Visits to implement and machinery makers’ premises were sometimes recorded in the newspaper press. They record a whole host of information on a business including who the key personnel were, their reputation (and that of the business), implement making activities, and what the works looked like. Some provide information that is not available in other accounts.
In the early 1890s there were two accounts of visits to the Bon Accord Works of Ben Reid & Co., Aberdeen. This was a well-established business. In 1868 it described itself as “seedsmen, nurserymen, and implement makers”. In that year it had nurseries in Albyn Place and Burnieboozle and implement works at the Justice Mills, Aberdeen. The Bon Accord Works as a name of a premises appear to have been first recorded around 1869.
There are two accounts of the Bon Accord Works – and the Ben Reid & Co – from 1890 and 1892 which provide a great deal of information on them and the business behind them. They are worth quoting at length:
“Ben Reid & Co. (North British Agriculturist, 1 October 1890)
We had the pleasure if recently inspecting the famous Bon Accord Implement works of Messrs Ben. Reid & Co., Aberdeen. This well-known firm, whose enterprise and excellence of workmanship have made the Bon Accord implements known and highly prized not only in this country, but wherever there are crops to be sown and harvests to be reaped, has for many years consisted solely of two gentlemen-Mr William Anderson and Mr Robert Garvie. The former gentleman is invariably found at the head of the firm’s stand at every agricultural gathering of any consequence in the three kingdoms; while the latter is found with equal regularity at the head of that garrison of industry, where the implements are produced by which the consequests of the firm are year by year extended. Mr William Anderson is the beau ideal of the implement exhibitor, as he is fully equipped not only with the suaviter in modo, but also with the fortiter in re. His naturally genial disposition is mated with a robust confidence in the dignity of his calling, and the very important use which the implement maker renders to the agricultural community. He pushes the sale of his goods on the invulnerable principle of giving good value for a good price; and the cheap-jack who wants to beat down the price, and buy first-class implements at the current rate for scamped work, invariably gets short shrift at his hands. He has always stood boldly out for the exhibitors of implements receiving more generous recognition from the leading agricultural societies than they have hitherto had, and his efforts in this way have been rewarded with considerable success. It is not surprising, therefore, that even his keenest competitors in the same line of business should have united, as one man, to honour him by appointing him president of the Society of Scottish Engineers, a position which he has held for the last three years. His partner, Mr Garvie, is not so well known to the outside public, on account of his sticking so closely to the factory work; but by all who have the pleasure of his acquaintance he is justly esteemed as a high-souled knight of labour, whose ‘scutcheon is graved with numerous honours won on the field of engineering science.
The premises occupied by this firm are splendidly equipped, though by no means so extensive as one would have expected considering the amount of manufactured goods which are here turned out every year, and the quantity of timber that has to be stored in order to be thoroughly well dried and seasoned. This apparent deficiency of accommodation, however, is due to the fact that machinery specially designed and specially constructed is here used to a quite unusual extent for the manufacture of the reapers, seed drills &c. Just as in the latest product of dairy science, the Instantaneous Butter-Maker, the new milk is fed in at the one end and the butter and butter-milk come out at the other, or, as in the case of the fabled pig-dressing machines in Chicago, where the pigs are put in at the one end, and the hams, sausages, and bristles done up into brushes come out at the other, so here the wood and steel are fed into the machines and come out, not finished reapers or mowers certainly, but parts which are executed with the nicest mathematical precision, and only require putting together to complete the Bon Accord product. Most of these manufacturing machines, whose use saves time and labour to such an extent, and also ensures that each and every part shall be the exact counterpart of another, have been conceived and produced in the brain of either Mr Anderson or Mr Garvie. The greatest care is taken to ensure that none but wood and steel or iron of the very best quality shall be fed into these manufacturing machines, which, automatically as it were, turn out all the separate parts of the machines produced at the Bon Accord Works. The Bon Accord reapers and mowers, seed drills, and broadcast sowing machines produced by this farm are too well and favourably known to require description outside of the Dark Continent. So, too, is their sharpener for reaping-machine blades, which is now justly regarded as an indispensable requisite on every farm. Every scythesman knows how tiresome it is to cut with a blunted blade, but when there was only the old plan of using the file to fall back upon, the ploughman were only too apt, to forget that the cutting with a blunted reaper blade was as heavy on the horses as upon the scythesman. By the way, in these days when everything must be brought up to date, it might be a good plan for some enterprising firm like that under notice to bring the Nineteenth Century Art up to date by depicting Old Father Time with a self-binder and a chronometer, instead of such out of date appliances as a hook and an hour-glass.
In addition to the purely agricultural implements by which the firm has become so well known, a large business is also done at the Bon Accord works in the production of garden railings and gates. This branch of the business is also conducted in a most exhaustive way, and all kinds of railings and gates are produced, from the humble railing and wicket that encloses the garden of the cottage villa, up to the costly railing and gorgeous gates that form a fitting off-set for the mansion of the peer. So greatly has this part of the business at the Bon Accord works, that a skilled artists is constantly employed in producing and elaborating designs for such railings and gates.
The implement works of Messrs Ben Reid & Co. are the only works of the kind in the Granite city. This is not surprising considering the standing which this firm have acquired in the implement trade. At the same time, the north-east of Scotland is far from being a preserve of theirs any more than the rest of the country is. Indeed, it is probable that their constituents are as numerous in any other part of Scotland as they are in Aberdeenshire, and their foreign trade is also a vast as well as a growing one. Altogether, it may be safely said that, alike as regards the quantity and quality of the products turned out by this firm, and the unique position which the partners hold in the estimation of the agricultural public, the Bon Accord works are an institution of which the city of Bon Accord may be justly proud.”
(from Implement and Machinery, 19 October 1892)
“The current number of the Implement and Machinery Review contains a very interesting article on the Bon Accord Works, Aberdeen, from which we make the following extract: Deriving its name (Aberdeen) from the Dee, on the north bank of which it lies, this town of 113,000 inhabitants was regarded as “a place of some commerce” by the Normans in 1153, and her people’s watchword, “Bon Accord”, in Bruce’s time, is still her motto. Ever courageous, her citizens have sought to soar higher socially and industrially, and a drive through Aberdeen and her environs to-day shows unmistakably that she is “in the running” with the fleetest of the nation’s most progressive people. The spirit of emulation, which is characteristic of “men of mettle” was soon exemplified in Benjamin Reid of that city, who, starting in life as a gardener, soon became a florist, afterwards a seed merchant, also a horticultural implement vendor, and lived to be none other than the stepping-stone for the important implement making business now conducted at the Bon Accord Works, which his nephew ultimately founded. Ben Reid was a man of great integrity, and his nephew George, like him, lived to be beloved, but he was far more enterprising than his respected relative. They were in partnership for about six years, but George’s ambition was to widen the scope of their operations, and when the reins of administration fell solely into his hands he began seed drill making in Union Street, and thereto removed the wire working branch from his Guild Street premises that they might be kept exclusively as a seed depot, distinct from what he hoped would in time become constructive works of some significance. But the seed vending and seed drill making and wire weaving businesses ultimately grew to such an extent that they outran his ability to conveniently control them personally; and so good a trade was bemirrored in the increasing call he experienced for different classes of implements and machinery that even more efficient supervisional help than his was rendered necessary. Determined to extend the reputation he had acquired, he kept his eye upon two good business men who had impressed him with their ability to consummate his wishes. They were William Anderson, then representing Messrs Murray & Co., of Banff, and Robert G. Garvie, manager of the Northern Agricultural Implement Co., of Inverness. That he was ‘cute in their selection is certain, for whilst the former had originally conducted his own smithy and implement business at Macduff, and had acquired much experience of men and home and export business in his outside management of an agricultural engineer’s affairs, the latter had been brought up in his father’s mill, where a practical acquaintance with the joiner’s craft had made him conversant with constructive methods, and he had supplemented this knowledge by valuable experience inseparable from the responsible position he afterwards held in Inverness. To gauge their views in hope of assimilating them with his ideas, Mr George Reid interviewed them in London at one of the best meeting places possible for such a purpose. This was at the Smithfield Show at Islington. The offer he made them was tendered as “an excellent one”. They agreed to join him, and became partners in 1876, but he has “passed away”. Yet, as the sole surviving proprietors of the Bon Accord Works (still conducted as Ben Reid & Co’s), Messrs Anderson & Garvie not only look back with pleasure upon the genuineness of George Reid’s promises, but love to dwell upon his good qualities of mind and heart. Reverting to the Smithfield interview whilst addressing us, “I well remember”, said Mr Anderson, “Mr Reid’s saying, with a. degree of forcefulness not to be forgotten, “I’ve a good business for you”. That statement’s correctness has been fully borne out, for we’ve been prospering ever since”. This avowal appears to be as true as George Reid’s statement was correct, for we fins that within the last ten years no less than three gold, fifteen silver, and five bronze medals, cut of a total of ninety prizes, have been awarded them by notable Agricultural Societies in recognition of their goods’ superiority; and their implements and machinery have found buyers, not only in the British Isles, but in Cape Colony, Natal, the Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Chili, Canada, Ceylon, Egypt, India, France, Germany, Spain, Russia, and Norway, a single order for a hundred threshing machines having been given by one of these markets not long ago.”
