Word: gowanda
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last month, in Gowanda, N. Y., died a man who had made between $18,000,000 and $25,000,000 out of glue. His name was Richard Wilhelm, and few people outside Gowanda had ever heard of him. Except for a few shares of preferred stock, he owned Peter Cooper Corp. outright, and that company makes more animal glue (a $17,000,000 a year business) than all its competitors combined...
...German immigrant, Wilhelm (then 31) left glue-jobbing for glue-making in 1897, resolved to make a million dollars in ten years. He chose Gowanda (near Buffalo) because it had a tanning industry, and animal glue is made chiefly from the fleshing of hides. He made his first million in seven years and began to expand. First he bought up the old Peter Cooper Corp., whose famed founder, a New York philanthropist (Cooper Union), was a glue pioneer. By 1930 he had bought competitors in Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Hammond, Ind., Springdale, Pa. and Brantford, Ont. He hated travel...
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