Background
Frederic Christopher Dumaine was born on March 6, 1866, in Hadley, Massachusetts. He was the son of Christopher and Cordelia Roberts Dumaine. His parents were French-Canadian immigrants of working-class background.
Frederic Christopher Dumaine was born on March 6, 1866, in Hadley, Massachusetts. He was the son of Christopher and Cordelia Roberts Dumaine. His parents were French-Canadian immigrants of working-class background.
At fourteen Dumaine left school to aid in the support of his widowed mother.
At eleven Dumaine began to work in a dry-goods store in Dedham, Massachusetts. In 1880 he became an office boy for Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, a Boston financier and the treasurer of Amoskeag Manufacturing Company. Coolidge took an interest in Dumaine, who reportedly saved half of his modest weekly salary, and sent him to Manchester, New Hampshire, to work for Amoskeag; there in the course of fifteen years Dumaine rose from bobbin boy to purchasing agent.
In 1905 he was named treasurer and functioned as chief executive of what had become, through a merger, the world's leading producer of cotton textiles. While Dumaine's association with Amoskeag lasted sixty-eight years, it was rarely confining and allowed him to venture into other enterprises: in 1902, for example, he gained control of the ailing Fore River Shipbuilding Company of Quincy, Massachusetts, restored the firm to a financially sound position, and sold it to Bethlehem Steel.
Amoskeag Manufacturing Company had been established in 1831 by the Boston Associates as a planned textile community modeled after Lowell, Massachusetts Amoskeag initially employed rural New Englanders, but by midcentury favored English, Irish, and Scottish immigrants who, in turn, were replaced by French-Canadians around 1900, and still later by Polish and Greek immigrants.
As paternalistic industrial communities died out elsewhere in New England, Amoskeag flourished. When Dumaine took control in 1905 he instituted a welfare program that increased his control over labor. Entire families worked in Dumaine's mills and benefited from home ownership, pensions, dental care, nurses, schools, and playgrounds. Amoskeag peaked in 1922, prior to a major strike, with 14, 000 workers employed at 650, 000 cotton spindles, 78, 000 worsted spindles, and 24, 000 looms. The strike of 1922 resulted from an announced 20 percent reduction in rates and a lengthened workweek, allegedly to make Amoskeag more competitive with Southern mills. After nine months the strike ended with a compromise on hours and the restoration of earlier rates.
A still greater problem at Amoskeag in the 1920's was plant obsolescence. While Dumaine clearly had the cash surplus to modernize, he chose rather to reorganize the company into two units in 1925: an operating company and an investment trust, thereby draining $18 million of the $25 million surplus from the operating company. Hopes for modernization ended with this severe cash drain.
Dumaine argued that he was under no obligation to watch cash surplus be eaten up by a losing operation. The townspeople of Manchester, heavily dependent on Amoskeag, disagreed and in 1936 raised $5 million to rescue Amoskeag from a bankruptcy referee. Dumaine was called before a Congressional committee that investigated his activities, but no legal action was taken against him.
Dumaine is also known for his association with the Waltham (Massachusetts) Watch Company. When the company was reorganized by Kidder, Peabody and Company in 1923, he was appointed president and immediately cut wages, personnel, and advertising. He also slashed costs by eliminating investment in research and new machinery. His strategy produced a profit in 1926, the first since 1919, and he later guided Waltham through the 1930's, with more cost cutting and the development of electric clocks and speedometers. While Dumaine appeared to handle Waltham's finances brilliantly, he did so at great expense over the long run as the physical plant became obsolete and Waltham's reputation for quality waned. Some $6 million in bonds were retired between 1923 and 1944, thereby strengthening class A stock, of which Dumaine owned more than half. In contrast, stockholders had to sue for dividends in 1941.
Amid wartime prosperity he sold out. As in his dealings with the Amoskeag Company, Dumaine again fared better than the organization that he ran. In 1948 Dumaine made a truly spectacular coup in which, at the age of eighty-two, he gained control of the New Haven Railroad, after having been dismissed as a director in 1947, supposedly for working against the line's best interests.
In 1944 the Amoskeag Company, over which Dumaine still had influence, and the Delaware and Hudson Company bought preferred stock in the Boston Railroad Holding Company. The holding company, established in 1909 to acquire and purchase railroad securities for the New Haven, had not paid dividends for years. The purchasing firms moved for the dissolution of the Boston Holding Company and asked for the designation of a receiver to sell the assets. It was believed that Amoskeag and Delaware and Hudson would receive face value for their stock plus years of dividends, while the New Haven stood to lose its $5 million equity in the holding company.
Under final reorganization of the New Haven in 1947 those holding preferred stock could elect two-thirds of the board of directors. A Dumaine-led group quietly garnered a majority of the preferred stock and thereby gained control. Once again Dumaine instituted cost slashing, including the discharge of those responsible for his own dismissal. This severe economy drive on the New Haven predictably generated short-term profits.
Dumaine's other active business interests included the New England fishing industry; Suncook Textiles; Eastern Steamship; Atlantic, Gulf and West Indies Steamship Lines; Mack Truck; and John P. Maguire and Company.
Dumaine died on May 27, 1951, in Groton, Massachusetts.
Quotations: Time reported Dumaine's last words: "It wasn't worth it. "
Frederic Christopher Dumaine was aggressive, domineering, terse in speech.
When Dumaine died he was survived by his second wife, Louise Gould Dumaine, and seven children from his first marriage to Elizabeth Thomas, whom he had married on April 13, 1895.
