Why Akron Became Rubber Capital

Start with the check. In 1870 Benjamin Franklin Goodrich moved his rubber company to Akron after local citizens offered $13,600 to bring it there. The newly formed Akron Board of Trade helped finance the move. The business incorporated as B.F. Goodrich in 1880.

Now watch the dates that follow. Frank and Charles Seiberling founded Goodyear in Akron in 1898. Harvey Firestone relocated from Chicago in 1900. William O'Neil started General Tire in 1915. That completes the Big Four, and the list is closed: B.F. Goodrich, Goodyear, Firestone, General Tire. Seiberling is the surname of the men who founded Goodyear, not one of the Big Four.

Now the population figures. Akron had 69,067 people in 1910. In 1920 it had 208,435, growth of about 200 percent, the fastest of any US city that decade. By World War II the city held six tire factories.

One more thing came out of that boom, and it is not a tire. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron on June 10, 1935 by Bill Wilson, a New Yorker, and Dr. Bob Smith, an Akron surgeon. The person who introduced them was Henrietta Seiberling, of the same family that founded Goodyear. That is the boom's fingerprint on a story with no tires in it at all.