USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 21
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I
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ber perceived, however. that they had much in common, and diplomatically brought about a coalition. In the same manner an alliance was formed with the Publicity Club, an association of the younger business and professional and advertising men with the avowed mission of "boosting New Haven." The three societies, though pursuing their separate activities and doing a distinct work, now form together the New Haven Chamber of Commerce, and weld together the strength of the men as is done in very few cities of the size of New Haven.
Some of the results which this united force has achieved in the city within the past six or seven years have been initiated by one branch, some by another, some by all three working together. The end of getting things done has been set above pride or individual credit. And the list is an imposing one. The merest mention must suffice.
The chamber unified and made dynamic New Haven's demand for a new federal building and postoffice. The results of that demand appear, albeit slowly. The chamber promoted the establishment of the trade school, and as a result of a wisely directed effort, the city has a trade school admirably adapted to its needs, and withal one of the best schools of the sort in the country. The chamber was the force which the projectors of the New Haven Manufacturers' Exhibit, to be more particularly mentioned later, were able to use for the working out of their idea.
When those interested in helping the factory workers of the city to organize for their protection against tuberenlosis, by means of an employees' anti-tuber- enlosis association, songht to effeet their purpose, the chamber was the means which they found ready. It might have been possible for New Haven to get its long-needed isolation hospital some day without the Chamber of Commerce, but that organization was able to help in changing the long struggle to a realiza- tion of the institution. The chamber has aided in anti-ice famine work, collected funds for the sufferers from the Salem fire, has repeatedly led in organizing Red Cross campaigns, and in relief funds for the Belgian and other causes.
The chamber helped in securing home rule legislation for New Haven. It helped achieve a modern fire-alarm system. It took up, as the modern suc- cessor of James Hillhouse the elder, the work of reforesting New Haven. It promoted the teachers' pension legislation. It has worked for better pavements, for the use of schoolhouse auditoriums as neighborhood centers and for public and neighborhood meetings. It has secured the placement of more and better buoys in the harbor.
It has promoted the strengthening and improvement of the commercial course at the New Haven High School. It started the New Haven County Farm Bureau Association, whose benefits in more efficient farms and better farm life are already of marked evidence and high promise. It inaugurated the "Buy in New Haven" movement.
These are some of the achievements of the period of the chamber's awakening. As an example of the variety and extent of the work it is doing now, it may
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profit to mention some of its activities in 1916 and 1917, as reported by its secretary :
Secured favorable action by the Board of Aldermen to extend the municipal dock, equip it with loading and unloading hoists, lay steam and electric railroad connections and deepen vessel berths.
Worked for the new railroad passenger station of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, and promoted the underwriting of the bond issue by the company to pay for it.
Worked to secure a trolley shelter for transfer of passengers between rail- road and trolley lines at the new station.
Aided the state in the military census enumeration, and aided the Federal Government in securing information on industrial interests as a part of the preparedness work.
Aided in home guard recruiting.
Organized the Junior Fire Prevention League in the schools; gave prizes for encouragement of study by pupils in schools along that line; secured enact- ment of law to prohibit the building of dangerous fire hazards in frame tenement structures.
Assisted in plans to relieve freight congestion in the interests of both the railroad and steamboat companies on one hand and the New Haven publie on the other.
Represented the city's business interests before the Interstate Commerce Commission with regard to Long Island Sound steamboat matters.
Brought to New Haven exhibits of wares that could be made or are made in New Haven from foreign markets, to enable manufacturers to study possible extension of their own business.
Aided the navy department to secure accurate detailed information about New Haven's industries both for peace orders and for possible preparedness program.
Through its committee on public health has been studying the vexations sewage disposal problem and urging remedial action by the Board of Aldermen. The same committee secured the order for a publie convenience station. It is also at work on a study of preventive measures in regard to the fly nuisance.
Brought to the city the remarkable City Planning Exhibit of the American City Bureau.
IIas stimulated interest in honest and efficient advertising through the Publicity Club department.
Has assisted many worthy organizations working for the public welfare hy permitting the gratuitous use of the chamber's hall and offices.
All this, and many other features of the service of the chamber, were made possible through its excellent equipment. In 1912, the city's newest and almost its tallest building, constructed by C. W. Murdock, was named the Chamber of Commerce Building. By arrangement with the officers of the chamber, its con-
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struction included an ample and well appointed hall, with convenient offiees for the chamber, and there its work and service has since been done.
III
So are two sides of New Haven's recent development-the civic and the material-represented by two of its prominent societies. There are many other influences, less conspicuous, less known, at work. Some of them have had their day and ceased to be. No sketeh of the progress of New Haven in this period would be complete without mention of the New Haven Confederation of Men's Church Clubs. The men's church organization-league or men's elub or brotherhood-had come to be a conspicuous feature of New Haven church life soon after 1900. By 1909 at least half of the churches of New Haven had them, and others were constantly being added. One of the most successful of these was the Men's Club of the Church of the Redeemer, of which Lueius W. Hall was for many years the earnest and successful president. Mr. Hall, blessed with a keen sense of fraternity and brotherhood, had a vision of a union of these organizations. He began with the clubs in the churches of his own denomina- tion, the Congregational. By 1910 he had twelve or fourteen of these, in New ITaven and vicinity, united in a federation. Soon after that he reached out to other denominations. Itis persistent effort resulted, some two years later, in the formal organization of the Confederation of Men's Church Clubs, repre- senting about forty organizations in churches of seven denominations, with a united membership of not far from two thousand men. Eventually the alliance was extended to more or less closely include the men's organizations of the Roman Catholic and Jewish churches, and it seemed possible that the church- men of New Haven might be welded into a mighty foree of union for work of common interest.
There was, in the opinion of many, a distinet field for union of the sort. Churchmen of New Haven regarded it with lively interest and great hope. Burton Mansfield, who before this had won the loyal following of the ehureh- men of New Haven by his leadership in the Laymen's Missionary and the Men and Religion Forward movements, was elected the first president, and served for two years. He was appropriately sneceeded by Eneins W. Hall. to whose earnest work, more than anything else, the organization owed its existence. Under Mr. Mansfield and Mr. TIall some excellent movements for the betterment of New Haven were started, and had the confederation been continued in the spirit of its organization, its accomplishment might have been notable. But a new body of officers, elected to succeed Mr. Hall and his more intimate asso- ciates, in their wisdom decided that the confederation had not demonstrated its claim to a separate existence, and merged it-not to emerge, it seems-in the Civic Federation.
Those conversant with the development of men's fraternities in the New Haven churches in this decade will testify that the confederation had a more
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important and lasting effect on this feature of church progress than readily appears. It promoted the spirit of fellowship, it immensely encouraged the formation of new clubs and the regeneration of old ones, and it started some reforms which it has been comparatively easy for others to bring to profitable fruitage.
One other New Haven organization of noble record-also of blessed memory- should be mentioned in this connection. The Economic Club of New Haven was a society of excellent intention, of wise guidance, of great service to the com- munity. Its plan was the familiar one, in its time, of having five or six dinners in the season. each followed by a discussion, from men of national prominence in many cases, of some important economie subject of the time. But the Eco- nomic Club lived in the days when New Haven's mind was diverted in many directions, not all of them highly important. It suffered from lack of the appreciation which was its due, hence from lack of adequate support. Those who had carried its chief burden were fain. early in 1916, to merge its identity with the Civic Federation.
CHAPTER XIX
MANUFACTURING IN NEW HAVEN
SOME RESPECTS IN WHICH NEW HAVEN WAS A PIONEER-DEVELOPMENT AND DESCRIPTION OF CITY'S INDUSTRIES
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New Haven is the greatest manufacturing city of a great manufacturing state. Changing conditions challenge this statement, but the facts may be pre- sented with confidence in their showing that, however the comparison may be in number of factories, employees, amount of capital invested or aggregate of product, New Haven has a standard of excellence, an extent of reputation, a variety and importance of manufactures, which combine to make it Connecticut's greatest manufacturing city.
These conditions find their causes back in the far beginnings, indeed. Ten years after the first settlement, we are told, men versed in every branch of the trades then known might be found in New Haven. Those known were few in comparison with the list today, and unfortunately no consistent record was kept, but it does not appear that New Haven had to import any workmen for any purpose. However, there was not at first much of a demand for manufacturing plants. The community was rather pastoral. But nine years after the first settlement there was a plant for making shoes, a plant of a size which might prop- erly distinguish it from the "cobbler shops" of that and a later day, which made only to order. Timber was dressed and lumber was manufactured, and beaver skins were prepared for export, soon enough after that to be counted among the early manufactures of New Ilaven.
But all these and the other points of manufacturing interest which might have been found in the first century of New Haven's existence were of local note only. Manufacturing plants of size are the surest producers of rapid growth in a city, and New Haven's slow growth for the first century and a half of its existence seems to prove that its manufacturing development dated later than that. For that matter, that was tre of most of the communities of the New World in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Before the invention of steam, only the towns which had water power facilities grew materially in manufacturing, and New Haven had very limited opportunities in water power. Its seaport . position made its destiny. and held it in prominence until the era
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of modern manufacturing came. In that era, as we shall see-it began imme- diately after the close of the Revolutionary War-New Haven at once took a place of national prominence in American manufacturing.
The familiar claim to "the greatest plant of its kind in the world," or in the country, is seldom resorted to in New Haven. Doubtless it has many manu- facturing institutions which might make it, and some which do. But many New Haven factories can show qualities so much more commending them to general confidence that there is no need of it. New Haven demonstrates in many ways that greatness does not consist alone, or chiefly, in size. There are five or six of the cardinal lines of American manufacturing which either started in New Haven or had close connections with this city in their early days. It has repeatedly been said that "the introduction of the Whitney cotton gin laid the foundation for the cotton industry." That Eli Whitney, who gave it the name, was, as nearly everybody knows, early identified with New Haven, and there, as early as 1793, established the first factory for the making of his machine.
Nationally, that was the beginning of New Haven manufacturing. This pioneering was followed not many years later by other contributions almost as notable to American manufacturing progress. The first rubber ever imported to this country was brought to Boston in 1800. It might not have done any- body much good had not Charles Goodyear, wizard of rubber development, been born in New Haven that same year. It was not until forty-four years later that his genius flowered into the practical manufacture of real rubber boots and shoes, but 1844, when Leverette Candee started that business in New Haven, was early in the days of New Haven or any other manufacturing. The firm of L. Candee & Company has kept New Haven on the rubber manufacturing map ever since.
But considerably before 1840 New Haven was mentioned as one of the centers of the chaise-making industry in America. James Brewster, one of the founders of a family which has served and honored Conneetient in many other ways, started the carriage industry in New Haven in 1827. Other pio- neers in this manufacture came shortly after him, and despite the supposed decline in the use of the horse in the large centers of the east, New Haven has today thirty concerns rated as carriage makers.
Eli Whitney did not confine his contribution to early New Haven manufac- turing to the making of cotton gins, as we know. By 1798 he had gone into firearms out near the lake and on the road which still bears his name. And from that day to this, in every land where they burn gunpowder, the making of firearms has been identified with New Haven. The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was the lineal successor of the Whitney Arms Company, though organized sixty years after it, and the industry has grown by the attraction to this manufacturing center of independent companies until now, in this time of demand for war materials. there are here four or five munitions concerns of note.
The clock industry, as we know it in New Haven today, is not as old as
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some persons think, but New Haven was in it in its beginnings, and had an important part. The New Haven Clock Company was planted here in 1817, and forty years later this concern absorbed the Jerome Clock Company, so that Hiram Camp and Chauncey Jerome, two famous pioneer American clock makers, were jointly associated with New Haven.
Still another industry that had one of its oldest roots in New Haven was the making of matches. Matches were not made in the United States until 1836, and it was several years later before machinery for their manufacture was sufficiently developed to make their production amount to much as an indus- try. E. B. Beecher of Westville was among the developers of the successful modern process of making matches, and had a factory in Westville for some years prior to the organization there of the Diamond Match Company in 1884. The importance which this concern assumed among the producers of matches in the country may be indicated by the fact that, when the match trust was organ- ized some fifteen years afterwards, it took the name of the Diamond Match Com- pany. under which title it operates today. Some of the important processes and mechanical advances which make possible the great magnitude of the match industry in these days are directly traceable to the progress achieved in New Haven. In addition to Mr. Beecher, J. P. Wright of New Haven is mentioned among the early inventors and developers of the match.
New Haven is not prominently mentioned in the development of American shipbuilding, but we know that it had a part in its establishment in New Eng- land as early as 1640. It appears that New Haven's product, then and in the two and one-half centuries after that for which it participated in the building of vessels, was mostly confined to coasting schooners, but some very notable vesseis of this type were launched from New Haven yards before the industry waned here as all along the Connecticut shore.
The manufacture of plumbers' and steamfitters' supplies did not noticeably develop in this country until near the middle of the last century, and not in New Haven until somewhat after that. Yet when it attained prominence, all at once New Haven was found to occupy a place in it very important in pro- portion to its size. So that by 1890 there were thirty-five factories in New Haven making plumbers' and gasfitters' supplies, hardware or machinery con- neeted therewith. These had a capital of $196,450 then, and an annual output worth nearly half a million dollars. Both capital and annual produet. of course. have materially increased sinee that time. The number of establishments of. the sort has now increased to 117, and there are in New Haven eleven factories devoted exclusively to the making of plumbers' supplies.
The making of crackers, or "biscuit." an industry which became prominent in the east soon after the beginning of the nineteenth century, was early repre- seuted in New Ilaven. In the days before the trust, the New Haven Baking Company was always included in a list of the leading bisenit baking concerns of New England. In the late 'nineties this was made a substantial part of the
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National Biscuit Company, and since then not more than two or three baking companies with any elaim to national standing have existed in New Haven.
New Haven could show many other claims to belong among the pioneers of American manufacturing. It was from the first the abode of Connecticut Yankees, and the Connecticut Yankee is versatile. Versatility has been a promi- nent characteristic of New Haven manufacturing. There is hardly a branch of the tree of American industry that has not at some time had a less or greater representation in New Ilaven. It can, in fact, hardly be said to specialize in any- thing, so wide is its range of arts and erafts and trades.
II
These lines gave New Haven national and international note as a manufac- facturing city. But they did not give it a distinction which made it as widely known for its industry as it was for its education. The oldl "descriptive geog- raphies" always put first the fact that New Haven was the home of Yale University, and second that it was the "City of Elms"; then, apparently as an incidental. that it had "extensive manufactures of firearms, clocks and carriages." So it was up to the time of the Civil War, whose effect, naturally, was seriously to eripple most of New Haven's industries with the exception of the making of fire arms.
Then, after the war, came a new lease of life to New Haveu manufacturing, and at the same time a broadening of its lines of production. Immediately many new industries began to come to the city, most of which have remained and flourished ever since.
But still a greater awakening came with the crossing of the boundary line into the twentieth century, or about that date. The transportation and seaport advantages of the city had their effect in multiplying industries, and New Haven had a fair name as a desirable place of residence. Moreover, its popu- lation was growing rapidly from immigration. Labor was abundant and easily obtained. The rapidity of factory growth was not fully realized at the time, but by the end of the first decade of 1900 we find a city with at least 500 manu- faeturing establishments, employing altogether over 24,000 persons, several of them having from 2,000 to 5,000 workers cach. Their products were at that time rated at more than $50,000,000 a year. The number of plants has since then grown to nearly 800, and their invested capital approaches $18,000,000. The total number of workers at the present time is difficult to get. because of immense recent additions, and the secrecy which attends the manufacture of firearms and munitions. But it is frequently estimated, and generally without challenge, that the number employed in the leading one of these firearms factories alone is as great as the 24,000 accorded to all the New Haven factories in 1908. There are three principal coneerns for the manufacture of munitions, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. the Marlin-Rockwell Arms Corporation and the Maxim Company.
Vol. 1-12
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The other lines of manufacture in New Haven have, in the main, pursued the even tenor of their way, which is steady, consistent growth. Occasionally a new line comes into the company, and it generally stays. The New Haven manufacturing area, which used to be mostly along the railroad and harbor front, has materially extended, but is still mainly confined to the eastern and northern portions of the city. Hamden has been invaded in several directions. Some of the large factories have run over into Whitneyville, into Centerville and notably into Ilamden Plains, which because of the "Canal Road," as it used to be called, has convenient shipping facilities. The residence and manu- facturing parts of the city are still pretty well separated, and those who so desire may, but for the scream of the early morning whistles, fancy themselves living in a non-manufacturing paradise.
The student of New Haven manufacturing invariably reverts to the begin- nings of it. when Eli Whitney utilized the power of the stream that flows from the foot of Mount Carmel for the making of his cotton gin. He was six or seven miles down on that river. close to what are now the city limits of New Haven. Right under the brow of East Rock he built his dam and his modest factory, and right there has been a factory, used for one purpose or another, ever since. The story of the cotton gin, perhaps the most distinguished romance of early American manufacture, has been often told. Connecticut eannot claim the origin of the first Eli Whitney, but from the time that he built that first factory under East Rock he and his descendants have lived in New Haven, and been very much a part of its history.
Whitney was a graduate of Yale in the class of 1792. How he afterward went to the South expecting to teach, how he found the place filled and was obliged to accept the hospitality of his friend, Mrs. Greene, how there he learned of the unsolved problem of the cotton-growing South, and how his Yankee ingennity came to the rescue and solved it with the cotton-gin-these are details in a pretty well known tale. It might have been expected that the manufacture of the gin would at onee begin his fortune, but such was not the ease. It was said that he received in all about $90,000, which was indeed a fortune for that day. But out of that sum he had to equip his factory and pay the cost of tedious and expensive litigation to establish his rights to the patent on the cotton gin. For- tunes have been made on the manufacture of cotton gins after the Whitney model, but he did not make them.
But he did not therefore die poor, after the manner of many of his brethren of inventive fame. The United States did not disarm after the Revolutionary War: it had rather, in a sense, to begin to arm. There was prospeet of good money in making firearms for the government, and Whitney perceived it. He had begun making cotton gins in 1793, and in 1798 he took a contract to furnish 10.000 muskets for the United States Government. He did not have the monop- oly of the country for that manufacture, but he seems to have had a method of manufacture which was as radical as had been his cotton-gin invention. The other gun makers ridiculed him, it is said. because he went so far in substituting
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machines for hand labor. He was lacking in capital, too, but he seems to have been able to secure that without great difficulty. Success came without long waiting, and by 1812, as he puts it himself, he had developed the "most respect- able private establishment in the United States for carrying on the manufacture of arms."
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