54 
STATE AGKICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
gregate of but four establishments are, at present, nineteen hun¬ 
dred machines, with a total valuation of nearly $400,000. 
At the last named place there is also a great business done 
in the manufacture of various agricultural implements—as 
plows, by the Whitewater Plow Factory, and Esterly’s Seeder 
and Cultivator, by George Esterly, who is this present year 
manufacturing no less than five thousand, valued at $400,000. 
Seeders are also extensively manufactured at Beaver Dam 
and Horicon; Messrs. Kowell k Co., of the first named place, 
turning out three thousand the present year, with a total value 
of at least $210,000 ; and Messrs. Van Brant k Co., of Hori¬ 
con, three thousand two hundred, valued at $225,000. 
The manufacture of sash, doors and blinds properly belongs 
in the great lumber State of Wisconsin; but, in view of the 
youth of the State, and the general deficiency on that account 
of capital for extensive operations, it certainly is a ground of 
just pride that, thus early in her history, she may boast of 
having the most extensive and the most productive factory of 
that kind, not merely in the West, but in the whole world. 
We refer, of course, to the establishment of Chas. J. L. Meyer, 
of Fond du Lac, whose history we may be allowed to remark, 
in passing, like the personal histories of so many of our lead¬ 
ing manufacturers, affords a most interesting and instructive 
example of what unaided enterprise may accomplish in a few 
years in this Western country. 
This monster factory, which in a certain sense may be said 
to have had its origin in a small shop built in the year 1861, 
measures 245 feet in length by 100 feet in width, is three 
stories high—affording room for 100 pieces of machinery and 
400 workmen—and consumed in its construction 650,000 feet 
of lumber and 400,000 brick. As carried on by Mr. Meyer, 
the annual product of the establishment is about two and a 
half million lights of window sash, eighty thousand doors, 
'sixty-two thousand pairs of blinds, and some $75,000 worth of 
mouldings and other irregular work; the total value being 
scarcely less than a million of dollars. His market em¬ 
braces all the Western and many of the Southern States, ex- 
