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There’s something to be gained from company newsletters.
A little wrinkled by time and water, passed along to me by a reader, Metered Impressions, an eight-page monthly report, gives the real-time report on a Rochester company that transformed itself and its workforce during World War II.
The transformation was twofold:
First, the National Postal Meter Co., which, true to its name made postal meters and other mailroom items, acquired plant space on Culver Road so it could add guns and ammunition fuzes to its product lines.
And second, with so many men off to war, hundreds of women joined the company as production line workers and as support crew.
Not surprisingly, Metered Impressions often led with news of guns and ammo. “First Fuze Contract Completed at University Avenue Plant” headlined the December 1943 issue.
Subsequent issues lauded the company’s on-time production, just as it passed along notes of commendation from the War Department. And certainly the newsletter bannered the sale of the company to Commercial Controls Corp. in 1944.
But the newsletter didn’t neglect the ordinary lives of its employees. There were births and weddings to be announced, company picnics to be photographed, bowling league results to be recorded.
We learn in April 1944 that the men’s basketball team won six games and lost five in league play, with Randall Sargent, a guard, leading all scorers. The women, sparked by center Irma Michael, had a record of six wins and nine loses.
“Partners in Production,” a must-read feature, contained brief profiles of employees, generally two men and two women a month. Always, they connected their work with the war effort.
Dora Peters, a mother of six children, was interviewed for one issue. She was quoted as saying that she was able to work all day and still return home in time to get a meal on the table for her family. Her oldest son was in the Navy. “I like to feel that I can be with him, by working to help bring the war to an end sooner,” she says.
Mary Basile was a hairdresser before the war who switched to working on gun sights during the war. “The guns don’t impart juicy morsels of gossip,” she says. “… But then, I know some soldiers who can make the guns talk.”
There’s often a sense in the short profiles that the women see their work as important, indeed vital, but temporary, as well. “I love machinery and I sure love my job,” says Ann Lucas, “but I’ll be glad to be a housewife again when the war is over.”
Of course, hindsight suggests that newsletter editor J.D. Hendryx may have prompted the women to look ahead to life away from the production line, just as he may have prompted them to say something about buying war bonds, which they often do.
Ann Mahoney of Rochester was one of the women who came to the company during the war. The mother of three young children whose husband worked for New York Central Railroad, she was a timekeeper at National Postal.
And though she left the company after the war, she saved her copies of Metered Impressions. They were eventually inherited by her son Tom, a Kodak retiree who lives in Penfield. He gave them to me, and now, they’ll go to the Military History Society of Rochester, where two of the M1 carbines made by the company are on display.
The September 1945 issue of Metered Impressions tallied the company’s wartime production. In all, 413,017 MI carbines, as well as millions of munitions fuzes, were produced in Rochester. (Speaking of transformations, stocks for the carbines were supplied by a local maker of baby cribs, Trimble Nurseryland Furniture.)
Subsequent newsletters document the return of men to the workforce — indeed, nearly all the new hires in sales are male — and consequently suggest the departure of women from the company.
Commercial Controls prospered for several years after the war, producing products such as a tape-operated composing machine. In 1956, the company was acquired by Friden Calculating Machine Co. Inc. of California. Friden merged with Singer Co. in 1963. The Friden division of the merged company stayed here until 1972, when it closed.
