Baxter International Inc. is a healthcare company with a global presence. Its first major production facility was in Glenview, Illinois, and within the space of this converted car showroom, Baxter innovated and produced life saving medical technologies that saw use on the frontlines of Allied armies during the Second World War.
Company Origins
Baxter International began as a humble enterprise with a grand vision in mind. It was in 1931 that three men, Dr. Donald E. Baxter, Dr. Ralph Falk, and Harry Falk, joined forces to establish Don Baxter Intravenous Products, Inc. Their mission was to make intravenous (IV) solutions commercially available in massive quantities, a novel idea at the time.1 Up to that point the production of IV solutions was limited.
Although the concept of IV therapy was known in medicine, the therapy was not widely practiced. Inadequate medical technology made early solutions vulnerable to pyrogenic contamination. Patients could experience adverse reactions like fever and had to be closely monitored. As a result, IV therapy was confined mainly to larger medical institutions where solutions were produced in-house.
The inspiration to make IV solutions more accessible and of a higher quality came to Dr. Baxter. After opening a laboratory in Glendale, California, in 1921, Dr. Baxter began to experiment with various products, one of which being IV solutions. His solutions proved successful in trials and were sold in small quantities by 1929. Despite his sales Dr. Baxter still sought to license his development and found a potential investor in Harry Falk. Samples of the solutions were provided for testing to Harry’s brother Dr. Ralph Falk and after the results were corroborated, the Falk brothers became partners with Dr. Baxter.
Production of the solutions continued in Glendale for the next two years. Then in 1933 the company relocated its operations to the small rural community of Glenview, Illinois, connected to Chicago by commuter train.
Glenview Production Facility
Baxter’s Glenview plant was located near the intersection of Glenview and Waukegan roads. Moving into a former car showroom, the plant operated until 1947 and was a boon to the local economy. Many residents from Glenview and the surrounding area were employed by Baxter during the Great Depression. One of whom was McClay ‘Mac’ Cole, employee number seventeen, who was playing cards at a nearby gas station when a punch press being delivered to Baxter fell off a truck. Going over to assist the workers, Mac asked for a job and began working at the plant in 1936. He married a coworker and retired from Baxter after fifty years of service.2
Like its employee base the actual plant grew as well. Construction projects increased the available floor space, such as the 1941 addition that more than doubled, at a cost of $350,000, the plant’s area to 70,000 square feet.4 Nonetheless, a single plant could not satisfy product demand and Baxter opened two more plants before 1941. The forefront of Baxter’s innovations still remained in Glenview.
In 1935 the company was renamed Baxter Laboratories, Inc. The company’s directors had larger designs for Baxter than the sole production of IV solutions. Its scientists began to conduct research in other medical fields. Of particular interest was blood therapy.
At the Glenview plant a blood transfusion device was designed by Dr. Naurice Nesset. Patented in 1938, incorporating some designs from an earlier device made by Dr. John Elliott, Dr. Nesset’s Transfuso-Vac was ‘a completely closed system under vacuum, containing sodium citrate to prevent blood coagulation, with specially designed valve and filter devices’.6
Following soon after the Transfuso-Vac came another major invention in blood therapy. Named the Plasma-Vac, this device was used to separate and store blood plasma. Baxter was a clear pioneer in cutting edge medical technology.
Even so, the company’s first decade of existence was a difficult one. Baxter’s sales volume remained relatively low due to production issues, high prices, and its products not yet entirely trusted by hospitals. Then came the war.
Wartime Boom
The business of Baxter Laboratories exploded in the Second World War. The company’s net sales totaled $1,168,000 in 1941, and by war’s end, this figure rose to $4,082,000. During the war years the government purchased 1.2 million Transfuso-Vac and Plasma-Vac containers, along with 4.3 million units of IV solutions.7
All across the Pacific and European theaters of operation Baxter’s products were used to treat American servicemen. That is, wherever supplies could reach the frontlines. It wasn’t until February, 1944, that sufficient quantities of Baxter products reached American forces fighting in the Mediterranean. A shortage of blood transfusion equipment forced American hospital units to rely upon British equipment or improvise, making crude devices from scavenged materials.8
Meanwhile on the Homefront, Baxter’s Glenview employees worked around the clock. But towards the later stages of the war the plant suffered from a manpower shortage. Fortunately for Baxter the 740th Military Police (MP) Battalion was stationed at Camp Skokie Valley nearby. For many of the MPs the prospect of earning extra money was attractive.
Baxter began to employ the soldiers, upon approval from Army and union officials, in early 1944. At the time the plant had difficulty in fulfilling government contracts and Baxter officials approached the authorities of Camp Skokie Valley, requesting that soldiers be allowed to work at the plant in their off hours.
Click here to read more on Camp Skokie Valley and the activities of the 740th MP Battalion.
A nightly bus full of volunteers departed from Camp Skokie Valley. The soldiers worked the third shift, a total of six hours, at the same rate of pay as civilians. They worked either inside the warehouse or on the fast-paced assembly line, depending on how strenuous a soldier’s day was. Their shifts were made as pleasant as possible.
Packed and ready for shipment to blood banks, transfusion bottles containing intravenous solution are stacked by Loretta Bueter, an employee of Baxter Laboratories, Glenview, Illinois. October 1942. From Library of Congress. 
Rabbits too, aid the war effort. William Edwin Morris, histologist for Baxter Laboratories Inc., Glenview, Illinois, conducts research on blood plasma through experimentation on rabbits. The company prepares transfusion bottles for blood letting. October 1942. From Library of Congress.
Deeply appreciative of the soldiers’ labor, Baxter threw a party for the men, numbering around seventy-five, in February 1945.9 The partnership between Camp Skokie Valley and Baxter endured for over a year.
Besides the financial benefit and patriotism, there was a third reason for soldiers wanting to moonlight as laborers.
During the war years plenty of women worked at the Glenview plant. Jane Meyer was hired in 1943, staying with the company until 1983, and recalled ‘Baxter was a great place for romance in those days. A lot of men coming back from the war married women they met and worked with at Baxter’.10 Meyer herself married a coworker.
What happened to the Baxter Plant in Glenview? The scope of Baxter’s activities outgrew its Glenview plant after the war. In 1945 the company announced that it was moving its operations to Morton Grove, Illinois. Production continued in Glenview until the new plant was finished in 1947. The old plant was next used by Kraft Foods, Inc. as a research facility. At some point the facility was levelled and the land was developed into a parking lot.11
Sources
- A complete history of Baxter International is found in Thomas G. Cody, Innovating for Health: The Story of Baxter International (Deerfield, IL.: Baxter International, 1994).
- Cody, Innovating for Health, pp.33-4.
- Village of Glenview, Waukegan Road Corridor Plan, report prepared for the Village of Glenview [Illinois], 2010, accessed 2 February, 2021, https://www.glenview.il.us/government/Documents/Waukegan-FINAL-2-16-10.pdf.
- The project was announced in late 1941. Staff, ‘Enlarge Hospital Supply Plant’, Chicago Tribune,16 November, 1941, p.B10.
- Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS), ‘file 0bwq05082’, Illinois Historical Aerial Photographs, 1937-1947, accessed 2 February, 2021, https://clearinghouse.isgs.illinois.edu/webdocs/ilhap/county/data/cook/flight4/0bwq05082.jpg.
- Cody, Innovating for Health, p.44; for information on Dr. Elliot’s device read Paul J. Schmidt, ‘The Plasma Wars: a History’, in Transfusion May 2012 (vol. 52, no. s1), pp.2S- 4S.
- Wartime figures on Baxter’s production can be found in Cody, Innovating for Health, pp.47-8.
- Douglas B. Kenrick, Brig. Gen., Blood Program in World War II (Washington D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1964), pp.434-5.
- Details on the soldier’s work is found in Mildred Smeby, ‘Glenview MP’s work in war plant on off hours’, The Daily Herald (Chicago, Illinois), 19 May, 1944, p.1. For a short description of the party thrown for the soldiers, see G.S.O. (Glenview Service Organization), ‘Dear Jane’, Announcements (Glenview, Illinois), 8 February, 1945, p.12.
- Cody, Innovating for Health, pp.37.
- Staff, ‘Kraft Acquires Glenview Unit for Research’, Chicago Tribune, 6 December, 1945, p.31.
My father, Ray Reisener, started working for Baxter in 1935. He was a victim of polio which left him with an atrophied left leg and precluded his military service.
He told me that in addition to the Army personnel there were a good number of Navy people
from the Glenview Naval Air Station who helped in the production effort. Baxter, at that time, was like a dairy. They delivered IV Solutions to the hospitals and picked up the empty IV bottles which were salvaged, cleaned and refilled.