Jacob Kaufman
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Introduction
Jacob Kaufman (July 15, 1847 - April 20, 1920) was a carpenter and manufacturer in Kitchener who founded the Kaufman Rubber Company, which eventually became one of Canada’s largest producers of footwear. He also helped establish several local companies in the leather and felt industry.
History
The third of ten children, Jacob worked on the family farm as a youth and could attend school only during the winter; he displayed “splendid natural mental endowment.” Still on the farm in 1871 but listed as a carpenter, he left to become a sawyer in the sawmill of Henry Ratz in nearby Gads Hill. In March 1877 Kaufman married Ratz’s daughter and a month later they moved to Berlin (Kitchener), a village of strong Germanic background.
In partnership with his father-in-law, Kaufman established a planing mill and a sash-and-door factory. The operation expanded and in 1888 a new brick factory was constructed. When the region’s supply of wood began to dwindle, Kaufman bought a large area of forest in Muskoka. From 1902 logs were cut there at mills at Rosseau Falls and farther north at Trout Creek, where Kaufman also produced wood alcohol and charcoal. When Nelson and Milton Good began producing automobiles in Berlin in the early 1900s, the Kaufman plant fashioned about 20 wooden bodies, which apparently were never used. Locally Kaufman’s goods were transported by a horse-drawn wagon until 1909, when a motor car was converted into a truck. In 1916 the business was incorporated as Jacob Kaufman Limited.
In addition to his lumber operations, Kaufman was a founder of the rubberized footwear industry in Berlin, an offshoot of its leather and felt industries. With A. L. Breithaupt and Louis Weber, he became associated with building contractor George Schlee, who had inspected factories in Ohio, and in May 1899 they organized the Berlin Rubber Manufacturing Company Limited. It prospered, but Kaufman fell out with his partners and in the spring of 1903 he started another firm, Merchants Rubber; it made rubberized garments for fishermen and miners as well as footwear. In 1907, after Berlin Rubber and Merchants had been absorbed by Canadian Consolidated Rubber of Montreal, Kaufman and his son Alvin Ratz formed Kaufman Rubber Company Limited, which became one of Canada’s largest producers of rubber products. It continues today as the Kaufman Footwear division of William H. Kaufman Incorporated.
Personal
Jacob was the son of Joseph Kauffman and Anna Stroh. He married Mary Ratz in 1877. They had seven children.
Jacob Kaufman died in 1920 and was described in the Kitchener Daily Record as "Kitchener’s industrial wizard," whose "career is a most unique one even in our community where men who do things abound. He was prepared to take a dare.” Between 1909 and 1919 this “plain spoken sociable man” had gifted his wife and four surviving children with more than $602,000; at his death he left them an estate worth almost $279,000.
Community Involvement
Kaufman was committed to the public development of Berlin. From April 1905 to January 1910, he supported municipal expenditure to secure electricity through the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario as a member of the city's light commission. Also a member of the water commission, he sat on the committee that established the town’s first sewage disposal system.
The Kaufmans were lifelong members of Zion Evangelical Church: a trustee for 35 years, Jacob regularly attended the Canadian conferences of the Evangelical Association; Mary headed Zion’s women’s society. In addition, she was president of the local Children’s Aid Society and Young Women’s Christian Association, and was a member of the National Council of Women of Canada, the Women’s Hospital Aid Association of Ontario, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Her influence is visible in the career of her daughter Emma Ratz in the YWCA in Japan and Canada.
Philanthropy
- In 1917 he funded the construction of a nurses’ home near what is now Kitchener's Grand River Hospital.
