from Poisoning Paradise: An Environmental History of Madison
By Maria C. Powell, PhD
Madison thrived in World War II
Madison benefited greatly from war industries, with Kipp and several other east side industries involved in war-related production: “The year 1942,” the State Journal wrote, “the first to see Madison and Wisconsin engaged for 365 days in production for the modern type of ‘all-out’ war, shattered all records for increased employment, soaring payrolls, and general economic prosperity.”[i] A front page article in January 1943 claimed that 1942 had also made Madison a “Boom Town” in retail sales.[ii]
In 1943 the Wisconsin State Journal published a series of “exclusive” front page reports “approved by military and censorship authorities” focused on “the highly important part Madison industries are playing in the war effort.” The article on Kipp, titled “Madison-Kipp Corp. Is Arsenal Within Arsenal of Democracy” excitedly described that “Madison’s contribution to the present World war through the Madison-Kipp Corp. is almost unbelievable…. “Nowhere to our knowledge has the initiative of private industry been directed to the wartime effort of saving our nation and its Allies any better than right here in Madison at Madison-Kipp.” Kipp turned out “millions upon millions of component parts of artillery ammunition”—ammunition that was highly accurate in killing enemy troops. “Sharp aluminum snouts that poke their way into the wings and engines of Jap Zeros or German Messerschmitts, little dishes for TNT sent up to make things lively for the enemy four or five miles above the earth, and automatic pilots which put trench mortar bombs exactly where the sender wants them to go.”[iii]
Sharon Helmus moves to neighborhood
When Sharon Helmus’ parents moved their growing family to Marquette Street in 1940, in a new house built just feet from Kipp’s facility in the Four Lakes building, Madison Kipp had been in the neighborhood for nearly forty years. Though Sharon’s parents didn’t work at the plant,[1] many neighbors did. City leader’s earlier decisions to designate the east side as the “factory district,” and shrewd land developer’s efforts to attract factories and workers there, had clearly been successful. A newspaper article years later quipped that “Once it was said if you lived west of the Yahara River, you never heard of Madison-Kipp — and if you lived east of the Yahara, you worked there.”[iv]
Sharon, only one year old when her family arrived, was unaware of her neighbors’ previous complaints about Kipp’s expansion into the old building behind her house. She has fond memories of her childhood there. “It was a pretty good neighborhood to grow up…. every house had kids, all up and down the street.” She and her friends in the neighborhood played outside a lot. “The kids were always playing in our backyard, we were always playing in the street,” she recalled. Neighborhood kids walked every day along the train tracks between Kipp and Kupfer Ironworks, she recollected. “We never thought anything about the Kipp. We didn’t know anything about the Kipp. It was there, we were here.”
In 1939, after the military approved Kipp’s new die casting process, Kipp secured a large contract with the U.S. government to produce ammunition, and as the involvement of the U.S. in the war looked more likely, Kipp’s munitions operations ramped up.[2] War support efforts seemed to take over the neighborhood—and to some extent, the whole city. A September 18, 1941 front page column in the Wisconsin State Journal described the 19th Annual Eastside Fall Festival held in the Kipp factory as integral to supporting the war. The Atwood side of the Kipp factory, the old Four Lakes plant, it noted, was busy “making the tools of American might” with “lights blazing every night, lathes and motors singing every second” –while in the Waubesa side of the factory, the five-day festival was being held to keep America “strong and sane and steady,” doing a “dandy job of helping it forget the war for a while, but reminding it, nevertheless, of the fun and the comfort and the security that is Americaand America alone.”
Sharon, only a baby at the time, doesn’t recall the 1941 festival, but she probably attended with her parents, along with many others in the neighborhood. That year, the festival lasted several days, was attended by 8,000 people, and included flower shows, live music, barn dancing, beer, and much more. In 1942, with the United States now fully engaged in World War II, the festival was held at Olbrich Park instead of Kipp because the entire Kipp factory was needed for war work.
A later newspaper article told the story of one of Sharon’s neighbors, a young man who lived at 146 Marquette Street, who had been “making the tools of war out at Madison- Kipp Corp,” when he “decided that he’d rather use them than just make them.” However, while fighting in the Southwest Pacific, “putting some of those Madison made weapons to good use,” he injured his right hand and came back to Madison and told “the boys down at the plant that the products they are making are being put to good use by the men of this city — as well as of the country — in converting live Japs into dead ones.”[v]
Thomas E. Coleman’s power grows
While Madison-Kipp profited from the war, its owners became even more politically powerful in the Republican Party. Thomas E. Coleman was elected Chairman of the Wisconsin GOP in 1943.[vi] By 1945, according to one account, Coleman “was in firm control of the party’s patronage and purse strings,” and “anyone who sought to run a serious, well-financed campaign on the Republican ticket would have to acquire Tom Coleman’s personal endorsement.”[vii] Coleman authority was based “largely upon his ability to tap wealthy industrialists for campaign contributions… [o]ne close associate contended that he [Coleman] could raise $100,000 over the telephone in a half hour without the slightest difficulty.”[viii]
Coleman and other Stalwarts were outraged when in 1946, Senator Robert La Follette Jr., Fighting Bob’s son, rejoined the Republican Party after splitting from it in 1934 to form the Wisconsin Progressive Party. He engaged in nasty attacks on all things connected to the La Follette and Progressives; in a 1945 public speech, he accused the Evjue-Roberts-La Follette “radio ring” of “political hypocrisy” because they “for years covered their own commercial-for-profit activities by railing against wealth and special privileges.”[ix][x]
Coleman’s political power in right-wing politics continued to expand in the 1940s and 50s. He was hailed by national political pundits as a man of “political precision’ with an uncanny knack of analysis of the political future,” and many, especially in opposing political parties, called him “Boss Coleman.”[xi],[xii] In the 1946 Republican primary, Coleman supported Joe McCarthy, a circuit judge from Appleton with strong anti-labor, anti-progressive views, as being most likely to be able to beat Robert La Follette Jr. or “Young Bob.” With support from Coleman and other Stalwart Republicans, McCarthy was successful, and “from that time until Joe McCarthy died in 1957, Tom “Boss” Coleman ensured that McCarthy received all the financial support he needed.”[xiii] He supported Robert A Taft, author of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, in his unsuccessful 1952 bid for GOP presidential nomination—and when Taft died in 1953, Coleman collected money from wealthy industrialists all over the country to create a memorial for him in Washington D.C.[xiv]
Oscar Mayer expanded, manufactured processed food for soldiers
The war was also profitable for Oscar Mayer. In the 1940s, the company created products for the war, such as shelf-stable meats and ration packs for the military. It adopted mottos like “Our Job is More Meat, It’s Fightin’ Food!” (Winterhalter, 2019).
In 1940, despite some resistance among alders, an ordinance was approved by Common Council to vacate Roth Street on both sides of the property so Oscar Mayer could handle increasing government war orders.[xv] In September 1941, even as Mayor Law halted highway construction because materials were needed for the impending war, new construction was up in the city, largely due to another large $50,000 expansion at Oscar Mayer.[xvi]
During and after the war, Oscar Mayer also became an industry leader in plastic packaging technologies. In the late 1940s, it developed “chub” packaging, which was “a durable, air-tight tube of flexible packaging material for liver sausage and similar sandwich spreads” and later used for other types of processed meats. In 1950, the company created the industry’s first vacuum-sealed package for meat products called “Slice-Pak”—still used today but called “Serve ‘n Seal” (Winterhalter, 2019).
[1] Sharon’s father worked at Webcrafters, formerly Democrat Printers; her mother, Marcella, worked through some time in the 1950s in the city District Attorney’s office, and later part-time as a secretary at the Madison Bus Barn and in the state statutes office in the state capitol.
[2] Though Kipp relinquished its rights to this new process, and other companies began using it to produce ammunition, Madison-Kipp led the pack, outpacing all of the other U.S. manufacturers combined.
[i] 1942.12.31
[ii] 1943.1.19
[iii] 1943.3.28
[iv] 1986.7.28
[v] 1943.12.19
[vi] 1943.7.20
[vii] From the biography of McCarthy by Reeves, cited in Anne Chacon’s 2007 history of the Coleman family.
[viii] Chacon, 2007
[ix] 2.5.64
[x] 1945. 11.16
[xi] 2.5.64. WSJ
[xii] Chacon, 2007 p. 13
[xiii] Chacon, 2007 p. 14
[xiv] Chacon, 2007 and WSJ 2.5.64
[xv] 1940.10.12 WSJ
[xvi] 1941.9.4. CT
© 2023 Maria C. Powell. All rights reserved.