Albert A. Ginsburg

Pages 294-295 - Albert A. Ginsburg is general manager of the Hayes-Ionia Factories, and thus has executive supervision of one of the large and important industrial concerns in the city of Grand Rapids. In the year 1017, primarily through the influence of Dudley Waters, one of the prominent and forward-looking business men of Grand Rapids, Hector J. Hayes, of the Hayes-Ionia Factories, of Ionia, who was looking for an eligible location for a new and extensive factory, decided to establish this new factory in Grand Rapids. The company purchased the former plant of the Nelson-Matter Company at the corner of Seventh and Muskegon streets, and gave to the same the most modern of equipment for the manufacturing of automobiles bodies, fenders, hoods and other sheet-metal parts. In initiating operations in Grand Rapids the concern gave employment to somewhat more than six hundred men, and the growth of the business in the intervening period has been so great that at the present time the corps of employes at the Grand Rapids establishment of the company comprises more than three thousand persons, including man highly skilled artisans. The bodies produced by the Hayes-Ionia Factories are of composite type, of combined wood and metal construction, and the products are in demand by automobile manufacturers in all sections of the United States. In Grand Rapids and Detroit plants of the company are retained fully four thousand employes, and the value of the average output each month is $2,500,000. Hecter J. Hayes, founder of the great industrial enterprise of the Hayes-Ionia Factories, was born on a farm in the West Plains district of Ionia county, Michigan, four miles north of Muir. As a youth he became actively associated with the bicycle business, in Cleveland, Ohio, and later he became a pioneer in the producing of metal fenders and other accessories for automobiles, his research and experimentation having resulted in the production of a sheet-mental fender that proved far superior to the earlier bent-wood type. He opened a small shop in Detroit, where he employed only six men, and a few years later he was employing 1,400 men, his factory at that time having been the largest of its kind in the United States. In 1910 was placed in commission the large factory that Mr. Hayes had erected in Ionia, judicial center of his native county, and since that time the enterprise has continuously expanded in scope and importance, with the indubitable priority as one of the greatest of its kind in the country. Albert A. Ginsburg, general manager of the manufactories of the Hayes-Ionia corporation, was born at Calumet, Houghton county, Michigan, and after his graduation in the high school of that place he entered Detroit University, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1902. In his vacation periods he was variously employed, and his ambition led him to keep a lookout for a line of service in which he could be assured of success and independence. In 1904 he found employment in the Detroit factory of the Hayes-Ionia Company, and by practical experience be learned the technical details of the manufacturing. He was finally placed in charge of the material department, and after giving evenings and other spare hours to completing a course in factory management he was made factory accountant for the Hayes-Ionia company. In 1914 he was advanced to the position of assistant manager and assumed charge of the factory at Ionia, and in the World war period he was employed by the government, in1917-18, in supervising the manufacturing of aeroplane parts for the war air service. At the close of the war he was given charge of the Grand Rapids factory of the Hayes-Ionia organization, and since 1921 he has been general manager of all of the plants of the company – in Grand Rapids, Detroit, and Ionia.