U.S.
Cartridge Company
Company Origins
Established in 1869, the United States Cartridge Company was led by the controversial
attorney, politician, and Civil War general Benjamin F. Butler who, at the time, was a
Republican congressman from the Fifth Congressional District (Essex County). Butler
secured contracts for munitions with the federal government, which aided his fledgling
company, initially incorporated with a capital of $25,000. 1 Additionally, the increasing
popularity of hunting, especially among the nation’s growing middle class, resulted in an
ever-greater demand for shotgun shells and rifle cartridges. The U.S. Cartridge Company
quickly grew to rival such major ammunition manufacturers as Remington and
Winchester.
This engraving of Benjamin Butler dates from the Civil Dating from the 1880s and rife with racist caricature and
War, during which time which he served as controversial political satire, this cartoon attacked Butler as a wealthy
general in command at New Orleans. capitalist who self-servingly sought the support of
workingmen and promoted racial equality while employing an
African-American as his personal valet.
1
“A New Enterprise in Lowell,” Saturday Vox Populi, April 3, 1869.
Benjamin Butler
Much is written about Benjamin Butler as a political and military figure, but the skill,
shrewdness, and acumen he displayed in the many business enterprises in which he was
engaged has received far less attention. As a major shareholder of the Middlesex Mills,
beginning in the 1850s Butler emerged in the late-antebellum years as one of Lowell’s
wealthiest residents. In 1865 he joined with several other local capitalists to form the
Wamesit Power Company and the United States Bunting Company, the works of which
were located along the Concord River at the former Oliver M. Whipple property. An
astute judge of technical and managerial talent, Butler brought together a group of men to
oversee these firms, as well as the cartridge company, and the two manufacturing
concerns proved to be highly profitable.
This view of the U.S. Cartridge Company plant dates from ca. 1899 and shows the wood-frame factory
buildings that housed much of the machinery for cartridge production. In the early 20th century the
company constructed brick buildings and these older factories were torn down.
Inventors: Joe V. Meigs
For many years local merchant De Witt C. Farrington served as treasurer of U.S.
Cartridge and presided over the company’s financial affairs. For mechanical skill,
however, Butler relied on the gifted inventor Joe V. Meigs, whom the general had
convinced to move from Washington, D.C., to Lowell to join the company. From a
prominent family in Nashville, Tennessee, Meigs was born in 1840. His father, Return J.
Meigs, was a lawyer and Whig politician who served as U.S. attorney for the Middle
Tennessee District. Upon the outbreak of war Return J. Meigs remained loyal to the
union although he was part of a citizens committee that opposed President Lincoln’s
request to send troops to put down the rebellion. Nonetheless, feeling the heat from the
city’s many Southern sympathizers, Meigs moved his family to Staten Island in 1861 and
eventually settled in Washington, D.C., where Lincoln appointed him clerk of Supreme
Court.
The younger Meigs followed his father into the legal profession, but specialized in patent
law and areas related to the mechanical arts. During the Civil War he joined the Union
army while working in the War Department and proposed to Secretary of War Stanton
that African Americans be organized into army units in his former home state of
Tennessee, primarily to serve as sentries and aid artillery batteries. Appointed captain,
Meigs was placed in command of the first all-black artillery battery in the United States
military and engaged in a number of campaigns in the Volunteer state. After the war he
returned to Washington and worked in the court of claims, handling patent litigation.
Joe V. Meigs achieved national renown for his patented single-track, elevated railway, a short experimental
section of which was constructed in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late 1880s. Despite its promise,
this mass transportation system was never built in any other city.
Shortly before joining U.S. Cartridge Meigs patented a breech loading firearm and upon
taking the position of “inventor” with Butler’s company, he patented a metal cartridge
with an improved firing chamber that helped solve the problem of accidental explosions
of firearms. 2 Butler appointed Meigs agent of the company when it began operations in
1869 in a stone building erected by the Wamesit Power Company, next to S.N. Woods’
grist mill, two years earlier. 3 Meigs remained agent until the mid-1870s when Charles A.
R. Dimon, also a Union army officer who served under Butler during the Civil War,
replaced him. In the 1880s Meigs gained national renown as an inventor of a single-rail
elevated railway system, for which he oversaw construction in East Cambridge. 4 Meigs
and Butler also pursued water transportation projects, forming the Pentucket Navigation
2
Meigs was awarded a patent (No. 87,352) for a metallic cartridge with a fulminate chamber arranged in
such a fashion that it would explode only in one direction, namely outward from the gun barrel. A brief
description of this patent, dated March 2, 1869, is found in U.S. Congress, Annual Report of the
Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1869, v. 2, 41st Congress, 2nd Session, Exec. Doc. 102, (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1871), p.349.
3
“Cartridge Factory,” Lowell Daily Courier, December 18, 1868. Meigs’ role was primarily that of
inventor. For the daily management of plant Butler hired Charles K. Farmer, who had experience in
munitions manufacture in Springfield, Massachusetts, as superintendent. See “A New Enterprise in
Lowell,” Saturday Vox Populi, April 3, 1869.
4
“Studying Rapid Transit,” New York Times, January 12, 1888.
Company in the 1870s with the aim of dredging sections of the Merrimack River to
create a navigable waterway from Newburyport to Lowell. Unlike the U.S. Cartridge
Company, however, neither of these enterprises were successful. Meigs eventually
moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts, where he died in 1907.
Company Management: C. A. R. Dimon
For many years the key manager of the cartridge company was Charles A. R. Dimon.
Born in Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1841 and educated in the local academy, Dimon
became a clerk in the merchant house of an uncle in Salem, Massachusetts, his before
enlisting as a private in the Massachusetts Eighth Volunteer Militia, commanded by
Butler, in 1861. Dimon’s intelligence and ambition caught Butler’s attention and he was
rapidly promoted to the rank of major while serving under Butler in Louisiana. Dimon
gained renown for training and commanding a group of former Confederate soldiers who
joined the Union army and became known as the “Galvanized Yankees.” 5 After the war
Dimon returned to Massachusetts and eventually settled in Lowell after Butler appointed
him agent of U.S. Cartridge in the mid 1870s. Under Dimon’s capable management the
company grew and by the early 1880s it employed 250 workers. Although the company
produced primarily cartridges, paper-shot-shells, and primers, it engaged for a few years
in the manufacture of the “Lowell Battery Gun,” patented by De Witt C. Farrington and
similar to the more widely used Gatling gun. Its works expanded with the construction of
additional wood–frame factory buildings adjacent to Andrews Street and the company
was recapitalized at $150,000. 6
Benjamin Butler’s son, Paul Butler, assumed control
of his father’s enterprises in Lowell. Unlike his
father, he never sought political office and he
proved to be a talented mechanic.
5
As a colonel, Dimon commanded the “Galvanized Yankees troops in the Upper Missouri region in 1864-
65. Michèle Butts, Galvanized Yankees on the Upper Missouri: The Face of Loyalty (Boulder: University
Press of Colorado, 2003).
6
“The U.S. Cartridge Works,” Saturday Vox Populi, July 30, 1881; also, see the entry for the United States
Cartridge Company in The Bivouac, (Lowell: 1886), p. 54; Peter M. Molloy, The Lower Merrimack Valley:
An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1976),
p. 69.
Paul Butler
At about the same time Charles Dimon joined U.S. Cartridge, Benjamin Butler’s son,
Paul Butler, having graduated from Harvard University in 1875, began working at the
cartridge factory with Meigs. Unlike his father, Paul Butler eschewed party politics and
immersed himself in the mechanical arts and inventive endeavors at the cartridge
company. He succeeded Farrington as treasurer and after Benjamin Butler’s death in
1893 he was the cartridge company’s guiding force. 7
These brick buildings are the major remnants of the former U.S. Cartridge Company’s plant along
Lawrence Street.
7
Frederick W. Coburn, History of Lowell and Its People, v. 3, (New York: Lewis Publishing Company,
1920), pp. 6a-6b.
These two photographs were taken immediately after the U.S. Cartridge explosion in that destroyed
numerous houses and killed 22 people.
Dangerous Conditions
As in other 19th century manufacturing establishments, worker injuries in the factory of
U.S. Cartridge occurred all too frequently. Workers at the cartridge company faced not
only the common perils of injury from machinery and the belt-driven power system on
the shop floor, but also from the dangerous nature of producing ammunition. 8 The most
horrific of these dangers struck in late July 1903 when an explosion, sparked by the
ignition of gunpowder in one of the company’s powder magazines that was located just
over the Lowell city limits in Tewksbury, killed 22 employees and nearby residents,
while injuring more than 70.
The massive blast destroyed or severely damaged about 70 houses in Tewksbury’s
Wigginville neighborhood and the shock was felt as far away as Haverhill, where
windows broke and doors of homes “swung open with a crash as if by a gust of wind.” 9
A closed-door inquest held at the Lowell Police Court in August was followed by Judge
Hadley’s ruling in October that held Paul Butler and his aunt, Blanche Butler Ames, who
were the principal partners in U.S Cartridge Company, responsible for the explosion.
Likewise, the Dupont Powder Company, which produced the gunpowder stored in the
magazines, carried some of the blame. 10 One result of the disaster was the U.S. Cartridge
8
For an example of a small explosion that injured two female cartridge employees, each 14 years old, see
“Accident at the U.S. Cartridge Company’s Works---Two Young Girls Injured,” Lowell Daily Citizen,
February 8, 1878.
9
The death and devastation resulting from the explosion at the U.S. Cartridge Company received national
attention. Of the many terrible deaths, the most widely reported concerned four young boys who were
about to swim in the Concord River near the seven-arch bridge, about 1,000 feet from the company’s
powder magazines, and were killed by the massive shock waves from the blast. “Like Gun’s Flash,”
Boston Globe, July 30, 1903; “More Than a Score Killed by Explosion,” and “Wide Effects of the Shock,”
New York Times, July 30, 1903; “Loose Powder Grains on Floor Cause of the Lowell Explosion,” Boston
Globe, July 31, 1903.
10
Judge Hadley also found the foreman of the work crew responsible for the blast and cited the Tewksbury
Selectmen for their negligence in not taking steps to have the magazines removed from a populated area.
See “For Halloway’s Death: Judge Hadley Holds Goodwin Responsible, Powder Companies and
Selectmen also Held Accountable for Magazine Explosion at Tewksbury, July 29” Boston Globe, October
3, 1903.
Company’s construction of three magazines in South Lowell on the east side of the
Concord River, south of the Boston & Maine Railroad tracks. 11
The Ames Family
About a year before the explosion in Wigginville, the cartridge company lost the services
of Charles Dimon, who died of cancer while serving as superintendent as well as
Lowell’s mayor. Assuming Dimon’s duties was Butler Ames, a nephew of Paul Butler
and son of Adelbert and Blanche Butler Ames, Benjamin Butler’s sister. Like other
members of his family Butler Ames attended Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in
1889, but then went to West Point. A member of the class of 1893, Ames served only
briefly in the army, but volunteered upon the outbreak of the Spanish-American War and
attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel while commanding troops in Puerto Rico.
In 1900 Butler Ames and John O. Heinze established the Heinz Electric Company and located its factory
next to the U.S. Cartridge Company plant.
Similar to his uncle Paul Butler, Ames was mechanically inventive and in 1900 he joined
with John O. Heinze to form the Heinze Electric Company, manufacturers of electrical
equipment, including coils for wireless telegraphy and, by 1905, electrical coils and
magnetos for automobiles. 12 After 1902, Ames divided his time between Heinze
Electric, which had its factory close to the cartridge company’s plant off Andrews Street,
and U.S Cartridge. Paul Butler continued to serve as treasurer and eventually Ames
Butler became the company’s president. The two presided over a period of expansion in
11
“New Magazines Nearly Completed,” Boston Globe, December 16, 1903.
12
One of the earliest advertisements for the Heinze Electric Company’s line of automobile products
appeared the trade journal The Automobile, v. 13, (July 6, 1905), p. 35.
the 1910s, during which time U.S. Cartridge constructed a group of brick factor buildings
extending along Lawrence Street and the Wamesit Canal. 13
Wartime Boom
By 1917, U.S. Cartridge, inundated with orders for munitions from the United States
military and its allies in World War I, was the largest employer in Lowell. With over
8,000 employees, nearly half of whom were females, the company’s operations included
a plant in Billerica, manufacturing space in the former Bigelow Carpet Company’s
factory on Market Street, as well as the works at the Wamesit Canal.14
The Drive for Unionization
The wartime boom in the demand for munitions resulted in an unprecedented pace of
production at all of the major American cartridge producers. This occurred at the same
time that organized labor, notably machinists’ unions, with the support of an increasingly
powerful American Federation of Labor, intensified efforts to expand membership and
improve working conditions. A major unionizing drive at cartridge manufacturing plants
in the summer of 1915 precipitated a number of work stoppages. 15 In September,
hundreds of employees at the U.S. Cartridge joined this effort as company officials were
confronted with largest strike in the firm’s history.
Captain Thomas Doe, the plant manager, refused to negotiate with the machinists
representing U.S. Cartridge workers. He locked out 500 employees who supported the
union demands for an eight-hour day, increased pay, including overtime, and a formal
grievance process for arbitrating labor-management conflicts. Unable to continue
production, Doe initially shut down the factory. He subsequently attempted to resume
production with strikebreaking employees who were met at the factory gate on Lawrence
Street by jeering protestors. Pressured by the heavy demand for munitions U.S. Cartridge
officials settled the strike in early October, with many of the wage and work rule issues
resolved in favor of the machinists. 16
13
The growth of U.S. Cartridge extended to Maurer, New Jersey, part of Perth Amboy, where the company
operated a small plant employing 109 persons by 1918. See Bureau of Industrial Statistics, Department of
Labor, State of New Jersey, The Industrial Directory of New Jersey, (Paterson, NJ: News Printing
Company, 1918), p. 344.
14
Coburn, History of Lowell and Its People, v. 1, pp. 166-167, and v. 2, p. 417.
15
“Say Strike Will Spread,” Boston Globe, July 18, 1915.
16
“No Work for 500 Machinists,” Boston Globe, September 16, 1915; “Cartridge Plant is Closed,” Boston
Globe, September 17, 1915; “Girls Jeered in Lowell Strike,” Boston Globe, September 30, 1915; “Strike
Ends in Lowell Plant,” Boston Globe, October 2, 1915.
This advertisement for U.S. Cartridge Company shotgun shells dates from 1926, after the National Lead
Company had taken over the cartridge manufacturer and had moved much of the production in Lowell to a
plant in New Haven, Connecticut.
Corporate Takeover and Decline
While the Butler and Ames families controlled the cartridge company through most of
the 1910s, the National Lead Company acquired half of all shares of U.S. Cartridge stock.
After Paul Butler’s death in 1918, the Butler family sold its remaining interest in the
company to National Lead. By 1922 the New-York-City-based National Lead Company,
which also controlled the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, sought to transfer the
operations of U.S. Cartridge to the Winchester plant in New Haven, Connecticut.
Despite attempts by local politicians, members of Lowell’s business community, and the
city’s Central Labor Council to maintain production in the Spindle City plant, U.S.
Cartridge curtailed its manufacturing and laid off employees. Congresswoman Edith
Nourse Rogers appealed to the various parties and conferred with the U.S. Justice
Department to keep the plant open, but by late 1926 much of cartridge manufacturing
machinery was moved to New Haven. One final effort to retain the production of
radiators—this product line had only recently been established the Lowell cartridge
plant—also failed and U.S. Cartridge closed down on January 1, 1927. 17
17
“Cartridge Shop May Remain for Time,” Lowell Courier-Citizen, October 22, 1922; “Will Seek
Intervention of U.S. Government to Keep Cartridge Co. in this City,” Lowell Courier-Citizen, October 19,
1926; “Federal Agent at Cartridge Shop,” Lowell Courier-Citizen, October 23, 1926; “Take Steps to Keep
Cartridge Shop Here,” Lowell Courier-Citizen, October 26, 1926; “Cartridge Plant to be Vacated by Jan.
1,” Lowell Courier-Citizen, October 12, 1926.
