The history of New Jersey Zinc and Palmerton are in many ways one and the same. The Zinc Company now has a different name and its operations are tiny compared to what once was its dominant role in the community.

The New Jersey Zinc Company laid out Palmerton as an ideal community, with wide streets, parks, its own hospital, central water and sewer systems, and even a community house for social events.

NJZ paid for it all. The zinc smelting and refining facilities it built were state of the art. The practices of its operations were also state of the art. In the early twentieth century, workers given a choice of working at Bethlehem Steel or NJZ would always choose NJZ because its worker safety and hygiene programs were better.

In the early twentieth century, most basic industries had not yet provided change houses or medical monitoring, nor had they required that workers shower and change back into street clothes to go home. But NJZ provided all of those things as a matter of corporate practice.

NJZ located its research and development facilities in Palmerton. Hundreds of things that we use every day had their genesis in those laboratories: plastic stiffeners, zinc oxide additives to make tires last for tens of thousands of miles, French process oxides pure enough to be put into foods and vitamins, pigments that made photocopiers and laser printers work. Without these inventions we would all live in a very different world.

Palmerton, as it was laid out and built, was to be an ideal community—many would say Utopian. NJZ monitored its workers in ways that we would never allow today. If a worker had a drinking problem, his paycheck would be delivered to his wife so that he wouldn't spend it at the bar on the way home.

Plant managers and supervisors were expected to know and follow the families of their workers and provide extra assistance and support when needed. That loyalty was returned in better worker productivity and problem solving.

At NJZ, shutting down the furnaces could cost the company millions of dollars in damages. So, when a major blizzard would shut down the rest of the businesses in town, the zinc furnaces stayed open because the workers found ways to get to work and worked multiple shifts if necessary.

Palmerton has a proud history and its history cannot be written without the New Jersey Zinc Company being a part of it.

Request for Help

I have been asked to write more about the history of Carbon County as I know it. One aspect of that would be to write about the people who are unsung, those who have made our history in the 60 years since the end of World War II. Some of them are still with us, some are not.

Who are some of the people that I am thinking about? Dr. David Carpenter, Sonny Kovatch, Colonel Frank and Agnes McCartney, Representative Thomas J. McCall, House Speaker Keith McCall, County Commissioners Koch, Wildoner, Angst, Dougherty, etc., Joseph Boyle, Gertrude Apfelbaum, Dr. Batchelor, Doctor George and Laura Thomas. This list could go on forever, but the point of mentioning some of the names is to alert you as to what I am looking for. I need a lot of feedback since many of the people that I know of, I did not personally know.

Please e-mail suggestions to info@carboncountymagazine.com and I will contact you.

Bruce Conrad