The Factory
The R. B. Grover shoe factory was big, but not the biggest in Brockton, a town that had 35,000 shoe workers. The wooden building, shaped like a letter E, occupied half a city block at the corner of Main and Calmar Streets. Grover made the popular Emerson brand shoe, and business had been good enough to add a fourth floor.
The factory was heated using steam radiators, with the steam being produced by coal-fired steel boilers installed in a brick boiler house attached to the wooden factory as the crossbar of the E. When the fourth floor was added, the original boiler was replaced by a larger one and the old boiler, 17 feet (5.2 m) long and six feet in diameter, was left in place as a backup. Since the new boiler could generally meet the factory's demands on its own, the old one was seldom used; and when used, was used reluctantly. Grover's chief engineer David Rockwell, who had a first-class engineer's license and twelve years experience, did not trust it.
Read more about this topic: Grover Shoe Factory Disaster
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—Mother Jones (1830–1930)
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