Thread Number: 91593  /  Tag: Wringer Washers
Meadows "Wash Master"? Help! 		[Down to Last]

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Post# 1161203   10/5/2022 at 21:32 (562 days old) by cbbeard (Oklahoma)        

I came across an old wringer washer that I would like to see if anyone knows about. This is a Meadows, and I think it is a "Wash Master." The only thing I can really find online is that they were in Bloomington, IL and at one point they were sued by Maytag and won. I also find a lot of ads in old newspapers for this company.

I'm told this machine works, and may be a 1929 model. I'm looking for any information people might have, including potential value.

Thanks in advance!

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Post# 1161206 , Reply# 1   10/5/2022 at 23:08 (561 days old) by Unimatic1140 (Minneapolis)        

unimatic1140's profile picture
That is interesting. I would guess that Maytag patented it's back and forth post agitator/gyrator around 1922 or there about which would last until 1939. What does the agitator look like, does it oscillate back and forth?

Post# 1161217 , Reply# 2   10/6/2022 at 09:48 (561 days old) by cbbeard (Oklahoma)        

I'm not sure. This is an item I'm potentially trading for, but I want to make sure it's a good value first. Any ballpark as to what something like this might be worth? The wringer "market" seems to be narrow and unique!


Post# 1161221 , Reply# 3   10/6/2022 at 11:02 (561 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

The Meadows' agitator that I saw had 5 or 6 low ribs or bumps on the skirt as opposed to the high fins on the Maytag Gyrator and they were wider, like a fat finger, than the narrow Maytag fins. It was made of Bakelite. The Meadows agitator was featured in the Smithsonian exhibit "It's a Material World." Objects made of Bakelite, a "miracle" material in the early part of the 20th century featured prominently in the exhibit.

Post# 1161257 , Reply# 4   10/6/2022 at 22:03 (561 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md)        
Neat Wringer Washer

 combo52's profile picture

As to its value it is only worth what you are willing to pay for it, I would not buy it at any price if you are hopping to sell it at a profit in the future.

 

Really cool appliances like this are still being given away or being scrapped every day.

 

John L.
Post# 1161259 , Reply# 5   10/6/2022 at 23:02 (561 days old) by qsd-dan (West)        

qsd-dan's profile picture
Interesting wringer! I poked around the archives and nobody has acquired or posted this brand here. It has been mentioned a few times in various wringer threads.

Hope you at least get a good look at it and takes some pics.

Post# 1161282 , Reply# 6   10/7/2022 at 10:57 (560 days old) by cbbeard (Oklahoma)        

Thanks all!

Post# 1161445 , Reply# 7   10/9/2022 at 12:51 (558 days old) by bradross (New Westminster, BC., Canada)        
Some ephemera about the Meadows washer...

 bradross's profile picture
Here's what I have on the brand...

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Post# 1161500 , Reply# 8   10/10/2022 at 15:06 (557 days old) by Maytagmike (Burlington, Vt)        
Meadows washer

 maytagmike's profile picture
Still can't get over how much that looks like a Maytag looks very similar to my 1926.!!!

Post# 1161727 , Reply# 9   10/14/2022 at 09:17 (553 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        
Meadows Has Links To Thor and Eureka Williams

 By Bill Kemp | Archivist/historian McLean County Museum of History

In the first several decades of the 20th century, Bloomington was in many ways a blue collar town.

The city’s largest employer was the Chicago & Alton Railroad Shops, where 1,800 or more men maintained and repaired steam locomotives and rolling stock.

A local brewery bottled beer (at least until Prohibition) and a dozen or more factories and mills small and large shipped out farm equipment, flour, furnaces, mattresses, stoves and other items.

Bloomington was also known for washing machines.

From 1920 to the mid-1950s, Meadows Manufacturing Company made clothes washers from its plant on the city’s near southeast side. Over the years the Bloomington factory churned out one washing machine after another under brand names such as Meadow Lark (spelled as two words) and Select-a-Speed.

The company’s origin can be traced to the inventiveness of John Rocke, who at the end of the 19th century began making grain elevators, conveyer-like machines to move ear corn upward and into cribs or bins. His busy little workshop was based in Meadows, a hamlet in northern McLean County between Gridley and Chenoa, and he found a ready market among his rural neighbors.

In 1903 Rocke incorporated the Meadows Manufacturing Co., and in a short while the workshop had become a factory assembling about 500 grain elevators annually.

The ever-growing enterprise moved to Pontiac in 1910, and in two years the company’s floor space had increased to 60,000 square feet.

In addition to portable and stationary grain elevators, Meadows was now manufacturing other farm-related equipment like livestock scales, pump jacks and binder hitches.

And it was in Pontiac that the company began making power washing machines.

In 1920 Rocke relocated his operation to Bloomington, the move apparently spurred by Pontiac’s reluctance to extend water mains to his factory.

He faced a more welcoming climate in Bloomington where the local Association of Commerce purchased 14 acres south of Bell Street and west of Hannah Street for the factory site. The association also picked up the tab for the Illinois Central switch and siding to connect the plant to the wider world of rail traffic, and developed the Meadows subdivision to create affordable homes for the new workforce.

The Bloomington plant included an administration building, paint, wood and machine shops, and “one of the most up-to-date foundries to be found in Central Illinois,” with the furnace (and by extension the company’s moulders and pattern makers) able to handle 10 tons of molten metal an hour.

During its years in Bloomington, Meadows dropped its farm implement lines and instead concentrated on the design, manufacture, marketing, distribution and sale of washing machines.

Its early ones were either equipped with an electric motor or set up for power takeoff from a free-standing gasoline engine already owned by the customer.

Generally speaking, city residents purchased the first type and farm folk — at least before rural electrification — bought the second. During its first decade in Bloomington, Meadows boasted a distribution network spanning not only much of the U.S. (from Boston, Mass. to Oakland, Calif.) but parts of Canada and Europe as well.

Yet the Great Depression was most unkind to the household appliance industry, and the Bloomington company fell into receivership. In 1934 Meadows was absorbed by the Hurley Machine Corp., manufacturers of the Thor line of washing machines (the company would later be known as Thor Corp.). Despite the sale, the Meadows name survived since the Bloomington plant became a division of the parent company. By the end of the Depression, Meadows was turning out an average of 50,000 washers a year.

During World War II the company made parts for a 20mm anti-aircraft gun. “Wars are won with machine ships and factories, just as much as they are with battleships, fighting planes and armed men,” declared Meadows President I.N. Merritt in May 1942. During the Korean War the plant manufactured artillery shells.

Yet by the early 1950s it was becoming increasingly apparent that Meadows couldn’t compete against giant full-line appliance makers like General Electric and others. In late 1955, Thor sold Meadows to Bloomington-based vacuum maker Eureka Williams with its plant opposite Hannah Street. The sale price was $450,000, or about $3.8 million in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars.

The original Meadows buildings are still standing south of Bell Street, and until a few years ago they were part of the Wildwood Industries complex. The old administration building — 93 years old this summer — still carries the inscription “Meadows Mfg. Co.” as well as a handsome corporate “coat of arms” with the interlocking letters “M,” “M,” and “C.”


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Post# 1162026 , Reply# 10   10/19/2022 at 18:15 (548 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

I happened to find some information about the Meadows washing machine in an old file.

2/8/1927 patent granted to Meadows on use of Bakelite as a material for an agitator. The tub was made as made of laminated copper and steel with nickel plating inside the 23 gallon copper tub. This construction was more like the Sunbeam Coffeemaster than the aluminum or porcelain tubs of the Maytag. The agitator vanes were 5/8 thick and the agitator reversed 48 times per minute.


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