South side of the Schwartz Manufacturing Company building at 1000 School Street in Two Rivers, Wisconsin as it appeared in 1943. A maker of cotton goods, Schwartz Manufacturing built this new plant on School Street, near Lake Michigan, in 1940 and occupied it in January 1941. During World War II the company nearly doubled its workforce to produce cotton gun cleaning patches for use on rifles and machine guns. An article in the "Two Rivers Reporter" from January 31, 1950 stated that Schwartz Manufacturing made three billion of these patches for the war effort. The firm also made canvas gaskets for landing craft that were built by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company in nearby Manitowoc, Wisconsin.