USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 22
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It is interesting to know that this factory was in an important sense the pattern if not the parent of the most important firearms concerns in this part of the country. The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was its direct descend- ant, and began its career in the old factory at Lake Whitney. From it have directly or indirectly sprung the Arsenal at Springfield, the Colt Armory and Pratt & Whitney at Hartford, and the now defunct Arsenal at Harper's Ferry.
It is less generally known that Eli Whitney made another important thing at the old Lake Whitney factory than the cotton-gin and the gun, and incident- ally added to New Haven's distinction as a pioneer manufacturing center. It was the very first milling machine made in this country. That was in 1818. The machine itself was a erude one, and judged by today's standards, of little use. There is good reason to suppose, however, that it served as an important model, and had no little influence on the manufacturing standards of its time. This quaint relie was almost lost at one time, but fortunately was rescued by the present Eli Whitney, and by him presented to Yale University, where it is now preserved with honor in the Mason Mechanical Engineering Laboratory.
There must be a break, at least in continuity of control, between the industry which Eli Whitney founded and the actual beginnings of the institution which hears the name of Winchester. It is not the policy of the great arms manufactory to talk much about its business, or even about its ernde and struggling begin- nings. Oliver F. Winchester, a strong citizen of New Haven and of Connecticut, who in 1866 was lieutenant governor, had started a general firearms industry in the old Whitney factory about 1860. Strange as it may seem to us from the viewpoint of the present prosperity of every concern that can make firearms, Mr. Winchester seems to have had a struggle all through the war time. But he kept going, and in 1866 he succeeded in organizing a company for the manu- facture of a firearm that was a great improvement over the old Henry rifle. It was not intended as an army rifle. Mr. Winchester thought he saw in the still unconquered West a foeman, if such it might be called, worthy of the best he could make in shooting irons, and the sequel has commended his judgment.
This rifle, named the "Winchester" at the start, has become so well known, not only in our West, but on every frontier and in every sporting country in the world, that "Winchester" has almost passed from a proper to a common noun, and approaches the strange distinction of losing its capital letter. In half a century the concern whose capital Oliver F. Winchester floated with such difficulty in 1866, its management passed to the second generation of his de- seendants, its stock quoted at but not for sale at $1,000 a share just before the great war. and rising to $2,500 or more a little later, had come to be a small city in itself. In 1913 it employed nearly 6,000 persons: its factories covered
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over fifty-eight acres of ground, with twenty-eight acres of floor space devoted to machinery and tools. The effect of the war was to more than double this acreage and to increase the number of buildings over fifty per cent. This is in addition to 396 acres beyond the city limits which the company controls for its powder storage and mixing houses and laboratories. Twenty-five miles to the east. on a secluded "island" or point beyond the salt marshes on the western side of the mouth of the Hammonassett River, the company has a shooting range and proving grounds, where the crack of the riffe in the hands of experts who are testing the Winchester guns and ammunition sounds almost constantly the year around.
Only approximate figures can be given of the present number of workers at the Winchester plant. At times during the war the factory has been worked in three eight-hour shifts a day, and it is reported that at such times as many as 5,000 persons have been employed in each shift. What will be the status of the great concern after the war is problematical, but those familiar with the organization and efficiency of this world-known manufacturing institution have little fear as to the future.
It is a somewhat common impression that the wooden clock movement, fairly familiar to those acquainted with the "inwards" of antique timepieces, is the oldest type of elock. It is merely the oldest in Connecticut, and Connecticut elocks are the oldest native to this country. The metal movement was known before that in other clock making countries, but material for its manufacture was out of the reach of the early clockmakers of Connecticut, so they ingeniously made shift with wood as a substitute, using metal only for pinions and bushings. Evidence is still with us, in clocks running well on in their second century, that they made a good article. It is now almost a century and a half since Elihu Terry whittled out the First Connecticut cloeks in East Windsor. He moved to Plymouth later, and for all his handicap of lack of labor saving machinery, was making money rapidly for those times when Chauncey Jerome appeared at Bristol as his competitor. Bristol and its region has been one of the homes of Connecticut clock making ever since, though the Jerome interests were trans- ferred to New Haven well back in the last century.
It was early in the nineteenth century that Hiram Camp, founder of the New Haven Clock Company, was associated with the Jerome industry in Bristol. It is just about a century since he came to New Haven and founded, in con- junction with ferome, the industry which placed New Haven on the clock map and has kept it there ever since. For the first forty years of that time it was independent of the Jerome company, which ran a factory in New Haven, first for the making of clocks and later for the making of eases for movements which were made in Bristol. Soon after 1850, this concern got into financial difficulties. and about 1857 was absorbed by the New Haven Clock Company.
Since some time before that New Haven clocks have been standard in the world of timepieces. Almost every type except the tower clock has been made here, and in recent years this concern has developed the elock-watch, or popular
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pocket timepiece, to a conspicuous degree of success. These are made in a variety of grades and sizes, many of which compare most favorably with watches of the sort much more widely advertised. It is not so generally known that the American Pedometer Company, a concern which makes the best known pedometer on the American market, is a branch of the New Haven Clock Company, and that all of its output is made at that factory which occupies a large part of two sides of Hamilton Street in New Haven. The clock company is capitalized at $1,000,000, and employs upwards of 2,000 hands. Its product goes to every land of the world where time is regarded as anything like money, and is recog- nized as of high standard.
The builder almost the world over has "Sargent" in his mind when he thinks of building hardware. Perhaps no concern in New Haven makes its eity's name more widely known than Sargent & Company. It is strictly a New Haven concern, backed from the beginning largely by New Haven capital. That be- ginning was made in a small way in 1864, and has grown to impressive pro- portions. Sargent & Company is an institution that stands by itself, its group of factories a city in themselves, conveniently situated on the railroad and harbor front. In them are employed upwards of 4,000 workers, the concern being, normally, the second in importance among the manufactories of New Ilaven. A list of the small hardware made there would fill a small book. Some of the more familiar lines, such as locks, latches, knobs, door cheeks, planes, steel squares and other tools, are well known. Of some of these there is an endless variety, but there is also a myriad of articles in small hardware made by the company which even the average worker in the institution would find it difficult to enumerate in any complete way.
The rubber industry has not waned in New Haven, though the great centers of it have been mostly in other cities. Since in 1842 Leverette Candee estab- lished his factory for the making of rubber boots and shoes under the Goodyear patent, the concern which bears his name has been sticking to that line of product. It maintains its right to the title of oldest manufactory of rubber boots and shoes in the world, making every kind, style and size of rubber footwear, includ- ing special styles for all the different countries of the world where rubbers are known. Other manufactories of rubber goods, in larger variety, have come to join it in later years, of which the more important are the Seamless Rubber Company and the Baumann Rubber Company. There are now in New Haven eight concerns in all making various forms of rubber goods.
The Peck Brothers & Company is another of the world-known manufacturing concerns of New Haven, and illustrates another characteristic line of New Haven- made goods. It is the leader of a dozen concerns making plumbers' supplies, and has carried this line, particularly modern bathroom fittings, as near to perfection as it is carried anywhere in the world. Some of the other well known concerns in this branch of business are the Economy Manufacturing Company, bath tubs ; the C. S. Mersick & Company, handling plumbers' fittings in general, and the National Pipe Bending Company, house piping and coils.
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Hardly any business has so changed from its early form as that of carriage building. The horse may have diminished in numbers in New Haven, but still New Haven makes carriages for the country. The thirty carriage makers of the city are not all of them building mostly coaches for fours, and the stately landaulet gives place to more sprightly modern designs. But still there are coaches in use, and some of the finest of them are made and trimmed here. There are still some fine old New Haven names in the list of rotary firms. The New Ilaven Carriage Company is the successor of the old Brewster institution. Hlenry llooker & Company and the M. Armstrong Company are names that recall the finest traditions of the carriage trade. Dann Brothers & Company continue a growing business in supplies and carriage parts, and the D. W. Baldwin firm still builds as well as repairs carriages and automobile bodies, regardless of whether horses have any connection with them. C. Cowles & Company, a firm now well advanced in its fourth quarter of a century, makes. as it has done for years, the finest sort of coach and carriage and automobile fittings and lamps. A. T. Demarest & Company, A. Ochsner & Sons Company and Samuel K. Page complete the line of distinguished leaders.
New Haven holds its lead in the corset industry, with twelve factories, some of them making the world's best known lines. This industry does not date back so many decades, for it is only in recent years that corset making has been raised to the plane of high art, but it now employs several thousands of workers in New llaven. and is one of the city's most reliable industries. In the front ranks of the trade are such firms as Strouse, Adler & Company. I. Newman & Sons, the Strouse Corset Company, Henry H. Todd, the Hickok Company and Ottenheimer & Weil.
New Haven's line of makers of machinery is a long one, including at present twenty-seven firms. Some of the best known of them as the Greist Manufactur- ing Company, sewing machine attachments; the Geometric Tool Company, special tools ; the William Schollhorn Company, pliers and nippers; the Snow & Petrelli Company, hardware and special machinery; the IIoggson & Pettis Manufacturing Company, dies, chucks and special tools ; the MeLagon Foundry Company, pattern makers and iron founders; the New Haven Manufacturing Company, machine tools and special machinery ; the Rowland Machine Company, special machine builders; the Fuller Manufacturing Company, book binders' and printers' machinery ; R. H. Brown & Company, special tools and machines ; the Eastern Screw Machine Corporation, serew machine products.
Cigar making is an important industry in New Haven, as forty-seven estah- lishments, some of them of considerable size, indicate. Some of the brands made in them are called for in almost every large center of cigar consumption. Of course, as in every city where cigars are made, there are many small concerns which go to make up the total number. Some of the leading mannfactories in this line are Frederick D. Grave and Lewis Osterweis & Sons.
New Haven has its share of industries which, though including few factories, are peculiar to the city. The more important of these have already been men-
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tioned. In addition, there are such concerns as the Andrew B. Ilendryx Com- pany, widely famous for bird cages and fishing reels; the Aeme Wire Company, whose peculiar product has made a place for it in the electrical world entirely beyond proportion to the length of its record on the market; the Regal Silver Company, New Haven's lone representative in a business mostly monopolized by its neighbors ; the Lionel Manufacturing Company, in the business of making toy electric railroads ; the National Folding Box and Paper Company and its half a dozen smaller associates in the box making industry ; and not less than the others, the Bigelow Company, whose big B stands for boilers the world over. Publishers are not usually included in a list of manufacturers, but perhaps the Price & Lee Company, makers of directories for over sixty towns in five states, might prop- erly be added to the makers of New Haven's fame.
One of New Haven's newest factories perhaps deserves special mention. Albert C. Gilbert, only a few years ago, was a young Yale student who was helping himself through college by giving exhibitions in legerdemain in the evenings. Then he conceived the idea of making sets of magic apparatus for amateurs. By the time he was graduated from the Yale Medieal school he had the manufacturing bent stronger than the medical. He had invented a strue- tural steel toy for boys which he called the "Gilbert Erector." On leaving college he organized the Mysto Manufacturing Company, to make his magie sets and the Erector. He proved his advertising genius at the same time, and his business grew in the night. It spread fast and far, and in a few years forced him to move into one of the finest and best equipped of the modern factories of New Haven, that on Blatchley avenue formerly occupied by the Fuller Company. There the A. C. Gilbert Company now makes, in addition to the Erector and Mysto sets, the Polar Cub eleetrie fans, electric toy motors, the Gilbert chemistry oufits, Gilbert toy machine guns, toy diving submarines, Gilbert electrical sets and the "Briktor." The inventor has recently brought out an ingenious set of puzzles, some of which he is ineluding in many of the comfort kits sent to the far away soldiers.
These are merely some of the "high spots" in New Haven manufacturing. Its variety is almost endless. The almost eight hundred manufacturing eon- cerns in the city of New Haven make about 155 lines of goods, some of them, of course, making several different lines. Fourteen of the lines are represented by ten or more factories each. These are: Carriage makers, 30; machinery manufacturers, 27: cigar manufacturers, 47; cabinet makers, 18; eorset manu- facturers, 12; jewelry manufacturers, 12; confectioners, 14; engineering con- tractors, 54; bakers, 80: marble works, 11; medicine manufacturers, 14; hard- ware manufacturers, 25; hat manufacturers, 11: ice cream manufacturers, 11. Of the large manufacturing corporations in New Haven, 133 have a combined capital of over $17.000,000.
In the district covered by this history outside of New Haven, represented mostly by Meriden, Wallingford, West Haven and Branford, there are 245 eon-
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cerns, representing 114 lines of manufacture. Here, also, there are many cases where one firm represents several lines. In some cases, as found in Meriden and Wallingford especially, the history of an important American industry is in- cluded in the manufacturing history of the town. These will be treated at length under their respective towns.
CHAPTER XX
THE NEW HAVEN MANUFACTURERS' EXHIBIT
CONCEPTION AND FORMATION OF THE FIRST PERMANENT DISPLAY OF ITS SORT IN AMERICA-REVIEW OF SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL FEATURES IT PRESENTS
I
How do we know that New Haven is a great manufacturing city ? What does it make besides firearms and clocks and perhaps carriages and their parts ? These are questions which might be asked, and if they have not always been, one of the reasons is that the manufacturing light of New Haven has been too mueh hidden within the four walls of its dingy factories, and beneath their low roofs. The visitor from Japan knew much of what New Haven makes before he left his land; the dweller in New Haven has, until within the last few years, known comparatively little. For the means of advertising the manufactures of New Haven in the most sensible, natural, effective way was not discovered until a few years ago.
It was in the summer of 1911 that two citizens of New Haven, each vigilant for the welfare of his eity, visited Europe. One of them. George Dudley Sey- mour, was renewedly impressed with what he had noticed before in some of the Old World's manufacturing centers, the development of the permanent exhibit of local manufactured products. On the other, Charles E. Julin, it dawned in its fullness for the first time. They talked it over together on the way back. They talked it over with other citizens after they returned. Why not such an exhibit for New Haven ? There was not, so far as they were informed, such an exhibit in America. Here was a chance for New Haven to be a pioneer. to demonstrate that it was the most progressive as well as the greatest manufactur- ing eity in Connecticut. Here was a chance to show most effectively what it seemed difficult to impress upon New Haven people and others, that New Haven was something substantially more than the seat. of Yale University, and that its claim to manufacturing greatness was much more than an empty boast.
Industrial fairs had not been unknown in New Haven. Many an organi- zation had given a snecessful show, and for a few days had a surprising display of New Haven's industries and manufactures. The people had seen and mar- veled-and gone away and forgotten. But a permanent manufacturers' exhibit would be quite another thing. It would stick until it had successfully caught
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the attention, not only of the people of New Haven, but of all the country 'round.
It took time to make the captains of industry in New Haven nestle up to the idea. But the two men who had it were able missionaries. They had the newspapers on their side. And, fortunately, they had the aid of the awakened Chamber of Commerce. There was no need to waste time, and no time was wasted. The plan appealed to President Isaac M. Ullman of the chamber, and he appointed as a committee to develop it George Dudley Seymour, former Governor Rollin S. Woodruff, Edward R. Sargent, Walter Camp, HI. Stuart llotehkiss. Frank J. Schollhorn and Charles E. Julin. This committee saw to it that the scope and advantages of the plan were fully placed before prac- tically every manufacturer in New Haven and the New Haven district. The response was most encouraging. It struck the practical men with the foree of a brand new idea. They promised co-operation.
Accordingly, a temporary organization was formed on September 16, 1911, and the following were elected directors: Isaac M. Ullman, Edwin P. Root, Frank J. Schollhorn. II. Stuart Hotchkiss and Harry B. Kennedy. They were appointed immediately following a well-attended meeting of representative man- nfacturers who pledged themselves to participate in such an exhibit, and the directors were instructed to secure a place and get the exhibit under way as soon as possible.
In the middle of the nineties the printing honse of O. A. Dorman erected an ambitionsly ample building on the north side of Chapel Street, east of what is now "the ent." or subway by which the trains of the New Haven road pro- ceed through the city to the northward and eastward. It had not prospered to match its large building, and a few years later the building was sold to Minotte E. Chatfield. It is said now that he had at the time some thought that the building would be ideal for such exhibits, though he did not. probably, think of nsing it for a permanent one. He did not at once push it for such a purpose, however, but remodeled and equipped it for a place of amusement, and named it "the Auditorium." But it had not been a success for that nse, its acoustic drawbacks being against it. The building was open to engagements, and the temporary directors of the exhibit association were not slow in perceiving that it would make an ideal place for their purpose.
This edifice, located at 671 to 677 Chapel Street, was easily seeured. its owner being as enthusiastie as anybody for the projeet. There the exhibit was formally opened on May 15, 1912. Meanwhile, the permanent New Haven Man- nfacturers' Exhibit Association had been formed, with these directors: Frank S. Cornwell. Edward R. Sargent, Harry B. Kennedy. Frank J. Schollhorn, Winchester Bennett. John J. Reidy and Charles C. Hale. They eleeted as pres- ident Edward R. Sargent : vice president. Frank S. Cornwell : Treasurer, Harry B. Kennedy: secretary, G. Edward Osborn; expentive committee, Winchester Bennett, chairman. Frank S. Cornwell and Harry B. Kennedy.
So far as the exhibitors were concerned, the exhibit was a suecess from the
GAVENMAN
THE AUDITORIUM. NEW HAVEN The New Haven Manufacturers' Exhibit Building.
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start. A large number of the most important manufacturers of the city and of some of the towns a little outside placed most attractive displays in the rooms. The large floor of the Auditorium was railed off into sections, and one or two exhibits were placed in each. These displays have been developed and enlarged as the business progressed, and have been an accurate index of the business and manufacturing growth of the city. The firms represented, most of them intelli- gent advertisers, were not slow to see the possibilities of the show. Something over a hundred of the best concerns in New Haven now have displays there. and the number tends to grow.
The New Haven and wider publie, on their part, have appeared to need educa- tion as to the value of the exhibit. Those who conceived it at the start have tried to see to that education. Their idea, and it seems a reasonable one. was that the citizens of New Haven woukl deem the exhibit one of the sights of their city. New Haven is annually visited by thousands from all parts of the country and beyond. Almost every member of the University has his guests each year of his stay. some of them coming from far. Many of them come with the im- pression that the University is about all of New Haven. It was evident that the exhibit might excellently serve as a corrective of this impression. It was to be an expression of the other side of New Haven which in justice should be brought to the attention, not only of the visitors but of the people at home.
It has worked out in that way, but slowly. The Auditorium is an admirable exhibit building in all but location. Somehow, "the ent," as the channel of the railways is called. aets as a dividing line of the current of New Haven motion. Business and trade and civic and social interests seem to center on the hither side of it, and it takes indurement and advertising to draw them to the other side. The advertising has been tried. A great signboard, easily visible from State and Chapel streets and above. calls attention to the Manufacturers' Exhibit. Once a year, or thereabout, the association was wont to have a demon- stration week, during which there were special inducements, of souvenirs and the like. to visit the exhibit. These things, with the fairly constant aid of at least some of the newspapers, have served to keep the exhibit before the people of New Haven. It was, when established, the first permanent exhibit of its kind in America. It remains in a sense unique, though other manufacturing centers have been quick to see the virtue of the idea. and have followed New Haven's example.
Nothing is more effective for teaching than the visible evidence of the thing done. Here, displayed in one great aggregation, is what New Haven makes with its machines and with its hands. Here is the concrete evidence of the manufacturing brain of a great manufacturing eity, operating through more than a century. New Haven is a center of education : it is also a center of that characteristie Yankee ingenuity. "Made in New Haven" is a seal-motto as honorable in its way as "Lux et Veritas." There could not be a more self- respecting. unboastful way of displaying the virtues of the city than an ex- hibit of the best of its manufactured product.
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