LOS ANGELES DAILY TIMES
January l, 1915
Great Western Smelting and Refining Company
INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION IN LOS ANGELES
The Metals Corporation awards no better administration than that offered by the splendid growth here like in 1904 of the office created in the city by the then Great Western Smelting & Refining-Company, now operating under guidance of the Federated Metal Corporation. The history of the splendid Los Angeles office is an exact duplicate of the beginning of the Great Western Smelting & Refining Company in a small storeroom in Chicago, thirty-five years ago. It was in 1904 that the corporation sent" the present Los Angeles office manager, Mr. Seymour Swarts, here as its representative. At first the corporation maintained simply office space. Mr. Swarts was instructed to "feel the field out." How well he succeeded is best shown when it is noted that from a very small start, where the monthly sales averaged between 25.000 and 30,000 pounds, today the Los Angeles offices are housed in buildings at 1217 to 1221, inclusive. East Sixth Street, where, besides, large and adequate warehouse room is provided for, a monthly business averaging approximately 1,500,000 pounds. The fact that Mr. Swarts has succeeded in building up the splendid business that ha has for the corporation is perhaps secondary when considered in connection with the general operations of the institution. Not alone has the business expanded as it has, but in reality the Great Western Smelting & Refining Company office of the Federated Metals Corporation pioneered the local field and in very many cases financed present-day organizations that are leaders in the building and manufacturing industries of California's southland. In one sense of the word, the Los Angeles office of the Federated Metals Corporation but typifies the splendid general growth of industrialism in Southern California. It can be pointed out by Mr. Swarts that since 1904 the books of the Los Angeles office can show institutions financed at the start with credit rating not to exceed $600, carried today in excess of $150,000. The territory covered by the Los Angeles office includes all of Southern California, Arizona, part of New Mexico, all of the west coast of Mexico, and the state of Sonora. The Los Angeles office of the corporation is the largest shipper of Four X Nickel Babbitt material, due perhaps to the close proximity of this city to the mining fields of Arizona. The corporation smelts and refines brass and bronze ingots. Babbitts, solders and all other non-ferrous metals. It is an international institution and has grown year by year until today it has offices and plants in seventeen different world cities. Plants are located in San Francisco, St. Paul, St. Louis, Chicago and Whiting, Indiana. Offices are maintained in New York City. Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Oregon; Denver, Kansas City, Whiting. Indiana, and Los Angeles. Recently when the present corporation was formed and the Great Western Smelting & Refining Company was included, also was taken over the Union Smelting & Refining Company, the Trenton Smelting & Refining Company, the Duquesne Reduction Company and B. Lissberger & Co., and today the Federated Metals Corporation stands preeminently the largest and best equipped institution of its character in the world. Modest in the extreme. Manager Swarts of the Los Angeles office of the corporation contends that a large part of the success of the company in the California and adjacent fields has been due to the efforts of salesmen to get into close personal touch with master mechanics, who have authority to specify what particular brand of material shall be used. "Nothing is more eloquent than the power of suggestion," holds Mr. Swarts. "It was by the employment of just such methods as this that the corporation has been able to build up its business in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Old Mexico."