Enters the 20th Century
in
WINFIELD, IOWA

The Merillat System
of
Building Concrete Culverts and Bridges

Installs permanent work that will never need to be repaired or replaced, and does it for much less than your temporary culverts and bridges have been costing you.

Let us prove this at our expense before you pay a single cent.

One Form and therefore One Investment for all your culvert work, as our Forms are adjustable to any size. Over 1100 Merillat Cores in use: Over 200 in Iowa. Used and endorsed by the United States Government.

HERE'S OUR PROPOSITION:

We'll ship you a set of our cores, and when you're ready we'll build you a culvert of any size you want anywhere in your township. If this culvert isn't better and from 25 to 60 per cent cheaper than any clay pipe, iron or corrugated metal culvert in your township, and if the cores are not exactly as represented we won't ask you to take the cores. If the forms are just as represented and if we do save you from 25 to 60 per cent of your culvert costs you'll want them and you can pay our demonstrator for them.
The price is about the same as our competitors charge for a four foot form that makes only one size and is less than one-third the price of any outfit covering the same range as ours. We'll also ship our Bridge Form subject to demonstration, and make good in your county before we ask you for a nickel.
OR WE'LL BUILD YOUR CULVERTS and BRIDGES BY CONTRACT IN COMPETITION with ANYONE ANYWHERE

Any County or Township Road Official

may have any of the following booklets free for the asking. Our 16-page catalog, describing our Adjustable Culvert Form, our Adjustable Bridge Form and our Concrete Mixer; our book on Culvert Construction: or our Booklet K., Concrete Culverts in Kansas.

REMEMBER:WE MAKE THE MERILLAT ADJUSTABLE CULVERT CORE, adjustable to any size from 20 to 48 inches.

THE MERILLAT ADJUSTABLE BRIDGE FORM, adjustable to any size from 6 to 12 feet.

THE BEST CONCRETE MIXERS, BOTH CONTINUOUS and BATCH, for USE on CULVERT and BRIDGE WORK.
REMEMBER, TOO, that we contract both culvert and bridge work at a price that will surprise you.

A Concrete Culvert, 16 feet long and three feet in diameter with wing walls ten feet long, was built at Peabody, Kansas, for $43.20, saving $23.00 over corrugated iron.

A Bridge, consisting of two 12 foot arches 11 feet high, with 44 feet of wing walls 12 feet high, was built over our adjustable collapsible Bridge Form at Wynne, Arkansas, at a total cost of $480.03, saving Cross County over $400 on this one job alone.

We still have some good territory open for first-class salesmen. If you can deliver the business let us hear from you.
Beginning March 1st, 1913, we will also have an opening for 5 or 6 more young men of good appearance and business ability as demonstrators and collectors, at a good salary.

We saved the city of Jackson, Mississippi $6,634 on 2500 feet of sewer. If you
want better culverts, sewers and bridges for less money, investigate our forms.

The Merillat Culvert Core Co., Winfield, Iowa

The following article appeared in the Winfield Beacon Newspaper December 1912:

P. C. Merillat

THE MERILLAT CULVERT CORE COMPANY

Scarcely do we find in the American people a man who is an inventor and a salesman, in other words one who can sell what he has invented, unless he is from Kansas. Winfield is fortunate to have such a man, not only for his keen business intellect, but because he loves his Winfield friends, inasmuch as he has spent hundreds of dollars in time and money, boosting anything of a good nature along and making our town stand high in the estimation of the surrounding country. Again he has shown his good will, when, after completing his new invention, the culvert core, and which has advertised our town more than any one thing, gave our citizens the benefit of it all, rather than his home town, in Kansas. this man is P. C. Merillat, President of the Merillat Culvert Core Co., which was organized Nov. 4, 1909, with a capital stock of $100,000. P. C. began his sales life as a book agent. All people who know anything about this life know what he had to contend with, and anyone succeeding with this will surely make a success in other lines. P. C. has sold various things in his day, such as blue sky, until at the present time he is engaged in building a house of artistic and unique design. Below is a picture of it, but the most important part of it cannot be seen as it is in the cellar. A portion of the basement is called "P. C.'s" room. It will be furnished accordingly, and at the end there will be a fireplace that will be unequaled anywhere in the U. S. This will be made of cobble stones, picked up and sent to him by his friends, from all parts of the world. Each stone will have its history in a book, which will lie on the mantle and may be inspected by all who visit his home. He is working night and day trying to hurry the finishers along for his grand opening. We will want to see it, P. C. (Note: This home is presently occupied by third owners, Raymond and Ruthe Werner.)

Shortly after the organization of the Core Co., P. C. was swamped in work, so he just wrote home where there were more like him and ordered his brother, C. C. Merillat to appear on duty and help him out. Chris arrived here in May 1909, cleared away the clouds, by surrounding the work which had worried P. C., and started the business off again on both feet. Early in the spring of 1911, a house was started to be built on Millionaire Row, and by jumping into the harness himself and rushing his help along, Chris completed the above beautiful bungalow in June. He then needed one of the fair sex to be mistress of the building he had just finished, so he also went to Kansas and we guess he had one picked out before, because in a few days he returned with his new wife and immediately turned the house over to her. He has the only home of the kind in Winfield and with its excellent furnishings, a better could not be asked for.

John Merillat moved his family here from Kansas and helped with the work, but Iowa seemed to have no effect on him, so he returned to Kansas.

The company's last call to Kansas brought G. C. Merillat to our town, a young man of well advanced ideas, and who took up the work of treasurer, and correspondence manager. In coming here, Winfield has added to her citizens a clean, bright young fellow, whose vim and vivacity, makes our old world go round. He is never too busy to accommodate, and is always willing to donate his time and money to anything of a boosting nature to the town. If they have any more like the samples from Kansas, send them along, we can use them.

The Merillat Culvert Core Company was organized Nov. 4, 1909, with a capital stock of $100,000. P. C. Merillat is President; C. C. Merillat, Secretary and Sales Manager; G. C. Merillat, Treasurer; and H. E. Reece, V. President. The above named with H. W. Van Dyke, constitute the Board of Directors.

The company manufactures and sells the Merillat Adjustable Culvert Core, adjustable from 20 to 48 inches and the Merillat Adjustable Bridge Form, adjustable from six to twelve feet. These forms are far ahead of any others on the market, because of their adjustability to different sizes. Instead of buying a lot of forms, one form and therefore one investment will build all culverts from 20 to 48 inches, while the other form will build culverts and small bridges from 6 to 12 feet.

In the three years the company has been in business they have sold over 1,100 culvert and bridge forms, having introduced their system in almost every state in the Union and their business is increasing rapidly every year. The volume of their business this year will exceed $100,000.

Among their customers are the United States Government, which uses Merillat Forms extensively in the Reclamation Service in the West, Railroads, Counties, Townships, Cities and Contractors. The company has branch offices in the South and on the pacific coast and has state managers in over half the states in the Union.

P. C. Merillat's Home, circa 1910
Locust Street, Winfield, Iowa

Front View

Back View

Note: A garage was added a few years later; its revolving floor was the talk of the town.