Olympia’s new broom factory wants to sweep the market — and keep it local
A carload of broom corn and machinery is due from Chicago, and George W. Ellis promises three jobs and brooms made on Main Street.
A CLEAN SWEEP. Olympia Will Have a Broom Factory in a Week. A Car Load of Machinery and Broom Corn on the Way From Chicago—An Opportunity to Encourage Home Production.
Olympia has added another to its line of industries. Business men will now have an opportunity to patronize the home manufacturer and the housewife will be enabled to make a clean sweep of her home with a broom made in Olympia.
Within a week or two a broom factory is to be started here which will turn out sweepers equal in quality to anything that passes over a Puget Sound floor. George W. Ellis, nephew to I. C. Ellis, who ran against George G. Messegee for street commissioner, is the enterprising man. He has rented the large warehouse in the rear of the Ellis residence on Main street, and is now making the necessary alterations.
One carload of broom corn, and the most improved machinery for its manufacture into brooms, is now on the way from Chicago, and is expected in a few days.
When the factory starts, three practical broom makers will be put to work. They are now here and each one is thoroughly experienced in this line.
Mr. Ellis states that he will have every facility for the manufacture of brooms of the highest quality and if the people of Olympia are disposed to patronize and encourage home industry, there will be no necessity whatever for buying anything but an Olympia made broom.
“if the people of Olympia are disposed to patronize and encourage home industry, there will be no necessity whatever for buying anything but an Olympia made broom.”
The 1892 pitch — buy Olympia-made goods, create a few jobs, capture a small manufacturing niche — could be lifted from a modern economic-development press release. The warehouse is gone, but the tension between shopping local and competing with Portland and San Francisco remains.
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