IN THE NEWS

CASTLE HISTORY 1

October 2004

MOULTONBOROUGH - Countless area residents and thousands of tourists world-wide have visited Castle in the Clouds, marveled at its architecture, oohed and aahed over the spectacular views and listened to a brief explanation of how the Castle came to be.
But the life of Thomas Plant, who had the Castle built in the early 1900s deserves more than just passing comment. And it is important to separate fact from myth. Two books, both available at the Moultonborough Public Library and the Tuftonboro Public Library, address very different aspects of the man's life.

"Thomas Plant - Franco-American Entrepreneur" by Barry Hadfield Rodrigue is a scholarly work by a distant cousin of Plant. It documents his early years, his move from Bath, Maine, to the "shoe cities" north of Boston and the rise and fall of his fortunes. It is heavy on the fact that Plant was born into a poor Franco-American family, emphasizing how difficult it was for descendants of the French-Canadian population to be recognized for their business accomplishments.

It also documents the fact that Plant's success came from his ability not only to manufacture fine shoes and the machinery to create them, but from his business acumen that included smart marketing practices. His stubbornness is revealed as one of the reasons for the loss of his fortune. This article will focus on Rodrigue's book.
The other book, "The Castle and the Club" by Elizabeth Crawford Wilkin is an entertaining account of how Plant built what is now Bald Peak Colony. It makes clear his philanthropies, his charm, and his idiosyncrasies. This book will be the subject of a future article.

The Lakes Region Trust and the Castle Preservation Society are interested in fleshing out the history of the Castle. While these two books give a good foundation for that history, there are residents in the area who have personal stories to tell about the Castle and its owners.

Anyone who wishes to share such information is asked to direct those stories in writing to Don Berry, Chair of the Castle Preservation Society, c/o Lakes Region Conservation Trust, P.O. Box 1097, Meredith, NH 03253 or to email them to him at don.berry@verizon.net.

Just recently, in casual conversation with Berry, Tuftonboro Tax Collector Jackie Rollins commented that her great-grandfather, Fred E. Ellis, had been head of the construction crew that built the roads on the Castle property. That's the kind of input Berry and LRCT President Tom Curren are looking for from area people.

In his book, Rodrigue tells us that Plant's entry into shoe company ownership came when, in December 1886, the shoe worker from Bath, Maine, became one of ten investors, each of whom put up $100 to buy the year-old Lynn Union Shoe Cooperative Shoe Company. Plant acquired the $100 by winning a bet on a baseball game. The ten investors were silent partners, and Tom Plant was put in charge of sales management, where he acquired his marketing skills.

Tom's brother William had moved south with him, and in 1882 the two organized William Plant and Company in Lynn, with five investors contributing $1,000 each.
Throughout both books, we are told that Tom Plant wanted always to be in charge, and in 1891, he offered to buy out the other four investors for $22,000. Their counter offer was to buy him out for that sum, considerably less than his shares were worth.

The Thomas G. Plant Company opened for business in 1891, renting a new building. The company turned out between 2,300 and 3,000 pairs of quality women's shoes a day in a clean, modern facility. In 1893, Plant incorporated. He pioneered lighter and daintier shoes for women and began marketing directly to retailers, cutting out merchant houses that had acted as middlemen. William Plant became foreman and supervisor of Tom's factory, with revenue of $1.5 million a year.

Rodrigue's book is heavy on facts and dates and light on the early personal life of Tom Plant, so we don't know how or where he met his first wife, Caroline Griggs. She was the daughter of a Chicago publisher who, like Tom, was a self-made man. Caroline and Tom were married in 1895 in Chicago, and there began Tom's entry into high society.
The two honeymooned for five months in Europe. At some point, we are told, Tom had taken French lessons to learn Parisian French rather than the patois spoken by French Canadians. Additional success came as a result of that forethought.

As Plant added to his factory, he encountered union problems and learned the art of negotiation. Accidents at his factory also taught him the value of ensuring the safety of his workers. Rodrigue says this may have been the result of his concern for his employees, but that this might also have been from the lessons learned when injured workers sued.

When Plant moved his factory to the Boston area in 1896, it launched him "into the highest echelons of shoe manufacturing, invention, political intrigue and elegant living," Rodrigue tells us.

Plant's factory on the Jamaica Plain/Roxbury town line employed 1,000 workers who turned out 5,000 pairs of shoes a day and was known to have been one of the most modern and cleanest shoe factories of its day. Tom added new machinery and new departments and became one of the first shoe manufacturers to create brand name shoes.

From 1897 to 1903, he and Caroline lived in the Hotel Belvoir at Kenmore Square. This was a new idea, an apartment building with rents ranging from $400 to $3,000 a year. Tom joined Boston's exclusive Algonquin Club, left it in 1898 for unknown reasons and rejoined six years later.

After launching his brand name Queen Quality Shoes, Tom hired an advertising company to promote them. By 1900, they were being sold in every state and almost every city in the United States and Canada as well as overseas. The rise of low-cost, mass circulation magazines contributed to his success and his access to the middle class market.
Rodrigue tells us that, between 1870 and 1910, the U.S. population more than doubled, creating large urban populations.

Plant's factory was hit by a strike, and from that he learned about arbitration. He seems never to have failed to learn a lesson from adversity. After that, he gave no employee a reason to strike. He cut the workday from ten hours to eight, but continued to pay workers for ten hours.

He reorganized, but retained 60 percent of the stock. He offered a new line of shoes aimed at walkers and established a mail order catalog after recognizing the success of Sears-Roebuck. And he kept adding to the size of his factory. In the spring of 1902, he built a six-story addition at a cost of $30,000. Four floors of the building contained recreation and education facilities for his workers, bowling alleys, a gym, an athletic instructor, a sick room, showers, baths, a library, a restaurant, a roof garden, smoking rooms, stages and halls. The facilities were open until 10 p.m. He also arranged for cooking classes for women workers at a local school. There were concerts at noon and in the evenings. All of these amenities but meals were free to Plant's workers.

He expanded again in 1908. By 1910 the factory was a quarter mile in length with a weekly payroll of $40,000, and Plant was a multi-millionaire. His was one of the biggest shoe manufacturing companies in the world, employing 5,500 workers with annual revenue of $8 million.

His factory included five fireproof stair towers, automatic sprinklers with fire pumps from water tanks and mains. There were 85 telephones and eight trunk lines in the factory. A full time medical doctor was on duty during working hours, and nurses were available. He employed an eye doctor, set up an employee benefit association with sick and death benefits. He opened a savings bank for employees that paid between 6 and 10 percent interest. He established profit sharing.

In 1900, the shoe industry averaged 89 workers per factory and was still in transition from handwork to machine production. Plant's firm was one of a handful that introduced both welfare capitalism and scientific management before World War I.

William and his family had purchased property in Tuftonboro, so the Plants were familiar with the area. In 1904, Tom and Caroline also bought land in Tuftonboro. Additionally, they had a summer place in Dublin, New Hampshire. By 1909, they were renting the Hanks Estate in West Manchester and Caroline was "a conspicuous figure" at Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts horse shows. Tom became a horse fancier, which was fashionable at the time, but which he continued into his retirement at Lucknow.

But Rodrigue also tells us, "He had the need to dominate situations when others disagreed with him - gathering allies and using his money to dictate terms to others." Still, Tom Plant retained a basic humility and never forgot his origins. While he did not play up his Franco-American heritage, he did not run away from it either.

The newspapers of the day praised Plant as a "free wheeling genius," indefatigable," "colorful and energetic." One is quoted, "…considerable of a genius and a hard worker, Plant as he was called during most of his life was what is now called a loner; he made shoes differently, ran his factory differently, owned outright a portfolio of patents and entertained ambitions and dreams rather unusual and somewhat grandiose. He achieved a good many of them, too."

According to Rodrigue, in 1899, five firms merged to form the United Shoe Machinery Company that leased shoe machinery to the factories, and that company was alleged to have developed a virtual monopoly in the production of shoe-making machines. USMC took over 55 companies and held $70 million in common stock. It had 81,000 machines out for lease and controlled 80 percent of the country's shoe machinery. Leases did not permit using machines from other companies, and those leasing had to sign 17-year contracts.

At first Tom Plant tried to work around the USMC system, but when that failed he developed a new system of shoe manufacturing called "The Wonder Worker." Rodrigue says that Plant was not so much an inventor as a skillful organizer of the intellectual labor of others. He assembled a legal team. By 1908, he had shifted his focus from shoe manufacturing to machinery. (Untypically, this resulted in job gains rather than losses.)
In May of that year, the U.S. Patent Office granted Plant 30 patents and granted 55 others to his associates. He began his efforts to force USMC to buy him out.
Negotiations went on for two years, during which he installed his machines in his factories with rather mixed results.

Eventually it was agreed that USMC would pay him $3 million in cash and $3 million in USMC stock, in addition to taking on his financial obligations to the inventors, the cost of merchandise in transit and his outstanding payrolls.

In the midst of the "Shoe Machinery Wars," Caroline left him, taking up residence in Cohasset. She charged him with long-term infidelity. He said his goodbyes to his employees at Christmas 1910. In January, 1911, he sailed again for Europe with William's daughter, Amy. It is said that he was as close to William's children as if he had been another parent. The purpose of the trip was to find a place for his retirement.
On the cruise, Amy talked to him about the beauty of Ossipee Park. He called William and his secretary, Alfred Handley, to begin buying up land at the park.

In 1912, he and Caroline attempted briefly to reconcile. But on yet another trip to Europe, Plant met Olive Cornelia Dewey, a graduate of Wellesley, 24 years his junior. He was smitten.

On his return, he sought a divorce, giving Caroline the house in Cohasset and $1 million. It is said that he put the check in her napkin ring, and she found it when she came down for breakfast. Already under way were plans to build at Ossipee Park. By then he had accumulated several thousand acres. Construction began in the spring of 1913 - all systems go simultaneously, including the mansion, the stables, two lodges, miles of stonewalls, 30 miles of single-lane carriage ways with ditches, bridges and culverts.
He had the top of the mountain leveled and used the rock to construct his house. According to Rodrigue, he employed a total of 1,000 workers, mostly Italian stonemasons from Boston, but also carpenters and teamsters. Once his divorce from Caroline was final, he married Olive in 1913. They honeymooned in Europe, and on their return, they moved into Westwynde on the estate while waiting for the Castle to be completed.

It has a southern exposure and is built on a solid ledge foundation of local pink granite. The house has Maine oak beams, hand hewn in a Bath shipyard.

Recessed cement gives the appearance of seamless construction of the pentagonal stones. The roof is of Spanish tile. Plant had a hydo-generator installed in the stables. An outside fire hydrant with hose and connectors on each floor of the mansion attest to his concern about fire.

Other aspects of the Castle have appeared in print and are familiar to visitors. Not so well known is that he maintained a farm on the highway, where the experts he hired produced beef, pork, lamb, poultry, eggs, dairy products, vegetables and hay. It became a model farm.

His staff of twenty to thirty workers was hired from area families.

The estate cost just over $1 million. It was compared to a Rolls Royce: "rich without looking costly, simple, yet beautiful and artistic." He and Olive occupied the mansion in the fall of 1914. He called the estate "Lucknow." There are varied accounts of where the name came from, but Olive left a poem that reads: "In the twilit hall, by the open fire, each one agrees, 'I'm in Luck Now at last.'" In any case, later owners called it Castle in the Clouds, and that name has endured.

Plant generated some ill-will on the part of his neighbors when he used less than gentlemanly means to get the Lee family to sell him its farm. He came under further attack when he wanted to build a golf course where the Lee family burial ground was located. Once again, he seems to have learned from his mistakes. There had been complaints when he fenced off property that had been open and used for hunting and fishing by area residents. He opened the property, only to close it again when people littered and carved their initials in his trees. While he warned off tourists, he did, however, allow area residents access. The high wages he paid offset the loss of tourist dollars and appeased area residents who had, anyway, become disenchanted with the behavior of some people who came to visit.

In 1916, he bought property in Bath, Maine, and subsequently built an "old folks home," at a cost of $75,000 to $80,000, which he endowed with 3,300 shares of United Shoe Machinery Company common capital stock, which was worth nearly $150,000. The home was governed by a seven-member board of trustees, all of whom were local people.
In 1919, he first conceived the idea of The Bald Peak Country Club, but did not act on it until later.

The beginning of the decline of Plant's assets occurred when the Bolsheviks defeated the Czarists in the Russian Civil War. Plant's bonds would not be redeemable by the Soviet Union. He had also invested in Cuban sugar. In the 1930s, a $100 share in Cuban cane sugar dropped to 50 cents.

Plant's poor investments continued to plague him. He began to advertise his New Hampshire property for sale, but there were no takers on his terms. He divested himself of ownership of Bald Peak Country Club. It is said that his involvement with the club finished his fortune, which had been on a downward trend since 1927.

In 1928, Plant mortgaged all his holdings for $150,000 to Robert Clayton in Boston. Clayton sold the mortgage, and it was here that Plant's past connections came into play. The new mortgage holder, Joseph Emery, extended Plant a further $40,000 on his mortgage and bought some of his cottages at Bald Peak Country Club. He secured two more mortgages, but in the summer and fall of 1935, his finances hit rock bottom. Small loans from a variety of friends and business acquaintances sustained him for a while, but by 1941, he was in debt for almost $500,000.

On July 11, he received notice that a mortgage holder intended to sell his estate at auction. He was then in the midst of a two-month illness and died three days after the letter arrived. He was 82 years old.

Tom Plant's Castle will be open until the weekend after Columbus Day, closed for the winter, and will reopen in early May 2005. Entrance to the Castle is on Route 171 in Moultonborough. The Castle and its surrounding grounds still provide several of the best viewing spots for fall foliage around Lake Winnipesaukee.