Tin Decorating Company
The Tindeco factory was located on Baltimore’s waterfront, and began making tins primarily for the American Tobacco Company beginning June 1914. Its modern factory was the largest tin decorating plant in the world. The plant floor area was just over 7 acres, housing 35 lithographic presses, plus flat bed presses which used engraved stones, shaping and stamping machines, and huge drying ovens. Tindeco could produce four million tins a day, including one million 10 cent tobacco tins. Besides the different tobacco items made, there were also candy boxes, cookie and cake tins, medicine tins and talcum powder cans.
Tindeco employed 1,000 to 1,400 men the first full year of operation. By 1922, 3,000 workers were needed during busy seasons when the factory operated 24 hours a day. The Tindeco factory was self-sufficient. Everything needed to make a tin except the raw materials, was within the factory confines. This included an art department, and machinists to design the dies needed. Paints were ground and mixed on site. The Tindeco machine shop was one of the finest in the United States. Many of the employees, but especially the machinists, were highly skilled German and Polish immigrants. Many of the machines used in the tin industry were invented in the Tindeco machine shop. By 1922 the product line had been expanded to include a variety of kitchen objects, plus items from several famous illustrators. Harrison Fisher’s signed artwork was used on fruitcake tins, while Harrison Cady did a series of Peter Rabbit children’s tins. Tindeco tins also included the famous Roly Polys and other gorgeous tins, which were often embossed and printed in seven or eight different colors.
Producing the beautiful tins was a dangerous business. Factory workers in the lithography department were considered lucky if they had all their fingers. The 4 foot x 4 foot tin plates, when coated with paint, were slippery and they had knife-sharp edges. There was a fully equipped surgical room within the factory, along with a full-time nurse and a company doctor for the men who weren’t careful enough. It was also hot in the lithography department. The windows couldn’t be opened when the presses were running because a draft would blur words on the wet paint. The ovens that baked on the color really heated the department up, making that area of the factory hot to work in.
Tindeco was sold to the Owens-Illinois Glass Company in 1935.
