Outagamie County, WI - "Retired Lumberman Remembers Hatten and the Heyday of
 Lumber"
        
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 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives
 Subject: newspaper article "Retired Lumberman Remembers Hatten and the Heyday of
 Lumber"
 Submitted by: county coordinator 
 EMAIL: jmmarasch@aol.com
 Date Submitted: 15 March 2000
        
 Source: New London Press newspaper article from Bicentennial issue, undated.
 
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   Retired Lumberman Remembers Hatten and the Heyday of Lumber
 by Diane Montz
 
      Ben Hartquist keeps a violin in his basement office.
      
      "So I don't have to go upstairs to practice,' he says.  "A violin is like anything else -- if you don't practice every day..."
      Except for violin practice, Ben uses the office mostly for reminiscing these days. He is retired from the lumber business. 
 Ben can draw a tune out of the old violin, and story out of every item in the office.
      "Here's a ball you couldn't buy for love money," he says.  The old baseball he picks off the shelf is signed by a variety of
 famous players.
      "Here is where we made all our money," he says of the office.  "This chair could tell stories."
          He sits in the smooth old wooden desk chair and leans back -- all the way back to 1918, the year he came to New London.
          Up through depression time, Ben was manager of the Hatten Lumber Co. The lumberyard was owned by Senator Hatten.  Ben says
 Sen. Hatten lived alone in the Elwood Hotel, and was known for his frugal lifestyle.
          "People said 'Hatten gave you a lot' and I said 'we think so,' " Ben says.  He taps the side of his head: "I learned a lot from him. 
 "
          "He never gave anything away though," he admits.
          Ben says lumber wasn't the hottest item going during the depression.
                   "You couldn't give lumber away," he          says.  "I said to Mr. Hatten, 'what are we going to do?' he said 'we pile just as high as the sky".
          He remembers the importance of horses to the lumber business.
          "You had to have the very  best horses you could buy," he says.  "The mill was kept running day and night."
          He says a pair of good horses could cost as much as $700, and "if they weren't good ' they wouldn't pull." There were about 50
 horses on each of the two shifts at the mill.
           One small horse stands out in Ben's memories after all the years.
          "They had to pull the box cars out from the mill," he says.  "There was one little horse, they hitched her up and she'd turn around
 and look at the box car.  When you said 'go' she just dug in and pulled."
          Maps of the railroad shipping routes hang on the office wall.  Ben says they were distributed by the railroad to their customers and
 can't be found today.
          After Sen. Hatten died, the mill shut down.  Ben went into business on his own.          He started the Benjamin Hartquist Lumber Co.
          "I was a broker after Sen. Hatten died," he said.  "I knew all of the shippers."
          Ben bought the lumber and sold it direct to the factories.  His brother and son-in-law Jay Mattick worked with him.
          Ben gestures around the office.  "Jay sat here, I sat there and my brother - he's dead - sat over there."
          They shipped lumber from Canada, Oregon, Washington and, Florida.  Ben says one customer paid $900 for a special order of
 lumber from India.
          After awhile, there wasn't much need for a lumber wholesaler.  Ben says the customers he shipped lumber to just looked at the
 delivery tags and began to order direct.
          Ben and his wife Doris still live in the big Wyman St. house they built when Ben worked with Sen. Hatten.  He uses the basement
 office for personal correspondence now.  And he still practices the violin, though he gave up playing with area symphonies awhile back.