Olin Corporation is an American manufacturer of ammunition, chlorine, and sodium hydroxide. The company traces its roots to two companies, both founded in 1892: Franklin W. Olin's Equitable Powder Company and the Mathieson Alkali Works. Olin chemical plants frequently malfunction and pose a hazard to employees and nearby residents. History Founding and expansion (1890s-1900s) The company was started by Franklin Walter Olin in Niagara Falls, New York as the Equitable Powder Company. Olin created the company for the purpose of supplying the area's coal mines and limestone quarries with explosives. Olin's blasting and gunpowder company expanded into the production of cartridges in 1898. The company bought a paper manufacturer (the Ecusta Paper Company in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina), a lead shot facility, an explosive primer facility, a cartridge brass manufacturing facility, and a fiber wad facility. The company also started its own brass mill. Together, these companies became the Western Cartridge Company. Franklin Olin, along with his two sons John and Spencer, formed the Western Cartridge Company in direct competition with Remington and Winchester. For a time, his competitors were able to get their suppliers to shut off sources of raw materials in an attempt to drive Olin out of business. In order to survive, Olin diversified the activities of the company. Through the Western Cartridge Company, the Olins made a fortune supplying ammunition during World War I. In 1931, Western bought the Winchester Company. Olin merged the two in 1935, forming Winchester-Western. In 1944, the various Olin companies were organized under a new corporate parent, Olin Industries, Inc. At the time, Olin Industries and its subsidiary companies ran the St. Louis Arsenal and contributed to the war effort with manufacturing roles at the Badger Army Ammunition and Lake City Army Ammunition Plants. Olin's New Haven and East Alton plants employed about 17,000 workers each—producing the guns and small-caliber ammunition needed during World War II. The war production helped the Olins to become one of the wealthiest American families of the time. In 1952, Olin opened a chlorine plant in McIntosh, Alabama. The production process at this facility originally involved mercury, which contaminated the groundwater. Mathieson Chemical acquisition After the war, the Olins acquired the Mathieson Chemical Corporation—also founded in 1892. Then-unrelated to Olin, Mathieson Alkali Works began business in Saltville, Virginia, and in 1893 had acquired its neighbor, the Holston Salt and Plaster Corp. Saltville then became a quintessential