Join the Club! Early Social Life at J&J

 

Early Johnson & Johnson employees belonged to a variety of social clubs and groups, and took a wide range of classes offered by the Company.  The Company organized classes in hygiene, gymnastics, millinery (hat making), embroidery and English instruction.  At one point, up to two-thirds of our early employees were Hungarian immigrants, and employee notices and signs had to be written in both English and Hungarian.  Circa 1907, women employees at Johnson & Johnson had a basketball team, a Glee Club and a lending library, and also did charity work at a local New Brunswick orphanage.  Male employees belonged to clubs as well – as these photos from the “J&J Hikerage Club” show. 

The Scientific Director

One of the most fascinating people behind Johnson & Johnson was Dr. Fred B. Kilmer, who was the Director of Scientific Affairs for Johnson & Johnson for 40 years, starting in 1889.  Company Founder Robert Wood Johnson (who lived as well as worked in New Brunswick) became friendly with Dr. Kilmer when he visited Kilmer’s pharmacy — the Opera House Pharmacy — in downtown New Brunswick.  Besides being a scientist, Dr. Kilmer (a president of the New Jersey Pharmaceutical Association) understood marketing and promotion, and was a writer. Another of Kilmer’s customers at the pharmacy was the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, who bought supplies to use in his experiments at his lab in Menlo Park. 

 In 1888, Kilmer and Johnson collaborated on “Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment.”  The booklet was a groundbreaking summary of the latest views of the medical profession on wound treatment…and contained a catalogue of Johnson & Johnson products that could be used in the antiseptic treatment of wounds. 

 

Dr. Kilmer furthered the scientific direction of the Company and helped make its expanding product lines trusted by physicians and patients.  He was instrumental in early Johnson & Johnson publications such as Red Cross Notes, a scholarly journal directed toward the medical profession; and Red Cross Messenger, a trade publication whose audience was pharmacists. Dr. Kilmer was also responsible for preserving the Company’s early history, including the products, documents and photographs seen on this site. Dr. Kilmer was the father of renowned poet Joyce Kilmer, who was killed in World War I.  His house (where Joyce was born) is still standing, at 17 Joyce Kilmer Avenue in New Brunswick. 

Early Manufacturing Workers

 Johnson & Johnson started with just 14 employees but, by the end of 1894, the Company employed 400, and manufacturing and office space occupied 14 buildings.  This photograph shows early employees of Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  Many of the Company’s early employees were of Hungarian descent, since New Brunswick had one of the largest Hungarian populations in the country at the time. 

A Fortunate Train Trip

Johnson & Johnson has been headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, since the company got its start in 1886.  Believe it or not, this was due to a very fortunate railroad trip by James Wood Johnson. 

  

While looking for a factory location for the new company early in 1886, he was riding a westbound Pennsylvania Railroad train through New Jersey.  When the train slowed down to cross the Raritan River, Johnson looked out the window and saw a “To Let” sign on a four-story factory building in New Brunswick.  Johnson ended up renting the fourth floor of the building, a former wallpaper factory, which became the first home of Johnson & Johnson.  Besides having a convenient building for rent, New Brunswick was a rail, coach, waterway and commercial hub midway between New York and Philadelphia, and was home to a variety of small industries — like rubber companies, a needle factory, and a maker of fruit jars.

120 Years of Helping Patients

Johnson & Johnson was founded in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1886 by three brothers: Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson.  The Company produced the first-ever antiseptic surgical dressings, based on Sir Joseph Lister’s theory of asepsis.  Before sterilization, 19^th century operating rooms were terrifying places, and patients were considered lucky to survive an operation.  Neither surgeons’ hands nor their instruments were sterilized, nor were the cotton and other materials they used to stop bleeding and dress wounds.  As a result, mortality rates from infection were extremely high.  Sir Joseph Lister, an English physician, tested French scientist Louis Pasteur’s theory of invisible germs as the cause of infection.  Lister sprayed an operating room with carbolic acid, a disinfectant, and in doing so, founded modern antiseptic surgery. 

                        

The above photos show, L to R, Company founders Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson.  In 1876, during the U.S. centennial celebrations, Robert Wood Johnson, who was in the medical products business, attended a conference in Philadelphia and heard Dr. Lister (photo below) speak. 

   

Lister’s speech inspired Johnson with the idea for a new business that could help patients and surgeons:  the manufacture of the world’s first sterile surgical dressings.   When Johnson formed the new company with his brothers in 1886, the antiseptic dressings they produced dramatically increased the survival rates of surgery patients.