The Journal – June 3rd, 1916

Nearly all machine shops make bolts for “home consumption,” some blacksmiths likewise, but there is but one concern in Oregon which makes them for the market, and ships them as far east as Montana, south to San Francisco and occasionally beyond, and north to the Canadian border.
It makes them by the ton, and of all lengths and sizes.
And it makes other things, too.
It turns out rivets by the bushel.
It makes a full line of pole pins for telegraph companies and railroads. The Portland Railway, Light & Power company has all its pins made by this factory, its eye-bolts, cross iron braces, etc.
Sewer contractors have the top bars for catch basins made by the Portland Bolt & Manufacturing company, the institution referred to, at 209 Thirteenth street north, and it has shipped tens of thousands of bolts, burrs, and washers to the government railroad builders in Alaska.

MAKES TOOLS AND DIES.

The company, in addition to rods of any desired length and its other products already mentioned, makes a great variety of mechanic’s tools for shop work, dies of all kinds and builders’ iron work. Its factory is 60×100 feet in size, and replete with machinery of many kinds, operated by 15 men who are turning out work at the rate of $100,000 a year, when four years ago the company’s doors were opened by J.M. Llewellyn, its present president and manager, with not an order on his books. He had a couple of men to help him in his initial work, and now his payroll is $1000 a month.

BUSINESS IS GOOD.

“Business is mighty good at present,” Mr. Llewellyn says. “The improvement began during the first days of January and has acquired momentum ever since. We have an exceedingly busy shop at this time. We are turning out a bunch of work for the new shipbuilding companies. Later they will install machinery of their own, but, after all, it is a question in my mind if they can do the work themselves as cheaply as we can do it for them. I recognize the convenience, however, of having a plant in their shops; but still I believe we will always have orders from them, and the larger their business the better we will be pleased. We manufacture bolts, rivets, washers, dies and tools for machine shops all along the coast, because it pays them to have this work done in a factory which specializes in these lines. We are constantly shipping to cities of the sound, Idaho, and eastern Washington and Montana. Wherever there is a machine shop of any great pretensions we are known and patronized, covering an area of 2000 miles up and down the coast.”
And yet the concern is but a four-year-old. But it’s a Portland youngster – with more muscle, even, than Judge McGinn at 16, healthy and robust as he was – and it doesn’t have to whistle to keep its courage up.
There are scored of other lively young Portland industries just like it.
It’s the kind Portland incubates.
The Journal has mentioned about a hundred of the type – and 10 years hence they’ll be thick as moss – and big as giants.