Profile · West Bend, Wisconsin
Bernhard Carl “Ben” Ziegler
Town of Trenton–born West Bend industrialist; cofounder of West Bend Aluminum (1911); B.C. Ziegler and Company; died 1946 still company president
$6,500
Bernhard Carl "Ben" Ziegler built West Bend Aluminum from a rented button factory into a national cookware name and kept the town employed through the Depression. Born in the Town of Trenton, Washington County, on January 25, 1884, he attended West Bend Lutheran and public schools and finished high school in 1902. At eighteen he sold fire insurance from a room in his father's hotel, worked as bookkeeper to a county treasurer, and rode a bicycle and then a horse-and-buggy to farm clients. During the 1907 Roosevelt panic he pulled cash from the banks and lent it to those farmers at 4 to 4.5 percent, later saying he did more business in two months than in the prior four years. On September 27, 1911, after a pocketbook-factory fire put townspeople out of work, he and six investors put up $1,000 each and rented a former button factory on the Milwaukee River for $8.50 a month. West Bend Aluminum's first run was saucepans, a frying pan, a pie pan, and a water dipper. Sears took 40 to 50 percent of sales through 1919. The Waterless Cooker made the company national. Ziegler also incorporated B.C. Ziegler and Company, opened First National Bank of West Bend in 1917, ran Gehl Brothers, and chaired the county parks. He died of coronary thrombosis on May 6, 1946, at sixty-two, still president of the cookware works. Ripley's later claimed West Bend skipped the Depression; the payroll is why. The town's industrial story still starts with his name.