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Fig plant expanded Angleton-area economy
Published September 7, 2009
The Angleton Fig Plant was a communitywide endeavor, involving just about everyone in one way or another.
The company that owned the plant had its own fig orchard, and a number of area residents planted orchards of their own, selling their product to the local cannery.
But from the plant’s inception it faced slow sales. It wasn’t that the local product wasn’t good, because it was.
The problem was people in the northern United States weren’t familiar with fig products, and a great many small towns in Texas and elsewhere in the South had glutted the market.
On Nov. 12, 1926, the front page of the Angleton Times ran a banner headline about the plant’s success just three years after the idea first was advanced and local residents visited other canning plants in the area.
“The eating public has before it the job of eating twenty car-loads of preserved figs packed this season at the Angleton preserving plant,” the story stated.
“That is 17,000 cases, all ready for the grocer’s shelves."
According to this story, the plant had received 586,000 pounds of freight, including three railcar loads of fuel oil for use in its operation, not to mention eight railcar loads of glass and six car loads of sugar.
“The plant received and bought every good fig offered during the entire season,” the paper stated. “No grower was required to lose a pound because of lack of market.”
According to the Times’ story, the sale of figs had brought many thousands of dollars to local growers in 1926, all from “recently planted orchards, every acre still in its infancy.”
When the orchards reached maturity, production would increase exponentially, the paper predicted, and this would offer employment to many local people in processing the fruit.
The plant had closed for the season a few days earlier, the newspaper stated, explaining local “orchards had run their course for the year, and no more good fruit was offered.”
What that meant, the paper said, was the town needed to develop other lines that could be processed at the local plant.
“In east Texas they are growing blackberries at big profit,” it continued. “We should get in the same business here. We have the advantage in that our packing plant is already built and operating.”
Explaining blackberries ripen and are “out of the way” before the figs began to ripen, the story noted returns from that crop could be excellent, and that Angleton residents “are entitled to some of that good money.”
“Rev. W.L. Cannan, who is located in the center of the berry district, has written his brother, our mayor (E.R. Cannan) some of the details of the business. He stands ready to assist in any way if we should become serious and want the facts,” the paper added.
In the typical combination of news and community promotion so common in small-town newspapers of that era, the story urges, “Let’s get back of the blackberry right now.
“We need it and other cash revenue getters. We ought to work on the blackberries until we are black in the face. Just as we worked on the fig until everyone was charged with having figobia or figitis.”
In his book, “Memories of Seventy-Eight Years in Brazoria County,” Frank K. Stevens said sale of the fig products was a problem from the inception of the local operation.
“None of us were experienced salesman, nor did we have the time to get out and try to sell figs,” he said. “We sent a man up north who was sure that he could sell them in great quantities to some of the large companies, like Libby’s and others dealing in such things.”
No matter how hard they tried, however, they had difficulty in moving their product — a situation aggravated by the quantity of fig products being sent to market by other plants.
Stevens said another of the difficulties the company encountered was keeping the plant in operation in the “off season,” so its employees had a year-round income. During the times the plant was shut down, all the workers except the caretaker were let go.
“Realizing the urgent need for other things to can and sell, I tried packing what we called a Beef Stew,” Stevens wrote. “This was made by killing a couple of good fat cows and having them dressed and cut into small chunks half the size of your thumb.”
These were thoroughly cooked in one of the plant’s 200-gallon aluminum kettles until they were tender. Then a gravy was made with the addition of flour, salt and pepper, and the result was a can of stew ready to eat simply by opening the can and heating it, then serving with bread or toast, or with vegetables or in meat pies.
Stevens, who described himself as “a poor salesman,” took samples of the stew to about four large chain stores so they could try it, and eventually one of them agreed to accept a case of the stew on consignment to offer it to their customers.
“It sold and they kept using it as long as we packed it and were peeved when we quit,” he recalled.
He would send a shipment of the cases to a warehouse in Houston. When these merchants wanted more, they would send their truck over to the warehouse and pick up what they wanted, Stevens said.
The warehouse then would send invoices to the Angleton plant for billing purposes.
Next week: Angleton plant develops more products.
Marie Beth Jones, a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton, is chairwoman of the Brazoria County Historical Commission.
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