By Pauline Masson –
Pacific was in the throes of the national Railroad Shopmen’s Strike of 1922 and under threat of losing the Missouri Pacific Railroad repair shop altogether – which it did when the strike ended – when a Mr. Oscar Arcularius telephoned Mayor Albert Koppitz with the idea of bringing a shoe factory to Pacific.
He was anxious to do it, Mr. Arcularius said. All Pacific needed to do was to provide a building. The shoe factory would set up its operation here and pay rent to the local owners.
Mayor Koppitz, owner/operator of the Koppitz Roller Mill, called a meeting of his fellow businessmen at city hall to see if they would want to invest in a building for a shoe factory that promised to bring 75 jobs to the city.
About fifty businessmen, professional men and prominent citizens showed up. They would need to raise $10,000, Mr. Koppitz said. The business men were sure they could do it and pledged half the amount before the meeting ended.
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Within a week they had the full $10,000 and Mr. Koppitz set his sights on the Ehriser Building, an abandoned brick structure next to the Frisco tracks at South First Street that dated to the late 1850s, that had served as the town’s first store and post office, and was later Union Army headquarters building and a Civil War Hospital.
The investors formed a corporation, the Pacific Improvement Association, to buy the building. Directors were Mr. Koppitz, W. Wolf, E. W. Gross, J. Mauthe and L.P. McHugh.
Frank Close, who was building a new shoe factory in Hermann, Missouri at the time came home to oversee installation of the equipment in the Pacific Shoe Factory.
On Monday, September 15, the machinery was turned on and about 25 workers began to manufacture shoes. Within three months, on January 1, 1923, the Pacific Shoe Factory was turning out 1200 pairs of shoes a day and ordered machinery that would double that production. By March 37 employees were putting out 1300 pairs of shoes a day and the factory was begging for 50 more workers.
For a brief shining time, the shoe factory was the pride of Pacific. In January 1923 it hosted a B.B. Dance to benefit the Pacific Grand Stand.
It is uncertain what caused the closure of the business. But in 1926 the building was available for lease, returned to its former abandoned status and relegated to storage for Boy Scout paper drives, church bake sales and an occasional dance.
Second Shoe Factory
In June 1944 Pacific found itself with a second chance at a shoe factory.
World War II was in full swing. America factories were churning out airplanes, jeeps, tanks, trucks, big guns and ship loads of ammunition. But the fighting force, the U.S. Army and Navy, was on its feet. American shoe factories, during the war years, produced 54 million boots and shoes under military contract.
St. Louis was a national leader, boasting more than 50 multi-storied shoe factories that were bursting at the seams. Some employed as many 1,000 workers and St. Louis was a tick away from being the top shoe producing city in America.
To keep up its war production and continue to supply shoes for American men, women and children, St. Louis shoe factories began building smaller “satellite” shoe factories in outlying areas. By 1928, St. Louis shoe manufacturing companies had established plants in 56 small towns within a 200-mile radius of St. Louis. Even those were soon outgrown.
Washington, Missouri shoe manufacturer Kane, Dunham and Krause (KDK) needed a small factory for its line of ladies shoes to keep its other factories for wartime orders. And they were in a hurry. Like Pacific’s old shoe factory of 1922, KDK said they would operate a branch factory in Pacific that would employ thirty to forty persons – almost immediately – if Pacific would provide a building that they could rent.
This time, the Pacific Lions Club said they would secure a building.
It surprised no one that the Lions would take the lead in a venture that would provide jobs. The Club had formed fourteen years earlier in 1930 for the specific mission to provide jobs to out-of-work neighbors. No one saw this as charity. It was the first public works project in Pacific and offered the struggling men the thing they prized most – work. To earn the $2 a week the men were put to work on civic projects.
Lions Club leaders said they would canvass local business men and property owners to subscribe to the project, serve as trustee for the funds raised and hold the deed on the building. The Lions turned to one the oldest buildings in town, known as the Old Lodge Hall.
There’s a bit of mystery about this building. It was built in 1855 and completely remodeled and enlarged it in 1904. The Knights of Pythias originally met there every Friday evening. No extant picture of it was found. But it shows up on a 1919 Atlas on an oversized lot owned by Louis Roemer on St. Louis Street – east of the City of Pacific lot where the Pacific Water Softening building now stands. Mr. Roemer apparently retained ownership of the lot and appears to have owned the Lodge Hall building as well.
The Knights of Pythias was the oldest fraternal order in Pacific. It was the first fraternal order to receive a charter as an act of the U.S. Congress and was recognized as the most prosperous fraternal order in the city’s history. It started meeting here in 1854 – a hugely popular organization that was formed to honor friendship, based on the Greek legend of Damon and Pythias. (See sidebar.) Like other fraternal orders, a function of the order was selling insurance.
In addition to their Friday evenings at the Lodge Hall, the Pythians later held huge get-togethers and dances at Leber Hall and the McHugh-Daily Opera House.
The Old Lodge Hall was later identified with the Pacific Masonic Lodge, which also met there. After the Masons built a new lodge at Union and Columbus streets in 1951 and the Pythians melded into other fraternal organizations, the Old Lodge Hall joined the Ehriser building as a site for storage for Boy Scout paper drives, rummage sales and church bake sales. Thiebes Funeral included in its newspaper ads free space to promote local events, which kept the Old Lodge Hall events in the news.
June 23, 1944, two weeks after the first meeting, the Pacific Transcript blared the front page headline that a shoe factory that would employ 40 would be in operation here within 90 days. On July 28, Chris Howe began work on the plumbing at the structure to get it ready for operation.
On August 11, 1944, Ed Roemer, son of the earlier owner, sold the Old Lodge Hall to the Pacific Lions Club. Opening of the shoe company was set for October 1.
Within six months Kane, Durham and Krause (KDK) Shoe Company was pleading that it needed twenty more workers. They especially wanted women and girls, thinking that they were more adept at sewing. The first of several additions was added to the building and plans were in place for a second addition that would double the factory floor space.
By March employees were putting out 1300 pairs of shoes a day and the factory was and was begging for 50 more workers. KDK announced that it had 62 workers and had paid $61,000 in wages, which the local newspaper said was, “A nice sum of money to be turned loose in any community.”
“As a city, we are proud of our shoe factory; proud of the fact that many of us had at least a small part in bringing it here and proud to point out that it is part of a responsible concern that is in business to stay,” the local editor said.
Why KDK did not stay or when the shoe factory changed owners is uncertain. But by 1951 the business was identified as the Omega Shoe Factory or more commonly The Pacific Shoe Factory and was in full swing. And Pacific had a new business leader.
Abram Moskowitz
Abram Moskowitz purchased the shoe factory and immediately constructed a new addition on the east end of the complex of buildings. During the next twenty years, the building would be expanded half a dozen times, eventually reaching all they way to Olive Street. Employment would grow to more than 100.
Mr. Moskowitz had an infectious personality that would cement his place in Pacific history to rival popular developers, elected officials, railroad bosses and business leaders.
He was born in Russia in to humble Jewish parents. His father was a shoe maker and while the son learned the fundamentals of making shoes by hand one at a time, he never attended school.
“To this day I never had one day of schooling, neither English, Jewish or Russian,” he told his Pacific acquaintances at a 1955 “Welfare Day” celebration.
He came to America in 1923 and found work at the Milius Shoe Factory in St. Louis. When his boss William Milius learned that his young worker could not read he refused to communicate with him except by hand-written notes. This obscure habit built a skill that took the young shoemaker to new heights. He moved up through a seres of jobs and eventually became superintendent of the company
He said he saw himself as handicapped when he came to America because he could not read or write. If he could make shoes without knowing how to read or write other handicapped people could make shoes. He gained national attention for providing jobs for handicapped workers.
In 1945, he drew sketches and wrote a detailed six page description of a new slip-lasted construction for manufacturing toes and heels in shoes and was awarded a U.S. Patent.
He instituted a unique training program for potential workers, who underwent several weeks of training in their specialty before going to work on the factory floor.
He penned a small brochure style pamphlet for his Leprechaun brand shoes that was placed in each box of shoes.
He wrote an editorial in the Transcript that scolded local retailers for closing their shops during the noon hour, depriving themselves of the business of his workers, who on their lunch hour wanted to shop only to find locked doors. At the time the Pacific Shoe Factory employed more than 100 workers from St. Louis and the surrounding areas. If his workers could not spend their earnings in Pacific, Mr. Moskowitz said, they would take them to other towns.
He introduced Pacific workers to a new industrial perk – profit sharing. After twelve Years of operation, the Pacific Shoe Factory issued checks in its profit-sharing program
Mrs. Goldie Waters, the first employee to go to work at the Pacific Shoe, received the first profit charing check just in time for Christmas 1961. Nine other women of the original ten employees hired by the company when it began operation also received checks – Anna Peterson, Myrtle Votaw, Francis Strauman, Martha Holmes, Billie Thiemann, Marian Smith, Ida Brown, Virginia Hirth, and Helen Murphy.
After the end of World War II the heyday of American shoe manufacturing was over and the industry began a slow decline. By 1953, there were only 23 factories in St. Louis and only five in 1964. In 1968 a flood of imported plastic shoes from Asia rocked the Missouri shoe industry. By 1970 the St. Louis shoe industry was a remnant of its former size. One by one the satellite shoe factories closed. The exact date when the Pacific Shoe Factory closed is uncertain. It was still in operation in 1962.
Today the rambling shoe factory building with its multiple additions stands on East St. Louis Street, and offers warehouse space. It is a reminder of the vitality of Pacific’s civic togetherness.
