Manufacturing town

“ It is a manufacturing town, and contains numerous factories which produce a sort of cloth named after the town, and also silk-weaving factories (2000 looms, with an annual output of eight to nine million yards) . There are also paper-making factories in the town. ”

“ These mills and the many factories and foundries of the city—for Erie is a manufacturing town of considerable importance—produce iron ware, cars, machinery, organs, furniture, brass, leather, boots and shoes, and send them, by the various methods of transportation, to markets in the States and Canada. ”

“ A factory in a town changes every person in the town, mentally and physically. This being true, does not the management of this factory call for men of heart and soul—broad-minded, generous, firm in the right? Then every factory is influenced by the laws of the land, and each country is influenced by the laws of other countries, since most countries that are engaged in manufacturing find a market abroad. ”

“ And it may, with some show of truth, be urged that, leaving charitable motives out of the question, the employer who uproots his manufacturing "plant" from the noise, and crowd, and dirt of town, and, transplanting it into the country, sets it down in company with hedgerows and daisies, confers a benefit on those who, by the sweat of their small brows, earn their bread of him. ”

“ There is nothing more characteristic of the rapid development of our national industry and prosperity during the last few years, than the enormously increasing extent of our principal manufacturing towns. In every direction the daisied meadows, shady lanes, and rural walks, are being displaced by rows of semi-detached villas, tall prison-like factories, or acres of little box-shaped cottages. ”

“ Our manufacturing towns are not at all what they ought to be; not sufficiently pure, wholesome, or well-regulated. But the rural labourers regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. ”

“ But the factory has developed differently in each industry and its social influence has never been quite alike in any two nations. When, for instance, Samuel Slater introduced cotton manufacturing into America, he set up in Rhode Island an exact counterpart of the English factory. When, later, other factories were built in New England there took place the same transition of a vast laboring population from the rural districts to the manufacturing towns;—but this population was very unlike the manufacturing population of England. ”

“ When field or garden labour can be combined with factory work, the miseries of the manufacturing system are much removed, and manufactures in such a case become serviceable under judicious and moral management: the present state of the town of Lancaster affords some illustration of this. ”

“ The small towns of the Eastern states have become centers in which endless varieties of manufactured goods are turned out, and it is up to the editor to exploit every new thing connected with the raw material and with the making and the marketing of the product in which the community is interested. The middle-state towns are given largely to manufacturing on a larger scale, to coal and coke and oil industries, to steel, to the making of machinery. ”

“ One of the advantages of manufacturing in a large city is that you can always get skilled labor and a great variety of materials on short notice. Should your product be in the nature of gas or steam engines, harvesting machines or automobiles you should locate your factory on some navigable river, on the Great Lakes, or on a railroad line (with a spur-track running alongside) , in order to insure good and cheap transportation. ”

“ The chief interest is manufacturing, for which the city has rare advantages. The surrounding hills and the adjacent country contain immense deposits of bituminous coal, which is readily and cheaply obtained. The leading establishments are iron and nail mills, glass works, and founderies and machine shops. There are in the city six nail factories and two manufactories of railroad, merchant bar, and sheet iron, while within a radius of four miles are four other large iron and nail works. ”

“ A visitor from the North or the Midlands would probably be surprised, on entering the gloving metropolis, to find nothing of the noise or dirt which is usually associated with manufacturing industry. No tall chimneys belch out black clouds of smoke; no gaunt factories rear themselves aloft above the houses; no ponderous machinery makes its throb felt even by passers-by in the streets. ”

“ As time wore on, every industry on the island, localized, and every man became specialized. Inventions and machinery multiplied. But every new labor-saving machine saved labor, of course, and produced better goods than hand labor. So every new machine took a job away from several workmen. There was much complaint about this but new inventions kept coming. There were now twenty different hat factories in the manufacturing village, each trying to undersell the other. One day they combined and built a large addition on the largest factory building. ”

“ The city is situated on two plateaus; the lower is occupied chiefly by factories, the upper by dwellings. Coal mining and manufacturing are the principal industries; among factory products are iron, steel, tin, stoves, machinery and glassware. ”

“ This is perhaps the most vital cause of the growth of cities. The great city, as we have already said, is very largely the product of modern industrialism. Improved machinery, improved transportation, and enlarged markets, together with the increased wants of men, not only have made possible a great growth of manufacturing industries, but also these same factors have tended to centralize manufacturing industries in the cities. Let us note briefly why it is that manufacturing industries are grouped together in great cities rather than scattered throughout the rural communities. ”

“ It was provincial in thought, speech, and habits. It was given over to agriculture, small trade, and rude home manufacture. Presently came the revolutionary inventions of textile machinery, of the steam-engine, and of processes for extracting and utilizing coal and iron. The heavy, costly machinery required capital and the factory. Concentrated capital and machinery required workers. The working people were forced to give up their small home manufacturing and their unprofitable farming and move to the industrial barracks and workrooms of the manufacturing centres. ”

“ It happens under the present law, that a large portion of the population of rural districts are induced to move into the manufacturing; and it happens frequently, that the power, the labor, the best part of a man's life, who so removes, are consumed in that manufacturing district, and thus all the advantages of his strength and good conduct, and industry, are derived by the manufacturing districts during the period of his residence. ”

“ A market for machinery must of necessity be a wide one, for no single community, not even a large modern city, can alone support a great manufacturing enterprise. Machinery building can thrive only in a settled country having a large purchasing power and good transportation facilities. ”

“ The snort of the iron horse, hitched to the nineteenth century, had not yet aroused it in my day. No shriek of steam whistle, scarce a ripple from the great world without, disturbed its rest. There was, indeed, a factory in town, always spoken of as the factory, a cotton mill of impossible pretensions, grotesque in [Pg 8] its mediæval setting, and discredited by public opinion as a kind of flying in the face of tradition and Providence at once that invited sure disaster. ”

“ A factory was forthwith started at Newcastle on a small scale, and the hardworking engine-wright found himself now fully advanced to the commercial dignity of Stephenson and Co. With the gradual growth of railways, that humble Newcastle factory grew gradually into one of the largest and wealthiest manufacturing establishments in all England. ”

“ Its chief industry is the mining of anthracite coal; the principal establishments are railway repair shops, which in 1905 gave employment to 48·9% of all wage-earners engaged in manufacturing. Among the borough’s manufactures are stoves and furnaces, malt liquors and silk. ”

“ No light of heaven pierced through the smoke of the factories with which the town was girt, but sometimes the red disk of a rayless sun might be seen riding in the black firmament through which iron bridges ploughed their way, and from which there descended a continual shower of soot and cinders. It was the most industrial of all the cities in the world and the richest. ”

“ The same is true of the other chief branches of the textile and metal industries. Nor is it only in the manufactures that towns and districts are closely specialised. The enormous increase of commerce due to machinery of manufacture and of transport requires the specialisation of certain towns for purely commercial purposes. London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Hull are more and more devoted to the functions of storage and conveyance. Manchester itself is rapidly losing its manufacturing character and devoting itself almost exclusively to import and export trade. ”

“ Manufacturing is the leading occupation in thousands of busy towns and small cities of all the industrial nations of western Europe and America, and shares with commerce and trade as a leading enterprise in the cosmopolitan centres. The merchant or financier who thinks his type of emporium or exchange is the only municipal centre of consequence, needs only to mount to the top of a tall building or climb a suburban hill where he can look off over the city and see the many smoking chimneys, to realize the importance of the factory. ”

“ If these districts have not already reached the point at which the complaint of scarcity of hands ceases, they are not remote from it, and are approaching fast toward it; and having, perhaps, fewer attractions to agriculture than some other parts of the Union, they exhibit a proportionably stronger tendency toward other kinds of industry. In these districts may be discerned no inconsiderable maturity for manufacturing establishments. ”

“ In the second place, at the period we have now reached the towns devoted themselves far more to commerce than to industry. Few could be cited that appear thus early as manufacturing centres. The concentration of artisans within their walls is still incomplete. If their merchants export, along with the products of the soil, such as wine and grain, a quantity of manufactured products, such, for example, as cloth, it is more than probable that these were for the most part made in the country. ”

“ Manufacturing industry is little developed, but there are three flouring mills, a planing mill and furniture factory, carriage and wagon factories, cement works, founding and machine shops, a castor oil factory, cement pipe works, and a barrel factory, employing in the aggregate 144 men. ”

“ If the site is so small that the building has to be carried far into the air and supplied with walls strong enough to resist the jar of machinery on many floors, manufacturing becomes a far less economical operation than it would be if the site were larger and the mill lower. The gain from centralizing the manufacturing process comes in part from the increased size of the particular establishments ”

“ There are woolen factories, including a company for manufacturing imitation seal-skin goods and a large blanket mill. The manufacture of Blank books and Envelopes, Steam-pumps, Wire, Machinery, Cutlery, Screws, Fire-hydrants and Steam-boilers, Cement works, Spindles and Reeds, Fourdrinier wire and Rubber-goods are among the city's greatly diversified industries. There are extensive brickyards and stone quarries near at hand and the lumbering business is an important industry.
OPERA HOUSE.
The building growth of the city has kept pace with the manufacturing. ”

“ But I found at Milwaukee a rebuilt factory belonging to the International, where 2,500 men are making fifty cream separators and 100 gasolene engines a day, both designed to make life easier for Mrs. Farmer, as well as for her husband. Also, it will please her to know that she may soon be honking her way to town in an automobile buggy, which the big corporation is making for farmers in a new factory in Akron.
[Pg 100] A harvester company must follow the whims of its customers, almost as much as though it had newspapers for sale. It must give 10,000,000 farmers what they want. ”

“ The natural scenery is fine, combining land and water views of much beauty. There are many elegant residences. The town is divided into 11 school districts, and has good public schools, several excellent private schools, and three weekly newspapers. It contains two large felt cloth factories, a fancy cassimere factory, two straw hat factories, a number of large felt hat factories, a shirt factory, iron works, a lock factory, a paper box factory, a manufactory of wrapping paper, a pottery, boot and shoe factories, &c. ”

“ If we were to go into the factories of Lowell, or into any of the thousand workshops which are converting Philadelphia into a great manufacturing centre, we would find the manufacture of an article approaching perfection just in proportion to the imperfection (in one sense) of the individual workmen employed in its production. The man [Pg 79] who can make a pin-head better and cheaper than any one else, must give his attention to making pin-heads only. ”

“ It was the aim of these manufacturers to locate every great factory in some quiet and attractive spot, free from the dust of town, and city, and divide it into many departments, from the blacksmithing to the packing and transportation of the completed article ”