Allied Industries Oral History

The wineries have formed an association, [the] “Southwest Michigan Wine Trail”. They have a nice brochure, and they have signage. If one winery is close to another winery, they put a sign of their competitor and the directions [to] the competitor. That is so fabulous because they really are competitors and the more volume you produce, it benefits everyone. Each one of them has a very unique operation. Phyllis Dowsett

During the Depression when it was so difficult, well that would have been late [19]30s, early [19]40s, and very difficult to sell. My father, at that point, made some contact with a pie factory in Chicago , and he would buy apples for a dollar a bushel, tree run, and farmers were happy to get it. Prices were much lower then than they are now. But they didn’t have to grade them; they didn’t have to provide baskets, and so it ended up being not that bad a deal. He liked that idea of taking his apples to Chicago . Arlene Emery
My grandfather started to grow plants before 1900. My father started the retail [nursery] business in 1914. In the beginning, this area was mostly small fruit, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, and so on. Small fruits [are] what built it. At one time we had fourteen thousand acres in strawberries.

We were in the mail-order business for a long time. At one time, we were mailing half a million catalogs. We had a fall catalog for several years that got larger and larger. Then we opened a garden center over in Niles , in about [19]46-[19]47, somewhere in that area after the war. Then we had one in South Bend in the southern part of South Bend in the [19]50s. Well, when mailing catalogs we mailed to just about every state in the Union , except California .

There’s always going to be somebody growing plants. We’re losing in this country. We’re just losing it. Real large growers left and what they’ll do, they’ll subdivide their land and they’ll go out of business. That’s what they’re going do. They’ll probably start importing a lot of plants. It’s been gobbled up.

The Depression hit us and it turned everything cock-eyed. It really stopped everybody. You didn’t know whether you were going to stay in business or not. The Depression was real bad around here, but people took care of each other. During the Depression it was so touch and go, in the nursery business. So many of them went by the wayside. This area had more nurseries in the [19]30s and [19]40s than any place in the state.

Conglomerates got into the nursery business. That’s when everybody quit. Otherwise, they’d stay in the landscaping or something or cash and carry. That held up for a long time, cash and carry did. It was good for a long time, but when the conglomerates, the bigger stores got into it, I can see the handwriting on the wall. You couldn’t compete. Cliff Emlong
Under the urban renewal in 1963, it was decided that those old parts of town should go away and they should put in new things. From Ship down to the river, they bought all of the old buildings down there and tore them down. That was in 1965 that they finally bought them and closed our business.

These basket machines went all over the country, all over the world as a matter of fact. It was a very successful operation. In the late [19]30s-early [19]40s, things began swinging a little bit away from stapling baskets. Now they don’t use hardly any wood baskets. Most of it’s now plastic, and they can zip those things off in a plastic machine at a great rate. Robert Hatch
We began growing fruit trees on our little seven-acre farm near Lansing , but we didn’t grow professionally. The growing of fruit trees [dwarfs, as well] is a highly complicated process. You never allow a tree to grow on its own, you have to train them. Wally ships trees to other nurseries all over the United States , and all over the world. I worked at training trees a little bit during our first year. Then I started having babies. I’ve got five children. I raised the kids and Wally raised the trees.

I decided at an early age that I was going to be a fruit grower. I was determined to attend Michigan State [and] I graduated, with luck. I benefited from the mentorship of Dr. H.P. Tookie, a pioneer researcher in the dwarfing of apple and fruit trees. So, our nursery became highly specialized. No one else, perhaps two or three nurseries in the entire country, used technological advances during this period to their benefit.

At Hilltop we specialized in dwarf trees, planted orchards models, and the farm grew because of them. We sponsored tours, and groups of people visited regularly. The nursery grew rapidly and in the [19]70s and the [19]80s, we were the largest in the world. Wallace and Laura Heuser

About two-thirds of Michigan fruit is sold for processing. We have a large processing industry that’s here in Michigan because the fruit industry’s here, and the fruit industry’s here because the processing industry is here. Mark Longstroth
When I became part of [the fruit packaging industry] in 1960, a transition was happening. Ninety-eight percent of [the fruit] was still packed in wood, and two percent was packed in corrugated, plastic or foam containers. Today, it’s just the reverse. Two percent is packed in wood, and ninety-eight percent is packed in corrugated and plastics. Sam Monte
In 1925, my dad and mother started a distribution outlet for a basket company out of South Haven, Michigan , known as the Pierce-Williams Company. They needed someone in this area to distribute their containers, and my dad decided to take it on.

My grandfather was a peddler horse and buggy and he saw this little store up in Bainbridge about twelve miles east of Benton Harbor . He helped my father buy that store, and we’ve been there ever since. That was in 1920. In 1926, he started selling bushel baskets to the farmers. When I came back from the service [in 1932], we got in[to] the chemical business. Sheldon Radom
The canners take the excess [produce] that you can’t sell fresh and you don’t want to go to the market with. Richard Schinkel
There were several grape juice companies in the area like J. Hungerford Smith and Paw Paw Grape Juice Company. Basically, the only real juice company that’s left in the area is Welch’s. The rest are all wineries…We have other industries such as Honey Bear canning factory, which also did deal with grape juice, but they’re more into other fruits and vegetables now, like pears, asparagus, and cherries, apples, blueberries, etc. Tim Washburn