The Bay City Times

Page 4

NOTE: this article is copied as written in 1950. Any corrections are in italics

Fifty years ago this month the Robt. Gage Coal Co. employed a few dozen miners working a coal digging in St. Charles, south of Saginaw.

Today the firm operates a retail and wholesale coal yard, the Republic Fuel Co. and Monitor Sugar Co. employing more than 400 people and doing a $5,000,000 yearly business.

It's success route was not without an occasional failure, either.

 Once a leading Michigan coal producer, the company since the turn of the century operated 14 mines in Bay, Saginaw, and Tuscola counties. In 1907 coal production in the state reached its high peak of some 2,035,000 tons.

Today there is a single coal mine in Michigan, Swan Creek Cooperative mine near St. Charles in Saginaw County. It produces 10.000 to 15,000 tons yearly.

Michigan's shallow coal veins, high cost of machinery, inferior qualities of coal led the firm to abandon mining.

In turn its talents to sugar beet processing and the wholesale and retail end of the coal and builders' supply business. It operates the largest sugar beet processing plant east of the Mississippi river.

Of the three who organized the firm, only Charles Coryell, its 80-year ole president survives. The Bay Cityan has directed its operation for the past 50 years.

The other organizers were Robert Gage, whose name the company still hears, and Francis W. Urch. They had operated a coal yard and … near Jackson.

Gage was the first president, holding the post for 19 years. He and Urch maintained their residences in Jackson. Gage could neither read nor write and depended on his partners for the book work of the firm.

In 1919, Gage, a native Welchman (Welshman), retired, and six years later Urch left the company. Gage has two nephews in Bay City, A. H. "Dick" Bendall, city assessor, and Walter Mathews.

Assisting their father as officers of the firm now are Charles A. Coryell, secretary-treasurer, and John A. Coryell, vice-president.

Charles A. joined the firm in 1915, after completing slightly more than one year of college.

John started with the firm shortly after completing high school. Earlier he had worked at the company's United City mine, one of the several mines inside the city limits and located near East North Union and Dean Streets.

Judging from the length of service of many of its employees, Robt. Gage Co. is a good place to work. Included among its long time employees are: William B. Reed, purchasing agent, who started in 1900, six months after the firm was formed; Herbert W. Bean, sales manager and wholesale yard manager (1923); William N. Heric, retail yard manager, (1910); AND William Fritz, salesman (1910).

Robt. Gage sunk its first mine shaft near St. Charles. The digging was dubbed "Mosquito Mine" because of the swarms of moquitos (mosquitoes) which infected its tipple.

Six years later it purchased the properties of Auburn Coal Mining Co. in Bay County, The latter firm had worked unsuccessfully for 14 months to push the shaft through 30 feet of quicksand and water less than 100 feet below the surface. With the assistance of interlocking steel piling, the new owners drove the shaft past the obstacle into the producing vein. The firm rained considerable fame for its then novel use of the interlocking piling.

A year later the properties of the J. H. Sumers Co. including three mines, a salt block, and leases on all coal in the St. Charles area were taken over. In 1912 the firm purchased the Beaver Co. mine in Bay County for $90.000 operating it until 1930. The firm's last mine, the Big Chief, near Unionville was closed four years ago.

Coal mining in its earl days here was dangerous and difficult. The diggings were worked by hand. A narrow coal seam had to be undercut with picks and shot down with black power. Miners working generally on the knees often on their backs, shoveled the coal from the small "rooms" into pit cars pulled by mules to the shaft where it was hauled to the surface. For his work the miner was paid 86 cents a ton and was capable of mining and loading about three ton a day.

Around 1910 the mines were "electrified." Machines were developed to cut the coal and electric motors drove shaft elevators and underground locomotives. Electricity provided lights, powered the huge ventilation fans, pumped water, the bane of all mining. But, electricity had its drawbacks then, too. Faulty electric wiring resulted in a fire which wrecked the St. Charles No. 1 mine in 1910, forcing its abandonment.

Operations at the Monitor plant

* * *

Although geologists estimate Michigan has an underground coal reserve of some 125 billions of tons in the 30 south central counties, there are factors which rule out its profitable mining. Michigan mines must be timbered to keep the roof from falling in, a costly oeration (operation), and because of the Great Lakes, the mines would require costly pumping operation.

In 1916 Gage stepped out of its mining role to form a subsidiary, Halogen Chemical Co., manufacturing bromine and iron bromides. Unsuccessful, the plant closed the same year.

Five years later, Gage took another fling at development. It purchased a river front site for a retail coal and mason supply business. It is still operated.

A "smokeless briquette" fuel plant was set up at Salida, Colo. But the fuel could not be produced cheep enough and Gage shut down the plant after two years.

In 1930 Gage Co. began looking for diversified interests as coal began to peter out.

One of its largest coal customers was the Columbia Sugar Co., which operated beet sugar plants at Paulding, Orio, Mt. Pleasant, and Bay City.

…difficulties, Columbia went into receivership in 1931. Gage leased the Bay City plant and entered the sugar producing "field."

In the bleak depression years the industry was a boom to Bay City area farmers. It meant a cash crop for farmers, employment for several hundred idle persons.

It was reported that the day following the announcement that the plant would rum farmers from "miles around" lined up with wagons and cars waiting hopefully to sign beet acreage contracts. The state police were pressed into service to alleviate the traffic jam.

From the beginning the sugar processing plant was successful. In 1932, Monitor Sugar Co., a subsidiary, was formed to purchase the Bay City plant from the receivers of the Columbia Sugar Co. Besides operating the Monitor plant in 1931 the firm leased and operated the Essexville plant of the Michigan Sugar Co. The following year the Coryells, in control of the Gage Co., leased and operated the Croswell plant of the Michigan Sugar Co. The Mt. Clemens plant of the Mt. Clemens Sugar Co. was leased and operated until 1940.

Operation(s) at the Monitor plant have mushroomed until some 37,000,000 pounds of sugar are processed annually. Daily slicing operations, during the season, have been increased from 1,600 tons several years ago to more than 2,400. Approximately 16,000 acres of beets are contracted for each year.

About the time the sugar "bug" bit the company the Michigan oil boom reached a fever pitch. Oil wells came in overnight and a bright future loomed.

In 1931 the company joined with George Talbot, an oil driller from Kentucky to from the Talbot Oil Co. Its first venture a well located in Greendale Township, Midland county, came in a 800 barrels per day. Since then several wells have been drilled in other areas of the state and some are still producing,.