From a small receiving station for tomatoes opened by the Van Camp Packing Company in 1903 grew a huge packing plant with an annual payroll by 1940 of over $70,000.  The peak of the company's employment occurred during the 1930s, when the National Recovery Act employed nearly 550 people in tomato canning.
	Indiana Willow Products Company produced furniture remarkably similar to that of Old Hickory, its hometown rival, yet in innovations in chair design and in weaving patterns.  This display of furniture at an Indianapolis trade show in 1941 clearly shows the decorative weaving patterns that became characteristics of its products.
The Martinsville Brick Company was established in 1909 by I.G. Poston, whose name appears on Knobstone paving blocks imbedded in the streets of Martinsville and other cities and towns across Indiana.  This downdraft or beehive kiln burned bricks at the temperatures up to 1900 degrees Celsius.  The Poston Brick Company was the first to develop colored brick, achieved by the use of minerals or salts in the final firing stages.
	Buried in a column in the May 10, 1894, Martinsville republican is an announcement that George F. Richardson of Indianapolis had secured the former Christian church building on Pike Street and opened "the Old Hickory chair factory."  Little could the editor know that this small factory, which at the time employed five men, would grown to produce the world's most easily recognized-and for the time most popular-furniture.