Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever by Geoff Williams Page B
Authors: Geoff Williams
Tags: United States, Fiction, General, History, State & Local, Modern, Nature, 19th century, Natural Disasters, Midwest (IA; IL; IN; KS; MI; MN; MO; ND; NE; OH; SD; WI)
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Pattersonâs tactics were ugly but effective. By 1905, when Patterson was sixty-one, it was believed that NCR had about ninety-five percent of the domestic cash register market.
In 1913, there had been a lengthy court case, after which a judge sentenced Patterson to a year in prison. His attorneys were appealing the conviction, but the 69-year-old was facing the very real possibility that on top of a $5,000 fine, negligible for a man like Patterson, he might soon be sitting in a cell at the nearby Miami County Jail in Troy, Ohio for a full year, with common criminals as bunkmates. This was not a luxury hotel for white-collar criminalsâthe term white-collar criminal wouldnât even be coined until 1939âbut a jail with dirt floors. (In October 1913, Wilbur Ballard, a sixteen-year-old in jail for stealing a horse, would tunnel his way out with a spoon.) In the 1920s, one criminal attorney-turned-bootlegger, George Remus, would spend some time in the Miami County jail and call it a âdirty hell hole,â and one presumes it wasnât any better and may just have been even worse when Patterson was facing the prospects of living there. But if he was worried, he didnât show it. When he was convicted in court, he was very calm, much more so than the agitated spectators, and after receiving his sentence, Patterson thanked the court for their service, and when the judge asked if he wanted to speak further, he replied, âI have nothing to say, your Honor,â and he sat down.
A jail sentence would be the period on what had so far been a spectacularly interesting life. Patterson was born on a family farm near Dayton in 1844, and although he grew up with money, he understood the value of a dollar and what it took to earn it. As a young man, Patterson spent time working as a toll collector on the Miami and Erie Canal, and in 1864, as was common then for many youth who didnât enlist to fight, he spent a hundred days as a Northern soldier in the Civil War, taking on duties away from combat, which allowed more veteran soldiers to stay on the front lines. He was a school teacher around 1870, and then in his mid-thirties he joined his brother to develop coal and iron mines in Jackson County, Ohio.
From there, he went to Coalton, Ohio, to become the general manager for the company store at the Southern Coal and Iron Company. In running the shop, the future business magnate recognized the need for something like a cash register machine. The store was losing money despite doing brisk business, and Patterson read that manufacturers John and James S. Ritty had invented a machine that would tabulate sales as they were made, and that it also had a receptacle for money. Patterson ordered two machines, loved what he saw, and, with his brother, immediately bought stock of the National Manufacturing Company. Two years later, in 1884, they bought enough that they were given control. They werenât thrilled with the plant, however, and decided to build a better factory on better land. They selected a site near the family farm, on land where they had played, worked, and grown up.
Ultimately, their company became one of the worldâs most successful enterprises, a company still thriving today as a global technology firm that focuses on ATMs and software and other technological marvels that are light-years away from the simple cash register. Patterson would have approved the changes. He was all about following the money.
In 1913, Pattersonâs business, long since renamed the National Cash Register Company, which everyone referred to by its initials, NCR, employed 5,500 and, aside from the main factory in Dayton, had branches in Toronto and Berlin. But it was Dayton where NCRâs success was impossible not to notice. Its headquarters covered thirty-six acres of floor space in fifteen buildings on a manufacturing property occupying 140 acres of ground. Fortunately, for Patterson and everyone in Dayton,
In 1913, there had been a lengthy court case, after which a judge sentenced Patterson to a year in prison. His attorneys were appealing the conviction, but the 69-year-old was facing the very real possibility that on top of a $5,000 fine, negligible for a man like Patterson, he might soon be sitting in a cell at the nearby Miami County Jail in Troy, Ohio for a full year, with common criminals as bunkmates. This was not a luxury hotel for white-collar criminalsâthe term white-collar criminal wouldnât even be coined until 1939âbut a jail with dirt floors. (In October 1913, Wilbur Ballard, a sixteen-year-old in jail for stealing a horse, would tunnel his way out with a spoon.) In the 1920s, one criminal attorney-turned-bootlegger, George Remus, would spend some time in the Miami County jail and call it a âdirty hell hole,â and one presumes it wasnât any better and may just have been even worse when Patterson was facing the prospects of living there. But if he was worried, he didnât show it. When he was convicted in court, he was very calm, much more so than the agitated spectators, and after receiving his sentence, Patterson thanked the court for their service, and when the judge asked if he wanted to speak further, he replied, âI have nothing to say, your Honor,â and he sat down.
A jail sentence would be the period on what had so far been a spectacularly interesting life. Patterson was born on a family farm near Dayton in 1844, and although he grew up with money, he understood the value of a dollar and what it took to earn it. As a young man, Patterson spent time working as a toll collector on the Miami and Erie Canal, and in 1864, as was common then for many youth who didnât enlist to fight, he spent a hundred days as a Northern soldier in the Civil War, taking on duties away from combat, which allowed more veteran soldiers to stay on the front lines. He was a school teacher around 1870, and then in his mid-thirties he joined his brother to develop coal and iron mines in Jackson County, Ohio.
From there, he went to Coalton, Ohio, to become the general manager for the company store at the Southern Coal and Iron Company. In running the shop, the future business magnate recognized the need for something like a cash register machine. The store was losing money despite doing brisk business, and Patterson read that manufacturers John and James S. Ritty had invented a machine that would tabulate sales as they were made, and that it also had a receptacle for money. Patterson ordered two machines, loved what he saw, and, with his brother, immediately bought stock of the National Manufacturing Company. Two years later, in 1884, they bought enough that they were given control. They werenât thrilled with the plant, however, and decided to build a better factory on better land. They selected a site near the family farm, on land where they had played, worked, and grown up.
Ultimately, their company became one of the worldâs most successful enterprises, a company still thriving today as a global technology firm that focuses on ATMs and software and other technological marvels that are light-years away from the simple cash register. Patterson would have approved the changes. He was all about following the money.
In 1913, Pattersonâs business, long since renamed the National Cash Register Company, which everyone referred to by its initials, NCR, employed 5,500 and, aside from the main factory in Dayton, had branches in Toronto and Berlin. But it was Dayton where NCRâs success was impossible not to notice. Its headquarters covered thirty-six acres of floor space in fifteen buildings on a manufacturing property occupying 140 acres of ground. Fortunately, for Patterson and everyone in Dayton,
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