John Dueber, the founder of The Dueber-Hampden Company in Canton, Ohio, died in 1907. At the time of his death, his company employed 3000 workers, almost evenly divided between women and men. His company had become the most widely known and respected pocket watch company in the world.
Dueber’s son Albert took over the family business after his father’s death, but he was not the astute businessman his father had been. The plants had grown old and the equipment that had once been state-of-the-art was now outdated. The company limped along, losing sales year after year.
While some of the factory was converted to make wristwatches, no one at Dueber-Hampden believed the wristwatch would “catch on.” They thought it was a passing fad, and that the pocket watch would always be popular.
The Dueber-Hampden Company Is Sold
Albert finally sold the company to a group of Cleveland businessmen in September 1925 for a little more than $1.5 million. The new owners had no experience in the watch making business, and no background in design, manufacture, or sales.
They kept the business going until the late 1920s when all of the machinery and tools were sold to Amtorg, a Russian buying agency. They wanted to introduce the art of watch making to the Russian people.
The Watch Making Equipment Moves to Russia
The equipment was packed into 28 freight cars and shipped across the ocean. Twenty-one former Dueber-Hampden employees were hired to supervise the establishment of a Soviet watch factory in Moscow and train the new recruits.
The employees left Canton on February 25, 1930. They were given apartments around the city, and welcomed with a huge banquet. They were periodically entertained, and even got a tour of the Kremlin. All expenses and salaries were paid by the government.
They started out training 700 Russian laborers, but that number had increased to 1600 by the time they left. Most of them lived there for a year, but a half dozen stayed for an additional six months before returning to the United States.
The Iron Curtain Drops
Some tried to correspond, but the Soviet government censored every letter. Once the Iron Curtain dropped, the American watch makers never heard from their Russian counterparts again.
No one really knows what became of the factory, though Henry Fried, Professor of Horology at New York University, reported seeing Dueber-Hampden machinery in China in 1986.
The watches remain a favorite among collectors, and are unsurpassed in workmanship and quality.
Kim Kenney - Kim Kenney graduated summa cum laude from Wells College in Aurora, NY with a major in American history and minor in creative writing, ...
