In late August 1945, in the country town of Wingham, NSW, the foundation stone was laid for what was to be a new slipper factory. Does that seems strange to you? It seems a little strange to me.
Australians would have been just getting used to the fact that – after six years of struggle – World War 2 was finally over. Earlier that same month erstwhile aggressor Japan had been nuked into final submission by the USA. The ink was hardly dry on the surrender document. And somebody was planning a slipper factory at Wingham?
I suppose it’s fair to say that the Allied victory had been anticipated for quite some time and there had been a lot of talk about postwar rebuilding. The war had changed Australia in many ways. For a start, the country had been tugged from the orbit of its British founders and was beginning to adjust to a new era of American dominance. Many women had been mobilised by industry as part of the war effort and were reluctant to return to their pre-war roles. And all over the country new industries had sprung up to replace goods that had previously been imported. Wartime shipping and material shortages had wiped out many imports altogether and Australia had been obliged and enabled to fill those gaps using its own resources and ingenuity.
In practice, the resumption of peace meant that many of these fledgling domestic industries would soon wither under the renewed onslaught of cheap (often “dumped” imports) from Britain and the USA, but the process took time and until it gathered pace many of the domestic industries managed to thrive.
I’ll note here that I’m writing this article because of this photograph, taken by Ron Morrison in 1970.
The man in the photo is Jack Hyatt, an American who had moved to Australia to set up a factory to make horseshoes. In a Sydney Morning Herald article that accompanied the photo I read that Hyatt had been encouraged to open up shop in the small town of Wingham, NSW, in a building that used to be a slipper factory. Surprised that a slipper factory had existed in sleepy Wingham, I tried to find out what I could about that previous enterprise (don’t worry – more about the horseshoes later on).
Turns out that a textile factory had been proposed for Wingham in the later years of the war. It appears that Felt and Textiles Ltd. – at that time a very large industrial combine with manufacturing interests in many parts of Australia, had been seeking a rural site for a factory and had considered a number of towns. The citizens of Wingham were very keen, but soon discovered that none of the buildings already in the town would be suitable. In early 1945 a group of Wingham business-people established a consortium named Wingham Investments Ltd and agreed to build a factory if the company chose their town. Their strategy succeeded and the result was a fairly impressive art deco style building. The architect was John K. Noller, of Sydney and the builder was R. Babington, also of Sydney. The foundation stone was laid on August 23, 1945 by the NSW Minister for Labor, Industry and Social Welfare, Mr Hamilton Knight, and a lengthy report of the unveiling was published in The Wingham Chronicle and The Manning River Times.
During his speech Mr Knight talked about the government’s reasons for supporting decentralisation of industry, with a key factor being the wartime realisation of the strategic dangers of having almost all the nation’s industrial resources clustered in a small handful of cities. He “emphasized the serious position Australia would have been in had enemy planes bombed the centralised areas where Australia’s war industries were concentrated”. “His government had realised this grave possibility and had immediately begun to implement a policy of decentralisation.” “The imperative needs of war” had prompted a concerted push to set up industries in “suitable country districts”.
Alongside the remarks about the strategic importance of decentralisation, other benefits were highlighted. These included creating jobs and prosperity in rural Australia and easing congestion in the big cities.
The most interesting part of the report of Mr Knight’s speech came when he listed industries around NSW that had been supported by the government in its push for decentralisation. It’s a long list and includes the manufacture of matches from local timber at Grafton, the building of ships at Taree and the processing of wattle bark at Moruya for the tanning industry. Carnauba wax was being made at Bourke, “power alcohol” at Cowra and Griffith and “cuddleseats” were being made at Cessnock. There were fruit and vegetable canneries. There was rayon being produced at Rutherford, chenille products at Mudgee and Newcastle. Chickens were being slaughtered at Tamworth, rice was being milled at Cootamundra and copper was being mined at Captains Flat. At Maitland confectionery and furniture were being made and millet was being made into brooms.
It appears the Wingham factory started producing slippers and shoes on March 11, 1946 with a staff of five. After five months it was producing 1000 pairs a day – each pair reportedly stamped “Made in Wingham”. By 1949, when Felt and Textiles bought the factory from the investors who had built it, the number of employees had grown to 75 and the payroll was a very useful addition to local prosperity.
Following staff reductions and rumours of impending closure the factory shut down in May 1952, citing an “acute shortage of work”. The same thing was happening to other textile-based industries across Australia, with low-priced imports blamed. At its peak it had employed 123 people and over its lifetime it produced 2.75 million pairs of slippers. It was reported in July 1953, that the factory would re-open, still under the same ownership, employing just 20 people. It appears this took place on August 27. How long the factory lasted in this second incarnation is unclear to me, although blogger “Jose the travelling padre” has written that it closed in 1959.
A proposal to have the Manning River County Council take over the building came to nothing and I don’t know what purpose, if any, it might have been put to after the last slippers shuffled unceremoniously out the door.
Which brings me back to the horseshoes. American Jack Hyatt, who apparently came from a long line of blacksmiths, was making horseshoes in Sebastopol, California for 15 years until he was, he said, priced out of business by Japanese products. So in December 1969 he moved his operation offshore. Puerto Rico had offered him a 17-year tax holiday, he said, but he preferred Australia and he set his sights on Sydney. But he got “a good deal from the Department of Decentralisation” which steered him to Wingham. The old slipper factory was still a good building and the railway station was just across the road so Hyatt and his son Doug got down to business.
According to an article in the US newspaper, The Hamlin Herald, (Jack was born in Texas) Jack, his wife Eula, two of their children and three of their grandchildren moved to Wingham, with plans for more of the family to follow in time. He also brought a mechanical hammer and four power-presses and soon he had ten local workers on his payroll and was stamping out 3300 horseshoes a day and exporting a lot back to the USA.
In those days Australian steel and labour were about half the price they were in the US, he said, which made the Wingham factory viable. There was solid demand for horseshoes in Australia, but even more so in the US, where interest in horses had skyrocketed. Hyatt reckoned there were five times as many horses in the US in 1970 as their had been in the days when horse-drawn vehicles ruled American roads. The average shoe only lasted about six weeks too, which helped keep up demand.
The US newspaper The Sonoma West Times and News carried a detailed article about the factory, with much information that I think only horse-lovers could truly understand. I’ll quote some slabs to give you some idea:
Their biggest demand is for back shoes, in either flat or ridged concave types, followed by training shoes for pacers and gallopers. They build a full line of shoes for pacers (trotting or harness horses), training and racing plates for gallopers. Unlike American horses, which use the same shoes for both training and racing, Australian horses are re-shod for racing. Training shoes are larger and heavier than racing plates. Australian-type shoes are different from the American style which have a toe grab and baffle plate and are faster and cheaper to manufacture.
The Hyatts have steel specially rolled for their requirements by a mill on the south coast of New South Wales and that used for concave shoes differs from steel for the other types.
I gather that the Hyatts ran the factory until 1979 when it was taken over by Clarke’s. I don’t know when the factory and business finally closed.
These days the factory still catches the eyes of some visitors to Wingham, who appreciate finding examples of art deco architecture in the small towns of Australia. It is, at the very least, a sort of monument to the foresight of the group of local investors who, in 1945, built it as an inducement to bring a slipper manufacturer to their town. The return on investment to the town of Wingham must, over the years, have added up to a very appreciable sum.
