutter head which had been perfected by members of the Shimer family, who had previously been engaged for several years in lumber manufacturing at Milton. After 1888 the business of S. J. Shimer & Sons in the manufacture of cutter heads and woodworking machines and the business of The Milton Manufacturing Company were conducted under a single ownership and management, but run as separate organizations. Mr. George S. Shimer was superintendent of the business of S. J. Shimer & Sons, and filled the same office for The Milton Manufacturing Company until the death of his father, Samuel J. Shimer, in 1901, when he was elected president of The Milton Manufacturing Company, and upon the separation of the business affairs of the two companies in 1906 Mr. George S. Shimer took over The Milton Manufacturing Company and his brother took over the enterprise of S. J. Shimer & Sons. The present organization of The Milton Manufacturing Company is as follows George S. Shimer, president; George S. Shimer, Jr., vice-president; Raymond W. Krise, second vice-president; Thomas M.
Miles, general manager; W. Bruce dinger, treas-urer; O. H. Reinhart, secretary; H. W. Cham- berlin, assistant secretary; Frank H. Miles, chief engineer; E. P. Hill, traffic manager.
The plant, taken over in 1888 and devoted to the making of cold punched and hot pressed nuts and refined bar iron, has been entirely rebuilt of steel and brick, with every feature of modern factory construction, adapting it in the most perfect manner to the improved processes and advanced methods of operation now in vogue. In 1915 the company took over the property formerly owned and operated by The Milton Iron Company and erected their own group of well equipped steel and brick buildings, with every appliance and requisite, for the making of gun shells, in which industry they were largely engaged, at first for the British Government and later for the Government of the United States.
From the, inception of the business there has been a steady but substantia! Growth in the volume of the operations of the plant and a corresponding development of its equipment and facilities for the important lines of manufacture in which the company is engaged. An additional power plant is now under construction, with a capacity of 4,000 kilowatts.
The company employs about 3,000 men and has a yearly capacity of 100,000 tons of iron and steel rolled bars. The making of cold punched nuts, hot pressed nuts, and bar iron, and the rolling of steel bars, have been and are now the principal features of the company's business, and nothing is left undone to make these products the best and most desirable of their several kinds. These products have enjoyed a wide patronage, being well and favorably known to the export trade and to the domestic trade in every section.
All of the officers of the company have grown up in the business, and in their several departments are skilled and practical men, whose ad-ministrative abilities under the executive direction of Mr. George S. Shimer, the president, have resulted in placing The Milton Manufacturing Company in its foremost place among the repre-sentatives in this country of its particular line of industry.
