Local businessmen and growers organized and incorporated the Falls Canning Company of Oconto Falls, Wisconsin, in 1911. Eighty-one individuals purchased 185 of the original 200 shares of stock offered at 100 dollars per share. In 1919, the shareholders voted to increase the capital stock to 50,000 dollars and to declare a 50 percent dividend.
The Falls Canning Company contracted with farmers to grow corn and beans and to sell their crops to the cannery for packing in tin cans. The Company also advanced seed to growers. In addition to corn and beans, the Company at various times also packed beets and other vegetables. The Company sold its products under its own labels and under many other brand names, primarily to major food distributors and supermarket chains in the upper Midwest. In later years, it relied on food brokerage firms and packers' sales agents for most of its marketing operations.
In 1927, many stockholders and directors of the Falls Canning Company organized the Pulaski Canning Company, with a capital stock of 50,000 dollars. Located sixteen miles south of Oconto Falls in the Village of Pulaski, the new firm's operations were very similar to those of the Falls Canning Company. After 1927, the Boards of Directors of the two firms met jointly and annually appointed one manager to operate both plants. The firms kept separate books, however, and maintained their own legal identities. The Pulaski Canning Company sold its plant to the Fruit Growers Cooperative of Sturgeon Bay in 1962 and the corporation dissolved.
In the 1950s, the Falls Canning Company faced growing financial problems. In late 1959, the firm wrote to the growers whose crops it had purchased to inform them that it was unable to pay them until after the end of the year. The letter explained that over the past three or four years, the Company had found it difficult to market its entire pack but that it hoped to improve its marketing by employing a new sales agency. The same year, the Falls Canning Company negotiated a loan of 80,000 dollars through the Small Business Administration. In 1960, the firm packed 30,358 cases of beans and 22,933 cases of corn; it reported total assets of 238,778 dollars and gross sales of nearly 350,000 dollars. However, the firm also showed a net operating loss for the year of 8,768 dollars. Three years later, in early 1963, the Board of Directors of the Falls Canning Company announced its decision to cease operations, explaining that present market prices for commodities made profitable operations impossible.
