George Elias Tuckett
George Elias Tuckett (born December 4, 1835 in Exeter , England , † February 19, 1900 in Hamilton , Ontario , Canada ) was a British-born Canadian businessman ( tobacco manufacturer , partner in a glassworks , etc.) and politician . In 1896 he was mayor of Hamilton for about a year.
Live and act
From shoemaker to tobacco manufacturer
George Elias Tuckett was born the youngest son of Elias and Mary Tuckett in the city of Exeter, the capital of the county of Devon , in south-west England. Shortly after the French-influenced Lower Canada and the English Upper Canada merged to form the province of Canada , the family, consisting of the father, mother and three children (in addition to George Elias, there was also a daughter and another son at that time), moved to Canada Hamilton in what is now the province of Ontario. The father found work there as a so-called light puller ( English : tallow-chandler ) who, in contrast to the wax puller , who made candles from beeswax, won candles and lights from animal fat. Although George Elias Tuckett regretted his lack of formal instruction later in life, he had a solid education by the standards of his class. He also attended a local private academy for a short time. Little is known of Tuckett's precise training as a youth. Some say that he completed an apprenticeship as a shoemaker because he had opened a shoe shop in Hamilton in 1852 at the age of 17, which is why it was assumed that he must have been trained in this area. After the business failed soon after, however, Tuckett entered into three partnerships with tobacco dealers from Hamilton in the 1850s and early 1860s and subsequently appeared as a manufacturer and manufacturer of tobacco products. The capital for this activity is said to have come from its shareholders, who in turn also worked on the marketing of the products, whereby Tuckett was in all probability involved in the production or is said to have supervised the work.
His first partnership after the failed shoe business was a short-lived one with David Rose. During this time, Tuckett was also in poor health, which is why he largely withdrew from the operational business to work for a few years on a sea boat. After returning to Hamilton, he entered into a partnership with Amos Hill before starting his own business in 1857 and starting a cigar manufacturing company with three or four employees. This was the hour of birth of the Tuckett Tobacco Company , which was only bought up by Imperial Tobacco in 1930 and incorporated into the group. To sell his products, he set up a branch in London early on . Probably the following year he married Elizabeth Leak, who also worked for the company and sold cigars in the market and at fairs in Hamilton. According to various sources, he and his wife had four or five children (George Thomas Tuckett (1859–1913), Elizabeth Virginia Duggan (1861–1922), Adeline Myrtle Isabella Lawry (1865–1947), Jennie Tuckett and Charles Paul Tuckett) . In 1862, Tuckett gave up cigars to manufacture plug tobacco in partnership with Alfred Campbell Quimby . The American Civil War interrupted tobacco exports to Canada, but this did not prevent Tuckett and his business partners from traveling behind Confederate lines themselves to purchase tobacco in Virginia and bring it to Canada. The associated stress and the dangerousness of these secretly performed operations also had an impact on Tuckett's health, which is why the business was closed in 1864.
Brief activity in glass production
The following year, George Elias Tuckett and a John Billings acquired Nathan B. Gatchell's shares in the local Hamilton Glass Works , which had only been founded the year before, and took on three partners. At the time it was the only glassworks in Hamilton and only one of five glass factories in all of Canada. Initial difficulties in marketing and selling the glassware forced Tuckett to leave the company after only a year, after which he returned to the production of plug tobacco. John Billings supported him and the business flourished. By 1868 the entrepreneurial duo Tuckett / Billings employed 70 people, more than any of the other two tobacco manufacturers in Hamilton. In 1871 the capacity of their facilities was doubled; In 1875 the company was given a good credit rating by RG Dun and Company , a credit checker. The value of her property, including the factory, which cost her 6,000 Canadian dollars (unadjusted for inflation) in 1866 , was estimated at $ 60,000 to $ 75,000 unadjusted for inflation. Tuckett also owned real estate valued at $ 40,000 to $ 50,000 (unadjusted for inflation), including his residence, valued at $ 16,000 (unadjusted for inflation).
Innovations in the Tuckett Tobacco Company
The partnership lasted until Billings retired in 1880. Subsequently, Tuckett's eldest son, George Thomas, and his nephew, John Elias Tuckett, became partners in the company, which from then on traded under the name George E. Tuckett and Son . The nephew had previously taken care of the company's Danville , Virginia office. In the late 1880s, George Elias Tuckett withdrew more and more from the operational business before the business activity was completely taken over by his son in 1892. The reorganization came shortly after the completion of another factory building in 1891. A comparison of this facility with the one built 20 years earlier shows Tuckett's attention to operational details and the importance of efficiency that he recognized. In the building from 1891, for example, the raw tobacco was transported to the third floor in various processing stages and lowered from floor to floor until it reached the mailroom. In the old factory building, work was far more inefficient; the tobacco was moved up and down from floor to floor in the older facility before it was dispatched. With the new, far more efficient system, only minor adjustments were made in the company until the start of cigarette production in 1896. In addition to streamlining the organization of work in his new factory, Tuckett had fire escapes installed and provided break rooms and separate washrooms for men and women.
With some success, Tuckett had applied a paternalistic labor policy in the 1880s to promote the loyalty of the then 400 employees. Among other things, the nine-hour day was introduced in 1882, and profit-sharing and bonuses were paid out to employees, for which it received consistently positive feedback. At the same time, different employment conditions segmented the workforce, thereby improving control over the work process. Tuckett believed that performance wages for the most highly trained workers, the skilled workers (the cigar and later the cigarette roller and plug producers), could continuously increase production. He believed that if these workers wanted to earn more or as much as other workers in the company, that would speed up their work and thus production. With their dependency on performance wages, they became the drivers of the daily rates paid. However, the plug producers in the company could not operate the presses without prepared tobacco leaves. The rollers, which prepared the leaves for curing and pressing, then employed child laborers who harvested the leaves for little money and then delivered them to them. The supervision of these unskilled and possibly least disciplined workers has thus been decentralized. The parents of the children, who were allegedly all between 14 and 16 years old, negotiated with the scooters about their employment relationship and assured the company that their children behaved well and were disciplined enough.
At Christmas, the company's employees received special payments for good performance during the year. The pieceworkers received Christmas presents or turkeys and cash gifts if their work was deemed meritorious. Daily wage workers were rewarded with a cash bonus in proportion to the company's profits. The child laborers received 25 cents and the chance to win prizes worth 5, 10 or 20 dollars (not adjusted for inflation). Many of these practices were associated with the distribution of bonus payments at Christmas. Tuckett always took care of the company's personnel policy himself, gave the employees annual reviews, explained the reasons for layoffs and also repeatedly read the rules of his company in front of the entire workforce. In addition, longstanding deserving employees received special inducements from Tuckett. For 21 years of service, he gave away a piece of land to build and $ 225 (not adjusted for inflation) paid out when a house was completed. Furthermore, he mainly took care of the marketing of his products himself and developed and promoted the brand names of his company in order to strengthen customer loyalty. In the early 1870s, for example, Tuckett and Billings were making a dozen brands of plug tobacco, each of a specific quality, which were sold in cans under the T&B trade mark . The most popular at the time was Myrtle Navy Tobacco . The so-called Marguerite cigars were introduced in 1891 and the T&B cigarettes in 1896.
Political work as city councilor and mayor
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Because of his success and his system of factory work, Tuckett was considered an attractive candidate for public office. As early as 1864, the then 29-year-old represented St. Mary's Ward , a district of Hamilton, on the city council. Tuckett considered himself a social radical and believed, as befits a successful craftsman, to pursue an independent political course. Originally a reformer , he was soon drawn to the Conservative Party of Canada by National Policy . Since it was already expected that Tuckett could face a general election , local conservatives prevailed against Tuckett in 1895 to accept the nomination for one of the parliamentary seats for the city of Hamilton. Fearing his election campaign, the Liberals offered Tuckett in 1896 to support him as mayor if he refused to run for parliament. Prior to that, he had served on Hamilton City Council in 1863, 1864, and 1884. Tuckett agreed to the Liberal proposal and was subsequently elected Mayor of Hamilton.
The government under Tuckett's leadership was considered a good one with low taxes. However, the moral reform movement that was on the rise in Hamilton soon found Tuckett in distress. Since he made tobacco, he was accused of sponsoring saloons that used to be a lot of tobacco. As director of the Hamilton Jockey Club , he is said to have promoted gambling . As a shareholder in the Hamilton Street Railway and as a recipient of tax and water tariff exemptions for his factory, he benefited from the excessive municipal spending he claimed. This quickly discredited him. His exemption of $ 85,000 (unadjusted for inflation) at an estimated value of $ 129,000 (unadjusted for inflation) cost the city $ 1,700 (unadjusted for inflation) in annual revenue. Still, Tuckett won the mayor election by a landslide victory. Even so, he had alienated the Conservative Party, and without the Liberals' commitment to support him as mayor in 1897, his re-election the following year failed. He lost significantly and was replaced by Edward Alexander Colquhoun after only one year in office .
The last few years until his death
When George Elias Tuckett died almost three years later, on February 19, 1900, he was considered a socially important and very wealthy man. He was an Anglican and was considered generous to his own community. He was also a Freemason and President of St. George's Society from 1898 until his death . In addition to sizable real estate, he had amassed personal property valued at $ 708,705 (not adjusted for inflation); including approximately $ 375,000 (not adjusted for inflation) in bank stocks and other stocks. Throughout his life, Tuckett served on the boards of directors of the Bank of British North America , Traders Bank of Canada and the Hamilton and Barton Incline Railway Company , as well as serving as President of the Hamilton Steamboat Company . In addition to his investments in the Hamilton Street Railway, Tuckett had also invested in the Hamilton Steel and Iron Company throughout his life . Although he had not received extensive training himself, Tuckett possessed the ability to adapt factory organization to mass production more efficiently and a willingness to experiment with industrial relations. Its success could be attributed to these traits. After his death he was buried in the family mausoleum in Hamilton Cemetery ; the mausoleum was built in an earth wall that had been raised in the course of the British-American War .
Worth mentioning
One of his employees in the tobacco factory was the Canadian athlete Velma Springstead (1906-1927), who also came from Hamilton and worked for some time as the secretary of the company's sales director.
literature
- David G. Burley: Tuckett, George Elias . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . tape 12: 1891-1900 . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1990, ISBN 0-8020-3460-8 ( English , French ).
Web links
- George Elias Tuckett in the database of Find a Grave (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hamilton Glass Works - Ontario , accessed May 3, 2020
- ^ The Hamilton Glass Works , accessed May 3, 2020
- ↑ a b Resting comfortably - The mortal remains of Hamilton's 'old money' crowd lie in eternal grandeur at Hamilton Cemetery ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (English), accessed on May 3, 2020
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Tuckett, George Elias |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian tobacco manufacturer, glass manufacturer and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 4th December 1835 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Exeter , England , UK |
| DATE OF DEATH | 19th February 1900 |
| Place of death | Hamilton , Ontario , Canada |