Amalgamated Sugar Company - 1910s

1910s

While Charles W. Nibley had been the president since 1904 and David Eccles as general manager, Eccles was actually operating the company. Eccles was elected president in 1910 with Nibley as vice president, which was the start of a rift between Eccles and Nibley.

Company records, stored at the Utah Loan and Trust Building in Ogden, were destroyed in a fire on November 11, 1911, except for some records stored elsewhere in a fireproof vault.

25,358 tons of sugar were produced from 207,022 tons of sugar beets in 1911. This was the first time the company had produced over 25,000 tons of sugar (or 500,000 hundredweight bags).

As the Minidoka Irrigation Project of Idaho was nearing completion in 1912, Amalgamated Sugar was deciding whether to place the failed La Grande, Oregon factory near Rupert or Burley. Burley was selected in late 1911, and the factory was operating by October 21, 1912. The location was chosen partly due to farmer land commitments and connection by the Oregon Short Line Railroad Company. The first year of the Burley factory had a higher production than any of the previous fourteen years in La Grande.

Henry H. Rolapp was elected president of Amalgamated Sugar in March 1913. Charles W. Nibley purchased American Sugar's stakes in Amalgamated Sugar and Lewiston Sugar in 1913, due to pressure on American Sugar by the federal government due to antitrust. From late 1912 when David Eccles died until 1918, his sons L. R. Eccles and David C. Eccles had controlled Amalgamated and Lewiston poorly, enforcing policies that were counterproductive and forcing Henry H. Rolapp to resign as president in 1914, only a year after he assumed office. Acting as General Manager in 1918, Eccles brought in an outside financial auditors, who was to have a "short and stormy career with the company." L. R. Eccles resigned on September 8, 1918, due to "mismanagement of company affairs". Bachman stated that L. R. Eccles could have continued being a promising operations director, but handled the business side poorly.

Lewiston Sugar and Amalgamated Sugar merged in 1914, keeping the Amalgamated name. Joseph F. Smith was named director and president of the new corporation, but resigned in April 1915. Anthon H. Lund became president, at the urging of Charles Nibley.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints purchased a large portion of Amalgamated in 1914, then sold it in 1929.

In 1915, a lawsuit was threatened by the United States District Attorney in Salt Lake City for antitrust reasons, citing the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. Around the same time the Federal Trade Commission sued the company, which was settled in 1921.

In 1915, an investment in the Layton Sugar Company was made (despite L. R. Eccles). Amalgamated Sugar tried unsuccessfully to buy the company a few years later.

Sugar sales from 1916 to 1920 were handled by Stephen A. Love, who was also the sales manager of Utah-Idaho Sugar.

In 1918, Amalgamated processed 529,722 tons of sugar beets into 56,166.85 tons of sugar, the first time the company produced over a million hundredweight pounds of sugar. Amalgamated showed a net loss for the fiscal year, the first time since the company had founded that they lost money. This was due to a decrease in sugar content of the beets, and a large increase in the cost to extract sugar. By 1918, the company had eight factories, located in Utah (Ogden, Logan, Lewiston, Brigham City, Smithfield) and Idaho (Burley, Twin Falls, Paul). These factories had a combined capacity of 5100 tons.

Through a transaction of the David Eccles Company, the largest stockholder, Amalgamated became a large shareholder in Ernest R. Wooley's West Cache Sugar Company in 1919. David Eccles, elected General Manager in September 1918, resigned in August 1919, in part due to the declining profits and lack of dividend payouts. As part of additional financing brought in by the Bankers Trust Company of New York, four managers from the Great Western Sugar Company were brought in to executive positions.