July i, 1907.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



317 



Two Good Men Retire from the Trade. 



THE Boston Rubber Slioe Co. have been deprived during 

 the month of the services of two iinportant members of 

 the administrative force at their factories, by the resigna- 

 tion of Messrs. E. F. Bickford and Frank L. Locke. We have 

 pleasure in presenting herewith portraits of these gentlemen, to- 

 gether with a brief record of their connection with the com- 

 pany. 



* * * 



Erskine Frank Bickkokd, who has resigned the position of 

 manufacturing agent, was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, in 

 1841. He received a common school education, after which he 

 worked in various capacities until his twentieth year, when he en- 

 listed in the army of his country in the civil war and served with 

 credit for three years, at the end of which time he was cap- 

 tured and confined in the hospital prison at Richmond, Virginia. 



Erskine F. Bickford. 



Fr.\nk L. Locke. 



It may be mentioned here that he has since carried somewhere in 

 his sturdy frame a bullet which no surgeon has been able to 

 locate. On being released from prison he went to .\nnapolis, in 

 the service of the government. 



In 1865 Mr. Bickford entered the office of the Boston Rub- 

 ber Shoe Co., then but a small corporation. It was so small, in- 

 deed, that with the help of one assistant he was able to run the 

 office, handle the pay roll, receive the goods, and do the billing. 

 The superintendent at that time was John Robson, the father of 

 John Robson, who is now connected with the company. On the 

 death of the elder Robson he was succeeded by J. B. Sweetland, 

 who was superintendent for about four years, leaving in 1872. 

 During this interval the business has grown considerably and the 

 factory has been enlarged from time to time. On the retirement 

 of Mr. Sweetland, the late Mr. E. S. Converse was for a short 

 time his own superintendent, with i\Ir. Bickford as an able as- 

 sistant. 



With the continued growth of the enterprise Mr. Converse's 

 time became more and more engrossed in the general manage- 

 ment of the business, while upon Mr. Bickford devolved the de- 

 tails of manufacture — a kind of work which he proved him- 

 self marvelously adapted to do, as shown in the splendidly or- 

 ganized army of operators who are employed in the great fac- 

 tories at Maiden and Melrose. 



After the Boston company was merged with the United States 

 Rubber Co. (in 1898) Mr. Bickford was appointed to the position 

 of manufacturing agent of the former company's two factories, 

 the new plan of organization embracing also a general superin- 

 tendent, with an assistant superintendent for each factory. Dur- 

 ing the past eighteen years Mr. Bickford has been a member of 

 the board of directors of the Boston Rubber Shoe Co., a position 

 which he still holds. 



In addition to his close attention for so many years to the in- 

 terests of the manufacturing company, Mr. Bickford has found 

 time to serve as a trustee and director in the Maiden City 

 Hospital, a director in the Maiden Savings Bank, and an active 

 supporter of the Maiden Baptist Church. Mr. Bickford is a 

 man of quiet and studious habits, a great reader, conservative to 

 a degree in his methods, and withal strikingly self reliant, and 

 capable of attention to a great amount 

 of detail. 



» » * 



Frank Loverinc Locke, who has re- 

 signed as general superintendent of the 

 factories of the Boston Rubber Shoe 

 Co., to take effect on July i, was born 

 in the West End in Boston in 1855, at- 

 tended the public schools, and was 

 graduated from the Phillips Grammar 

 and English High schools. After a year 

 employed in railroad engineering he en- 

 tered the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, from which he was gradu- 

 ated in 1886 as a bachelor of science. He 

 continued his connection with the In- 

 stitute for a year, then devoted some 

 time to the engineering department of 

 the city of Boston, going in 1895 to the 

 Boston Rubber Shoe Co., where he was 

 first engaged in the engineering depart- 

 ment. He later became assistant super- 

 intendent of the company, in charge of 

 Factory No. i, and on January 7, 1902, 

 was appointed general superintendent, 

 with an assistant for each of the two factories — the position 

 which he has just resigned. 



Mr. Locke has always maintained his interest in the Institute 

 of Technologj', has served as president of the alumni, was an 

 organizer of the Technology Club, and is at present a member 

 of the Institute corporation. He was for fifteen years in active 

 service in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, from which he 

 retired on account of the pressure of business in 1900, with the 

 rank of Colonel. Mr. Locke has taken an active part as director 

 and treasurer in the Associate Charities of Maiden and is a 

 member of the Maiden Hospital Corporation. He has been par- 

 ticularly interested, however, in the work of the Boston Young 

 Men's Christian Union, of which he has been a member since 

 1879, and for almost twenty years active in the board of govern- 

 ment, taking part in the most important work of the society. 

 Recently, upon the resignation as president of the Union of Mr. 

 William H. Baldwin, who has served in that position for 39 

 years, the unanimous choice of the Union for the succession to 

 the office fell upon Mr. Locke, and this accounts for his retire- 

 ment from connection with the rubber industry. The new posi- 

 tion to which Mr. Locke has been called is one for which his 

 connection with the work of the society has fully prepared him, 

 and not least among the qualifications for the new work is the 

 fact that he is a most pleasing public speaker. 



