Class of 1897

WHAT IS BILL HAM DOING NOW?

William Hale Ham was born in Barrington, N. H„ surrounded by great white houses, homes of grandparents or greatgrandparents, which still exemplifies colonial thrift, individual resourcefulness, pioneer skills, and neighborly socialism.

Ham refused to take Greek in the high school, and so the principal sadly prophesied no future for him. At college he did exceptionally well and in his own way. He was an individualist. He followed college by Thayer School graduation.

He had been building bridges, factories, lighthouses, and the war found him with his own company, the Bridgeport Housing Corporation, erecting whole streets of houses in Bridgeport for factory workers. After the great war depressed industrial Bridgeport and until the next great war calls for munitions and instruments of human destruction, the tenants in Ham's homes of modern culture and apartments of refinement are not fully employed.

For them and for himself Ham has made use of the old handskills of Barrington, the mechanical aptitudes of the engineer, and the business efficiency of Connecticut commerce and industry. He and his tenants are engaged in subsistence spinning and weaving. They are producing the Bridgeport Homespun and experimenting with the Bilhelehem Herringbones.

First Ham mastered the craft. He wears suits which he has spun, dyed, woven, and tailored. Then he bought up old spinning wheels, geared them to fractional horsepower motors, and gave home instruction, so that the unemployed or partly unemployed members of households could take up again in spare time and in kitchen, basement, or attic ancestral household arts. He has trained young persons, old women, and even a totally blind individual to a vital interest and profitable use of wasted hours.

Then Ham has developed on the old model a hand loom which may be set up and operated in a vacant room for home industry. He provides the looms at construction costs, and trains tenants in the age-old textile art of weaving.

Colors may be produced by chemical dyes synthetically prepared, but the colors lack the strength and charm which pleased colonial eyes. So Ham has gone back to the household records of Barrington and of those who founded it three centuries ago. By vegetable dyes from woods and gardens he has produced over seventy-five shades of color. He uses sassafras, sumac, butternut, mosses, and in addition has secured information, advice, and recipes from Turkish and Persian immigrants on the vegetable dyes of the Orient.

So Ham and his tenants as Household Industries Unincorporated produce, and Ham assumes the responsibility of merchandising. He has established no sales connections with department stores, but produces as individuals may desire. Often the man who wants a suit selects the material, the dye, and even the weaver.

Of course Ham has built up an organization. He is plant salesman, production foreman, purchasing department, sales department, shipping and receiving department, as well as research division and master artist. The offices of the Bridgeport Housing Corporation are display, rooms. Then there is the laboratory for experiments and the textile studio. There is also Mrs. Murdock, a small, cheerful, Scotch woman once from Harris Island, who in her own kitchen demonstrates arts and skills and can bridge the gulf of years from the time when the Puritans took the textile arts from British homes to New England cabins and white farm houses.

The plan works. The Tennessee Valley Administration has sent representatives to study and take away the plan as a household industry in the presidential valley, and Mrs. Roosevelt has purchased for the presidential family.

The report closes with this statement. "Mr. Ham appears to be an extremely interesting person, a very practical businessman who possesses a more complete technical knowledge of the textile business andhistorical background than he modestlywill admit."

In the December issue of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE on page 10 for educative purposes a picture was given of the early college buildings. The origin of this is a lithograph printed in Philadelphia with the artist's initials M. P. S.

Of this picture Professor Herbert W. Hill has said, "It is a very rare view ofDartmouth. Only one copy was known in1925. Since then the College has securedone, and of course there may be a fewothers."

The Secretary wishes to announce that he possesses a well preserved copy, which he is now designating as Number 3. He acquired this picture a number of years ago in National City, Calif. It was among the possessions of James Austin Smith, a graduate of the Dartmouth Medical College in 1849- The probable date of the sketch was in the years between 1840 and 1849.

In Portland, Jack Ela (William Eugene) is busily engaged in his business, that of monumental stones. He finds time however to write most entertainingly to classmates and to plan for the 1937 reunion. His letters are filled with reminiscences of John Poor from their intimate high school days, and the letters are also descriptive of the John G. Whittier district in Haverhill, where Jack was born and reared. To have lived for years in Whittier's boyhood home constitutes a treasured memory.

Secretary, . State Capitol, Hartford, Conn.