Moving Metal

forehead, he had hazel eyes framed by thick glasses; the U.S. government had accordingly declared him physically unfit for military service during World War I due to poor eyesight. His wife Mae was twelve years his junior. By the 1920s, Neilan was the California sales represen- tative for Powell Valve Company, selling valves, pressure regulators, and other equipment used in the state’s burgeon- ing oil industry. He was good at his job because he satisfied his customers and was always ready with a joke. “He could talk to anybody,” one acquaintance recalled. “He could talk to the homeless as well as the president of the United States and he was a straight shooter. As such, he was well respected.” Powell Valve was headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Inevita- bly, Neilan became convinced that if he could manufacture products in the West and cut transportation costs, he could pass on savings to his customers and keep some for himself. Ambitious by nature, he announced to his family, “Damn it, I want to start something here.” Many details of Neilan’s early business career are lost, but it is evident that he got around and knew how to seize an opportunity. By 1922, while still working for Powell, Neilan was promoting his own new product—a “packer and air lift” for use in oil well pumps. By the following March, he had established the Neilan Corporation, based in Houston, Texas, to manufacture it. Within a few years, the firm had moved to California and gone into the production of regulators as well as other fluid valves outfitted for pumps and engines employed in industries beyond the oil fields. In 1929, Neilan Corporation was purchased by a Boston-based firm called the Mason Regulator Company. The timing of the buyout was fortuitous—the transaction was completed before the stock market crash and the onset of the Depression. This left Neilan

construction, especially reinforcing bars, or “rebar.” Many of these companies were “mom and pop” outfits operating at tight profit margins, ill-matched with corporate giants like U.S. Steel, which produced the metal itself in its great eastern mills. Not surprisingly, the failure rate was particularly high for companies in the metals service sector. LUCK OF THE IRISH Out of failure often comes opportunity in the hands of the right entrepreneur, particularly one with plenty of business acumen and more than a little luck. Thomas Neilan was such a man. Born on May 26, 1887, to poor Irish immigrants Martin and Mary Neilan, Thomas had risen from humble beginnings in San Francisco’s Irish Alley, working first as an office clerk and then a traveling salesman. Tall and slender with a high

Newlyweds Tom and Mae Neilan in the 1920s.

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