South Boston, for which we paid I believe $90,000. It was 90 feet square and six stories. In 1905 we started our second building and paid Mr. Joyce $100,000 for the bonds, and had the pleasure of cancelling that debt before the second building was completed. We were crowded to the doors and running two shifts night and day and could not keep up with the demand for our goods. Before the second building was finished and occupied in 1906 we had purchased additional land facing on Second Street and adjoining our first building, and began our plans for another building.
At this time we were obliged to bend all our energies to expanding our plant, for the magnitude of our business seemed only dependent on our ability to secure machinery and room with which to meet the constantly increasing demand, and this continued until we had four buildings full of machinery. In 1910 began the installation of new machinery which was to increase the capacity of the buildings to turn out our product fully one hundred percent, and this process of change in efficiency continued up to the present time, when we find ourselves again confronted with the need for more room. We have arrived at a point where we are able to produce with one thousand employees five times the output of product that we were able to produce in 1909 with 1800 employees; a condition of progress and efficiency which cannot be said of any other industry in the world. The magic power of Aladdin’s Lamp, which met the desire and hopes of those who possessed it, has changed in the twentieth century to the magic power of the human mind to give birth to ideas of greater efficiency and economy in ways and means of doing things, giving wealth without end to those who have the foresight to grasp the opportunities that such ideas must bring.
The Gillette Safety Razor Company is still in its infant stage. We cannot produce today the goods that are in demand, and there is no prospect of overcoming this condition no matter how much wealth the corporation may accumulate. We have not even approached a possible supply of the world’s market, for in the United States alone there is an increase according to insurance statistics of two million five hundred thousand coming of shaving age each year, and out of a total of upwards of three hundred million who shave in the world, we have sold to less than ten million.
Every razor sold by the Gillette Company represents a saving of half an hour of time spent in a barber shop, without saying anything about the money paid for service and tips. With an approximate number of ten million customers this would represent a saving of ten million half hours per day, or a saving of five million hours which might be devoted to study or labor and which represents 500,000 working days, or the labor of 500,000 men constantly employed, which is nearly twice the number employed by the U. S. Steel Corporation, which at $3.00 per day represents a saving of $1,500,000 per day, or for a year of 300 days, a saving to the United States of labor equal to $450,000,000.
