The Good People Who Work In Those Buildings | Saint-Gobain takes time out to celebrate Norton Co.'s 125th
For most Industrial Strength columns, I visit a manufacturer and take a tour of a facility. This time, I visited Saint-Gobain Abrasives in Worcester, but I didn’t take a tour. Instead, I attended a celebration of what would have been the 125th birthday of Norton Co. June 18.
The original Norton building on the corner of New Bond Street and Route 12 in Worcester’s Greendale neighborhood isn’t much to look at.
But next time you drive by, give it some thought. It’s easy to dismiss, but Worcester as we know it wouldn’t be Worcester without that building, the company that built it, or the folks who started the company.
Saint-Gobain, the enormous, 300-year-old French building materials manufacturing conglomerate that bought Norton in 1990, took the time during a lunch hour to celebrate Norton’s 125th birthday.
The highlight of the celebration was a short speech from John Jeppson, the 94-year-old former head of Norton and grandson of one of the company’s founders.
It’s in men like Jeppson that we can see what made Worcester great. The group of entrepreneurs of which his grandfather was part had a simple idea: Make high-quality grinding wheels.
Holiday Spirit
That’s what the modest building Jeppson’s grandfather built on the corner of New Bond and Route 12 was for. That’s what the company does today. Anyone who’s driven Interstate 290 can see how Norton expanded between 1885 and 1990.
But the expansion wasn’t just in factories. Many of the homes in the area, in the Indian Hill neighborhood and elsewhere, were built by Norton and sold to employees at cost. And every year, Jeppson’s grandmother used to put on a Christmas dinner for the factory workers.
One of the afternoon’s other speakers brought up the bit about Christmas dinner. As he did, I watched Jeppson, seated behind the podium, hand resting atop a cane. I had to fight back tears as I imagined the memories drifting through his mind at that moment. There’s something touching about a 94-year-old man remembering his grandmother at Christmas.
The 1,200 Saint-Gobain employees who gave Jeppson a standing ovation under the giant white tent could see, as I did, the pride in his eyes. Not pride in making the most money or crushing the competition, but in doing things properly and in being fortunate enough to have led such a company.
He said he was fortunate to have worked in the buildings his grandfather built and fortunate to be able to address “the good people who work in those buildings” today.
If I had been one of the working stiffs on Norton’s factory floor in Jeppson’s day, I would’ve worn my only suit to his grandmother’s Christmas dinner out of respect for men like him.
There was a touch of melancholy in Jeppson’s eyes, too, as if he wonders whether the country’s manufacturing sector may be stronger and more attractive to employees than it is today if more companies had operated the way Norton did.
“Unlike so many American companies, who have overpaid their executives, who have failed to keep their products competitive and who have failed to understand the problems of their employees, Norton was known for being a really good corporation… It realized that people in its factories, and in its offices and in its sales force were truly responsible for the company’s success,” Jeppson said in his speech.
Got news for our Industrial Strength? E-mail WBJ Managing Editor Matthew L. Brown at mbrown@wbjournal.com
Watch as John Jeppson addresses Saint-Gobain employees at the company's recent 125th anniversary celebrations of the Norton Company:
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