Joseph Banigan
From Irish Refugee to Millionaire Mogule
Joseph Banigan was an Irish born businessman and industrialist who co-founded the US Rubber Company. He served as its president from 1893 to 1896 and was a prime benefactor to Rhode Island’s Catholic churches.
When he was six years old, Banigan was part of a wave of Irish-Catholic refugees who fled the potato famine in Ireland. Settling in Providence, he was educated in parochial schools. First learning the jeweler’s trade, he later met John Haskins, one of the early pioneers in the rubber industry. He gained his knowledge of rubber from Haskins and incorporated his other skills acquired from his years in a machine shop.
In a few years, he was the manager of the new Boston factory for the Good Year India Rubber Bottle Stopper Company. Charles Goodyear had been granted a patent in 1844 for his success in making rubber firm and permanent by combining rubber with sulfur and white lead, then heating it to 270 degrees. The process was called vulcanizing. Banigan discovered a way to bypass the vulcanization patent of Charles Goodyear.
In 1866 Banigan went to the Bailey Wringer Company in Woonsocket. When the company could not obtain satisfactory rubber rollers for its washing machine wringers, its principals formed the Woonsocket Rubber Company. Banigan built machines and developed a process that allowed the company to produce the finest rubber shoes and boots in the world. By 1876 the company was producing 130 cases of footwear a day. This operation began in Market Square, and the building still stands today, housing a popular restaurant location.
In 1889, the company built the Alice Mill on Fairmount Street. At the time of its construction, it was the largest rubber mill in the world and employed 1,500 people. To cut business costs, Banigan went to South America and bought directly from the suppliers, thereby eliminating dealing with middlemen. By 1893, the Woonsocket Rubber Company imported more rubber than any other manufacturer in the United States. His desperate competitors merged to form the US Rubber Company. When they made it worth his while, Banigan sold his company in 1893 for an incredible $9,000,000 to this conglomerate. He became the first president of the US Rubber Company in 1894. By now he was already Rhode Island’s first Irish Catholic millionaire.
The US Rubber plant remained thriving into the early part of the twentieth century. The Alice Mill was closed in the 1930’s but reopened during the Second World War and remained open until the 1960’s. Keds sneakers were one of the items produced.
Banigan is known as much for his generosity to charities as he is for his ruthlessness in business. He built the Little Sisters of the Poor, a home for the elderly in Pawtucket, RI. Concerned with the plight of young women in the work force, he also built Providence’s St. Maria Working Girls Home. Numerous other charities were supported by immense donations from him. His generosity was honored by Pop Leo XIII who made Banigan a Knight, of the order of St. Gregory the Great.
Joseph Banigan died on July 28, 1898.
