Los
Angeles County
Biographies
BRUCE F. BROWN
Bruce F. Brown figures prominently in
industrial circles of Los Angeles as president and manager of the southern
district for Fibreboard Products, Inc., one of the oldest and largest
manufactories in the United States engaged in the making if fibreboard and the
various forms of containers made of this product. The interesting story of the business is
printed below. Mr. Brown is a worthy
successor of his honored father, a pioneer in the paper-board industry. He was born in Corallites, Santa Cruz County,
California, August 24, 1882, his parents being Peter C. and Catherine (Boyd)
Brown, natives of Scotland, who immigrated to the United States in their youth
and were married in Oakland, California, on November 21, 1881. Their family numbered five children, as
follows: Bruce F., of this review;
Murray G.; Everett S.; Harvey M.; and Ralph W., who died in 1933. Murray G. and Harvey M. Brown are associated
with Fibre-board Products, Inc., and Everett S. Brown is a professor of
political science at the University of Michigan.
Peter C. Brown, the father of Bruce
F. Brown, crossed the Atlantic to the United States as a young man and located
in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a
cabinetmaker by trade and first worked for the Pullman interests and for Mr.
Comstock, a timberman. In 1876 he made
his way westward to San Francisco, California, where he was employed in
connection with the erection of the old Palace Hotel and the Mark Hopkins
home. It was in 1878, in association
with his brother James, that he began the operation of a paper mill at
Saratoga, Santa Clara County, California, for the manufacture of straw
board. Two years later the brothers
moved to Corallites, where they developed a plant for the making of butchers’
wrapping paper. They secured their
straw, the raw product, from Salinas and the Pajaro Valley. In 1902 they moved from Corallites to
Antioch, Contra Costa County, California, purchasing a plant at the latter
place. The Corallites plant was
abandoned because the farmers of the Pajaro Valley discontinued wheat growing
to raise apples and the wheat straw supply was thus lost. In the new location at Antioch, straw could
be secured and abundant coal was available in the nearby hills. Mr. Brown sold his plant in 1912 to the
Paraffine Paint Company, then called the California
Paper and Board Mills. Other
corporations likewise figured in the transaction. In the fall of 1912, Mr. Brown came on a
prospecting trip to Los Angeles and selected the site of the present Fibre-board
Products, Inc., as affording convenient marketing facilities, the business
center being but three and one-half miles distant. Waste paper was the raw material to be used,
and it was here available in quantities.
The plant was started under the name of the Southern Board and Paper
Mills and was owned jointly by the California Paper and Board Mills and the
Brown family. James Brown, brother of
Peter C. Brown, had withdrawn from the business at the time of the purchase of
the Antioch plant by the Paraffine Paint Company. Bruce F. Brown, immediate subject of this
article, had become connected with his father’s business in Antioch, while in
Los Angeles Murray and Harvey Brown, two other sons of Peter C. Brown,
identified themselves with Fibre-board Products, Inc. Peter C. Brown withdrew from active
connections with the enterprise in 1913 and passed away in 1926. The business in 1917 became a part of
Paraffine Companies, Inc. In the year
1927 the Paraffine Corporation separated the paper and board interests from its
other lines and reorganized with the National Paper Products, as at present.
Bruce F. Brown attended grammar
school in Corallites and continued his studies in the high school at
Watsonville, California. Subsequently he
completed a course in mechanical engineering at the University of California in
Berkeley, from which institution he was graduated with the Bachelor of Science
degree in 1903. Thereafter he was
connected with a number of paper mills in the east for several years. He was a resident of Antioch, California,
from 1906 until 1912 and was a partner in the formation of Fibre-board
Products, Inc., for which he is now manager of the southern district. He is also a director of the Paraffine
Companies, Inc., and the Schumacher Wall Board Corporation and Vitrefrax Corporation, both subsidiaries of Paraffine Companies,
Inc.
On the 12th of September,
1912, Bruce F. Brown was united in marriage to Elise Owen, a native of
Stockton, California, where her maternal grandfather, Henry T. Dorrance, was a pioneer harnessmaker. Mr. and Mrs. Brown became the parents of
three children, namely: Dorothy, a
student in Stanford University; Bruce F. Jr., a graduate of Huntington Park
high school; and Owen, who is attending the Montezuma school. The wife and mother passed away in Los
Angeles, April 13, 1931.
Politically Mr. Brown is an adherent
of the Republican Party. He is a Mason,
being a past master of Antioch Lodge in Contra Costa County. He belongs to the Jonathan Club of Los
Angeles, is an ex-president of the Vernon Rotary Club, and also has membership
in the American Society of Chemical Engineers.
He is widely known as a public-spirited, enterprising and progressive
citizen, as an outstanding industrialist in the southern California district
and as a scion of one of the state’s best families.
Pages
395-396
FIBERBOARD PRODUCTS, INC.
The above biographical sketch of
Bruce F. Brown tells of the inception of the manufacturing enterprise known as Fibreboard Products, Inc., which was established in Los
Angeles in 1912, with offices at 4444 Pacific Boulevard. At that time there were only fifty employees
and the daily output of fibreboard consisted of
fifteen tons. At this writing, with the
return of normalcy in world business, three hundred fifty men are employed and
daily production reaches a capacity of over one hundred tons. The plant on Pacific Boulevard alone
comprises twelve acres of floor space, and here an excellent quality of fibreboard is manufactured for the jobbing trade, including
board for motion picture sets, wall board and butter and egg carton board. Box makers are supplied with board, and
corrugated board is made for the Southgate plant, a subsidiary. Their principal products are paper boxes, egg
case fillers, folding boxes, ice cream pails, corrugated and solid fibre shipping containers, mailing tubes, oyster pails,
paper cans, set-up boxes, purity jars, butter cartons, boxboard and all allied
products.
The raw material used in the making
of fibreboard is principally waste paper of every description,
from newspapers and magazines to the lining of railroad box cars. Pulp made for the purpose is also shipped
here from Sweden, the same having a distinctively advantageous quality. Fibre shipping
cases and electric insulation are also made, while trunk fibre
and shoe patterns are produced at the plant located at Thirty-seventh and Soto
streets. In the modern equipment of the fibreboard the raw materials, after classification for
different kinds of raw product, are mixed by formula with certain chemicals, a
patented process, and a pulp is made which after extensive passage between
numerous steam-heated dryers emerges in the form of the stout fibreboard which is known so well to every American. There are many interesting details incident
to the manufacture of the product.
Ordinary butter cartons, for instance, can be made only of pure spruce
wood pulp, as any other material would impart an odor to the butter. After printing is done, a machine gives this
familiar carton the paraffin coating and folds it to shape. Printing presses are operated by the company
in the plant for all types of carton printing and for color work of the highest
order. The mechanical equipment is
strictly modern and affords facilities for the prompt filling of orders of any
description and of any size. A number of
box factories, in themselves manufacturers of major proportions, are supplied
with paper board by Fibreboard Products, Inc. This is an industry of which Los Angeles is
justly proud and which reflects great credit on the members of the Brown family
who were so largely instrumental in shaping its destinies.
The present officers of Fibreboard Products, Inc., are: J. D. Zellerbach,
president, and D. H. Patterson, vice president and general manager, who with I.
Zellerbach, W. H. Lowe, R. H. Shainwald,
M. C. Higgins, F. C. Lipmann, E. M. Mills, and H. Phleger,
make up the board of directors. They are
all residents of San Francisco, where the main office of the corporation is
located.
Transcribed by
V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: California of the South
Vol. IV, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 391-393, Clarke Publ.,
Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPHIES