Allatt Machine & Tool Co. - History

Manufacturers Index - Allatt Machine & Tool Co.

Allatt Machine & Tool Co.
Toronto, ON, Canada
Manufacturer Class: Wood Working Machinery & Metal Working Machinery

History

Last Modified: May 2 2022 6:51PM by Jeff_Joslin
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The Allatt Machine & Tool Co. was established in 1911 by Eastern-European Jewish immigrants (and brothers-in-law) Philip C. Young and Samuel Easser. Young ran the office and Easser ran the machine shop, while a third partner, James D. Rubin, operated an auto parts store in the front of their shop. The company remained active until the early 1950s.

The Allatt machine shop's business was primarily that of a job shop, especially for engine repairs. During World War I they manufactured a cutting-off and facing machine specialized for manufacturing shells for the war effort. At some point, perhaps in the 1920s, they made a benchtop tilt-table saw, whose existence is solely documented by a surviving example (a second example has since surfaced).

Sam Easser is now mostly remembered as a community activist and socialist organizer who worked with many of the famous names in Canadian left-wing politics of the first half of the twentieth century, including Tommy Douglas, J. S. Woodsworth, M. J. Coldwell and Agnes MacPhail.

Information Sources

Thanks to Barry Crowe, whose Photo Index entry first brought this maker to our attention.
1918-07-04 Canadian Machinery has a small text ad: "Allatt Machine & Tool Co. / 107 Adelaide St. West, Toronto, Ont. / Phone Adel. 908 / Cutting-off and rough-facing machines for 6-inch shell. / Repair parts for Williams type 6-inch cut-off machines."
An April 1922 ad for Heald Machine Co. includes a photograph of a cylinder regrinding machine in use at Allatt Machine & Tool Co.
1925 Public Accounts of the Province of Ontario has several mentions of payments to Allatt Machine & Tool Co., including automotive repairs $108.96, "push rods, rollers, etc., 21.00", valves (for a boat), $33, automotive repairs $138.92, automobile supplies and repairs $953.18, and boiler repairs $31.10.
1934 Toronto Centennial City Directory lists "Allatt Machine & Tool Co (Jas D Rubin, Philip C Young, Saml Easser) tools, machines 201 queen e; factory 26 Britain".
A 1939 issue of Industrial Canada had the following obituary:
Philip C. Young

Philip C. Young, partner in the firm of Allatt Machine & Tool Company of Toronto, died May 24, age 65 years, following a prolonged illness. He was born in Quincy, Ill., but spent the greater part of his life in Toronto.
Iron and Steel and Their Products in Canada, 1940-1942, lists Allatt Machine & Tool Co., 26-30 Queen St. E., Toronto, and 239 8th St. E., Owen Sound.
October 1969 Maclean's, in an article titled, The NDP's strength comes from workers like Sam Easser.
...83-year-old Sam Easser, who has labored for Canadian socialism since the day he arrived in Toronto in 1905, a bewildered Russian Jew with no job, little money and less English. He had been a socialist in the Russian city of Vilna [now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania], where he served his apprenticeship as a machinist...
The book The Unsung Psychoanalyst: The Quiet Influence Of Ruth Easser, by Mary Kay O'Neil, 2004, has this section about Sam Easser:
Sam worked as a machinist until he retired and proudly remained a union man until he died. Most of his working life, from 1911 on, was spent in partnership with his brother-in-law; they owned the Allatt Machine and Tool Company. Sam ran the machine shop and Jim the office, while a third partner worked the store in front, which sold automotive parts. Sam was known as a strict but fair employer who expected to work for everything he owned and his workers to earn their money; he never had a strike in his shop and retained great sympathy for the union movement...
...[Sam Easser] married Anethel Sachs in 1910 and their son Percy was born in 1912. Anethel died in 1915, and in 1921 Sam married Sarah Foster whom he had known for a number of years, as his sister Becky was married to Sarah's brother Philip. Sarah was also from an Eastern European Jewish immigrant family... The Feschter family (changed to Foster) were observant Orthodox Jews...
2020-01-30 The Star, in an article, A stitch in time: Labour Lyceum once a hub of activism for Toronto’s garment district by Sara Mojtehedzadeh: "Originally envisioned as an education centre for Jewish working men, the Labour Lyceum was founded in 1913 by machinist Sam Easser and Henry Dworkin..."