Will County IL Archives Biographies.....Bates, Albert J 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com September 7, 2007, 8:11 pm

Author: Genealogical & Biographical Record

ALBERT J. BATES.  Not only in Joliet, but throughout this and other states, 
Mr. Bates is known through the medium of his inventions.  There are few who 
possess greater inventive ability than he. This talent was shown even in his 
early boyhood.  When twelve years of age, although he had never seen a scroll 
saw, he constructed one which was operated by foot power; the steel of a hoop 
skirt was used for the saw blades by filing teeth in it, and the machine 
operated successfully. Three years later, long before the days of bicycles in 
southwestern Missouri, he made of wood a two-wheeled machine with a front 
wheel of forty-four inches, which did him service for some years; he had never 
seen a wheel of any kind and was guided in his work solely by the pictures in 
catalogues.  The greater number of the machines manufactured by the Bates 
Machine Company, of which he is a stockholder and director, were made and 
perfected by him, and, of varying uses and qualities, illustrate the 
versatility of his inventive faculties.

The ancestry of the Bates family appears in the sketch of William O. Bates, 
presented on another page.  The subject of this sketch was born, of Canadian 
parentage, in Washington, Iowa, in 1863.  When five years of age he 
accompanied his parents to Carthage, Mo., where he attended school.  Naturally 
gifted in mechanics, his activities were early turned in that direction.  For 
a year he worked in a machine shop at Carthage and for eight months in a shop 
at Springfield, Mo.  He then went to St. Louis, where he held a position as 
scroll sawyer for three months and later was an employe in a steam pump 
factory. In 1882 he went to Chicago, where he was employed for two years in 
machine shops.  While there he built machines for making check wire for a 
Joliet firm, by whom he was offered a position as foreman of their machine 
department. Coming to Joliet, in a few months he was also made superintendent 
of their barb wire department.  Meantime he made several machines for
special uses.  However, the remuneration not being in proportion to his work, 
he resigned as foreman, and engaged in designing and building on contract 
machines for manufacturing wire. 

With his brother organizing the firm of Bates Brothers, Mr. Bates started a 
machine shop in the fall of 1885.  The firm engaged in the manufacture of wire 
mill machinery and also carried on general machine work.  The plant burned 
down and was rebuilt on a different site.  In 1888 the Bates Machine Company, 
which has since developed into one of the most important industries of Joliet, 
was incorporated.  Of this Mr. Bates was secretary and treasurer from the time 
of the incorporation until September, 1895, but his outside business gradually 
took an increasing amount of his time and thought, and obliged him to resign 
as an officer of the company, although he still continues to hold stock and is 
a member of the directorate.  The company pays high wages and employs only 
skilled labor.  The plant runs during the entire year and the products 
comprise all kinds of wire mill machinery, including engines of two thousand 
horse-power, some of which are shipped to the gold mines of South Africa.  
There is scarcely any part of the world to which the engines have not gone, 
and in every place their value is immediately recognized by those most 
competent to judge.

As mechanical engineer and a large stockholder, Mr. Bates is now identified 
with the American Steel and Wire Company.  He is president and the principal 
owner of the Joliet Pure Ice Company, which carries on a large wholesale and 
retail business, and owns a plant having a daily capacity of forty tons; the 
most of the machinery used in connection with the plant was manufactured by 
Mr. Bates.  He holds stock in the American Tin Plate Company, is extensively 
interested in lead and zinc mines at Galena, Kans., and is president and the 
principal owner of the Bates-Cotter Company.  His attention is principally 
given to the designing of machinery for wire mills.  He is the inventor of the 
Bates woven wire fence machine, which manufactures two designs of fence, and 
which was the first ever used in the mills of the American Steel and Wire 
Company.  Through his efforts the machinery was simplified so that the 
manufacture can be carried on at about one-tenth the cost of any other 
machine.  Over ninety per cent, of all the barb wire made in the world is 
manufactured on his machines, and his designs for the manufacture of woven 
wire are the latest and best developed.

So deeply has Mr. Bates been engrossed in the designing and manufacture of his 
various inventions that he has had no leisure for public affairs and politics, 
in which, aside from voting the Republican ticket, he takes no part whatever.  
He is a member of the Union Club of Joliet. His beautiful home, at No. 600 
Western avenue, is presided over by his accomplished wife, formerly Ellen 
Amos, a native of England, and in girlhood a resident of Colorado.  She is 
identified with the Presbyterian Church and holds a prominent place in the 
most select social circles of Joliet.  Mr. and Mrs. Bates have four children: 
Pearl, Walter, Richard and Albert J., Jr.


Additional Comments:
Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County Illinois Containing 
Biographies of Well Known Citizens of the Past and Present, Biographical 
Publishing Company, Chicago, 1900

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