USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 42
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Several of Mr. Dunham's friends will recall the evening they and their wives were invited to his home on Prospect Street for dinner and to behold the effect of a house completely lighted by electricity. The guests were enjoying the occasion to the full
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when in a twinkling they were plunged in utter darkness. Undis- mayed by the chaff and imperturbable as ever, Mr. Dunham tele- phoned a single word to the "trouble department" and the chaffing gave place to still greater astonishment over the quick restoration of every light to duty.
Already Mr. Dunham was studying the possibilities of using water power to supplement steam, with the result that the sub- sidiary Farmington River Power Company, in 1889, built a dam at Rainbow-the first hydro-electric station in the East. The local station was then on Kilbourn Street. To this the first trans- mission line in the country, 11,000 volts, eleven miles, was con- structed. This attracted the attention of electrical engineers all over the country, but before the sensation had begun to subside another was provided by the installation of the first storage bat- tery, in 1894. To Mr. Dunham's mind there was economic waste in creating abundant power which should lie idle through day- light hours, and it was one of the great strides forward when it was demonstrated that the night requirements could be met by accumulating the power in the daytime. Thus one stride was to follow another. The next was the introduction of the steam tur- bine. Westinghouse, General Electric, all the great concerns knew how greatly such a thing was needed, but the trouble was that in operation they tore up the strongest iron floors. General Electric had abandoned the experiments when Mr. Dunham heard of a turbine at the Westinghouse plant in Pittsburgh, and hurried down there and bought it. The mere transportation of it was almost an unparalleled feat, but it soon was on its bed at the new Pearl Street plant. (New York was not to be ahead of Hartford even in the name of its electric street; a tumble-down hovel made way for the beginning of the great headquarters of today.) This the first turbine was proving its worth-with a little exercise of patience-in 1898, or five years before the 5,000-kilowatt unit was set up in Chicago to claim place in history as the father of them all. After the Hartford turbine had served here and also at the Dutch Point plant, it was retired in 1908 and, covered with the glory of being the most important instrument in the develop- ment of electrical service up to that time, it was given to the West- inghouse museum. From those days on, the famous electrical con- cerns looked to Hartford to try out the results of much that was
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being done to astonish the whole world of science. Courage and skill combined were needed.
So great was the increasing demand for power in 1898 that a new dam and power-house were built on the Farmington River at Tariffville, twelve miles from Hartford. Thus at the opening of the "century of marvels," the Hartford company, with a 7,000,000 capacity, was prepared to meet all then conceivable demands. Capital was increased to $1,050,000, but merely on the way to present contemplated $30,000,000. Dividends had been paid since 1894, and each increase of capital had and has meant benefit to those who had ventured so much and also to consumers. From the beginning the principle has been that con- sumers should share. And that has proved wise business. In 1900 the company had acquired the Hartford Light and Power Company. In 1903 the price to consumers had dropped from 20 to 15 cents a kilowatt hour; in 1905 to 13 cents; in 1906 to 11 cents; in 1910 to 10 cents; in 1914 to 8 cents; in 1922 to 6 cents; in 1923 to 51/2 cents, and in 1927 to 5 cents-with a plus-area charge of 5 cents per 100 feet of lighted area after 1922, and a consumers' dividend of 40 per cent on October bills in 1926 and 1927. The value of the stock was running up to 410.
Mr. Dunham's conception that power could be furnished to factories was considered to be in the realm of the ideal but not practical because of the expense. The proposition to furnish it at a reduced rate which should make the cost actually less than that of steam worried his stockholders. But, dreamer though they called him, he was by nature the most practical of men. Power was being stored in the daytime; power could be employed in the daytime. When the truth of his words had been proven at Billings & Spenser's and when the Rubber Works had relegated its own plant, it was not long before the town was wholly made over and the Age of Electricity was supplying the chief handmaid of industry and of personal comfort. No corner of factory, store or office was too dark to work or read in; intricate machinery requiring close light was no longer impracticable, and the power to run giant cranes or drop-forges, or sewing machines or type- writers responded instantly to the touch of a button.
It was but a day (in retrospect) before another increase in capacity became imperative. The Dutch Point plant-at the his- toric riverside and with all that ingenuity could devise-had
TWO 20,000 KILOWATT ENGINES IN THE SOUTH MEADOWS PLANT OF THE HARTFORD ELECTRIC LIGHT COMPANY
NEW SOUTH MEADOWS STATION OF THE HARTFORD ELECTRIC LIGHT COMPANY
Where the first and only mercury vapor engines are used
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reached a maximum of 83,000,000 kilowatts, by patching and coaxing, in 1920. The hoped-for had come and already was of the past. A new plant was rising, just across Park River to the south, the property including the site of the 1633 Dutch fort. Itself a marvelous engineering feat, performed under the direc- tion of present Vice President Townsend H. Soren, who had come here from the General Electric, it was opened in the presence of Governor Lake, Mayor Newton C. Brainard and other dignitaries and eminent electrical engineers. Since then it has been a place that European engineers come to study, for it is a marvel in pro- ficiency and cleanliness.
Samuel G. Dunham, who with his many interests had shoul- dered the presidential responsibilities of his brother Austin on the latter's retirement in 1912, was succeeded by Samuel Fer- guson, of distinguished family, his father being Rev. Henry Fer- guson of Trinity College, eminent for his learning and his philanthropy, and he was bringing to the office fruits of learning. and careful research, backed by a board of directors and officers unexcelled in their regard for the public welfare. Immediately the new plant, looking over at its still youthful but antiquated sister, was possessed of a new attraction. This was an invention that promised to cut the fuel bill in half if it came up to expecta- tions. It was the mercury-vapor boiler, and toward this first test all eyes were directed. When it is said that there were many doubting Thomases, the reader must bear in mind that not all was such plane-sailing as this Hartford narrative would seem to indicate; millions had been sunk in the feverish effort throughout the country to learn how best to utilize this greatest beneficial wonder since fire was brought to earth. Whatever in solar heat or radium or in the air above or in the bowels of the earth may come to supersede it, it cannot be robbed of the romance of this era nor yet of the credit as distinctive as is that of steam, of the water wheel, the propeller or of fire itself. Of the vapor boiler, Mr. Soren in 1923 put the result in a few words thus: "It is remarkable that this installation involving a new development in every respect should have been successfully operated exactly as originally designed and installed, as, if it were successful, it would mark the greatest advance in the art of producing power that has yet been made in a single step. It has proved satisfactory and we are sure the process itself can be developed to large sizes with
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complete success." His statement was conservative; the larger size has now been installed and the dimensions of the plant are correspondingly increasing. At its service, the plant now has coal brought by barges, has mercury-compelling energy, has water power brought in over long cables and has whatever New Eng- land, Northern New York and Niagara itself can furnish.
For the company has made connection with various sources. In 1920 it took control of the Connecticut Power Company, whose station at Falls Village on the Housatonic it had used since 1915 to replace the station at Rainbow. The younger company repre- sented a consolidation of six companies-itself, the Berkshire, Middletown, New London, Thomaston and Millerton (N. Y.) companies. In 1925 the Hartford had become associated- for operating purposes only-with the Turner's Falls, far up the Connecticut, and the United Electric at Springfield in the Connecticut Valley Exchange, a step in the broad superpower program of the country in the interests of economy and reliability. When more water at one place makes production more economical than at another, the hook-up is almost automatic, or when emer- gency calls for sudden increase of product, the demand is instantly met. In 1926 the Connecticut Power and Light Com- pany became a party to this exchange. In this way Hartford is tied in with Northern New England and New York from the Adirondacks and Niagara to the Atlantic, and from the head- waters of the Connecticut to Long Island Sound. The benefits are shared by nearly the whole of Connecticut. The light that illumines the Capitol dome is precisely of the same source as that in the most remote alley of New Britain or Manchester or on the hillsides of Granby or Enfield, to speak only of Hartford County.
Austin C. Dunham lived to enjoy much of this triumph, indeed to indulge in other fond interests. He had tasted success in other undertakings, like the Dunham Hosiery Company, with mills in Windsor and in Naugatuck; the Rock Manufacturing Company of Rockville (woolens), of which he had been president; the Willi- mantic Linen Company, of which he had been the head ; the Austin Organ Company, of which he had been a founder; the Automatic Refrigerating Company, the first of its kind; the Aetna and Travelers insurance companies, of whose boards he was a mem- ber, and also of the old National Exchange Bank. And he also was trustee of the Watkinson Juvenile Asylum and Farm School
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and of the Watkinson Library, and president of the Hartford Hospital. Nothing did he enjoy more, however, unless it was writing on economics or his "Reminiscences," or visiting Thomas Edison, than sitting and talking with a workman or out in the country with a farmer. One of his latest economic ideas he put into effect by purchase of a large tract in Newington, where he introduced Edison's theory of concrete houses for families who wanted land enough for a cow and chickens and yet be near enough to manufacturing centers to follow their trades. In 1916 he transferred this property to the Connecticut Agricultural Col- lege. Winters he spent South and died in St. Petersburg, Fla., in March, 1918. Among the enduring monuments to his name is the Dunham Laboratory of Electric Engineering which he gave to Yale in 1912, fully equipped.
§
Hardly less important in universal progress at the opening of the century was the culmination of effort to make of the type- writer an instrument available for every office and then for pri- vate use. The schools are being the last to awake to the necessity of training the young to use the machine, but we of 1928 can see how it has become an essential adjunct of every business and profession. The glimpses we have caught in the preceding pages of the development of the manufacture have made it necessary to record at this point only the complete achievement of ingenuity, skill and capital. It was a long time from Latham Sholes of Milwaukee, who in 1867 had devised a machine that would put the letters of the alphabet upon paper by movement of the fingers. By the rate of later progress it was a long time since Franz Wagner, in 1894, had put forth a really practical writer with the imprint of the machine-impelled letters constantly visible. The Underwood Typewriter Company, of which John T. Underwood and Dewitt Bergen continued as president and vice president from the inception, were back of him. When their Wagner Typewriter Company passed the stage of experiment, it was made a part of the Underwood plant at Bayonne, N. J. The importance being realized of skilled mechanics and also of close contact with the makers of most delicate machinery, Charles D. Rice appeared from Hartford, as has been related, the former Board of Trade
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plant in Hartford was taken, and in 1901 the first of the flow of millions of machines was started.
Going back to the life story of Harriet Beecher Stowe, it is hard to picture that the site of this enormous factory today-the largest of its kind in the world-was once the beautiful grounds of the home she had dreamed for years of making. There Mr. Rice continues to superintend the spreading factories from which go the carloads of progress-helping machines to every port in the world, and likewise, in part, the more recent factory in Bridge- port for the "portables." Over 8,000 employees are loyal to the concern-which means more than "work for."
But Hartford was to offer room for another, and capitalists like J. Couper Lord, George E. Smith, P. T. Dodge and C. Ryan, drawn for like reasons, even as we have seen, removed from Bay Ridge, N. J., to an exceptional location on Park Avenue, in 1906 so far out but today so far in. There the latest model of factory buildings was erected, with room for that expansion which con- tinues, still under the management of Charles B. Cook, who formerly was with the Underwood and who is a student of em- ployee welfare as well as of employee product. The Royal, writ- ing any language, is at home in any land, and welcome. The plant is the second largest in the world.
In 1905, a second Board of Trade plant, to encourage infant industries and built on Hawthorn Street-near Nook Farm but circumscribed in its area there by the Forest Street Realty Asso- ciation, made up of residents who incorporated and bought property in defense of their holdings-was immediately taken over by the Arrow Electric Company, makers of switches and other electrical devices. Under the management of Edward R. Grier, the company, which had been incorporated with Charles G. Perkins of the Perkins Electric Switch Company of the '80s as president and Mr. Grier as vice president, gained rapidly in prestige, refusing to be checked by any outsiders who might con- trol elements of the product. It secured the ownership of the Washington Porcelain Company in Washington, N. J., whence it obtains its own supply of electrical porcelain, put in the latest labor-saving machinery, the past year greatly increased its plant and at the same time combined with the Hart & Hegeman plant, making the largest institution of the kind in the country. Each
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company retains its identity but they are as one concern. There are nearly 3,000 employees in twelve plants.
Something "new under the sun" was constantly appearing. It has been noted that Austin C. Dunham's workings in electricity had brought out, among other devices, the one by which electricity could supply the long-needed means of doing away with ice in refrigerating for large buildings and for cars transporting perish- able food supplies. That electricity could turn water into ice was a very important discovery for mankind. The Automatic Re- frigerating Company, latterly under the presidency of H. Bissell Carey and the management of Maj. Michael F. Owens, found an immediate and grateful market for the product from its factory at the corner of Capitol Avenue and Laurel Street. The company was established in 1903 and came here in 1906, with branches in other cities. For years it occupied alone the field of mechanical refrigerating plants and took the grand prize at the Panama- Pacific International Exposition in 1915.
Hiram P. Maxim, leader in the recent automobile era and busy with still more electrical and automobile ideas, knew no limit to his fields. One morning he stopped after shaving to take note of the way the water swirled out of his washbowl and said to him- self, "Nature shows clearly enough for any man to see how to manage explosive gas leaving a gun barrel," and soon after, in 1909, was astonishing the dignitaries of the War Department by deceiving them completely as to the location of rifles firing smoke- less ammunition not a hundred feet away. The rifles were silenced by his invention. It was a triumph of Yankee genius which attracted the attention of all the nations and would have made of war a different thing had it not been that its perfection and development meant safety for those who used firearms with criminal intent. But guns were not the only things to be silenced ; peace had its requirements. And, impressive at the moment, there was the automobile exhaust, then the enginery in factories and in steamships; the practicality of the Diesel engine was increased materially by an adaptation of the Maxim Silencer Company's device, and it would seem that in another decade no harsh noise except thunder and static will be heard.
Nor need ingenuity be applied to new things only; old things could be given a new twist-old things in marketing a product as well as old things that were made. Alfred C. Fuller came here
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in 1906 and rented a shed at $11 a week, an amount that almost discouraged him. Bristles and wire and a cheap hand-twisting machine were his only equipment, the same he had been using in his sister's attic in the hamlet of Somersville, Mass. He had begun the battle of life as a farmhand in Nova Scotia and when the battle failed to turn his way, he sought out his brother, who gave him employment at selling homemade brushes from house to house through the country. When in the course of time he had accumulated $375, he took over such space as could be spared in his sister's home and, adding ingenuity to the processes of his old machine, turned out such brushes as he thought people would like. He trudged the countryside daytimes and twisted wire and bristles at night. Pattison made his tinpails in Berlin and sold them that way in 1740; Seth Thomas peddled his clocks on horse- back; Fuller found the field equally good but the method out of date. In Hartford he organized salesmanship. Hiring a man to do the shop work, he taught others how to approach customers. By 1922 he had constructed the great factory on Main Street, near the Windsor line, the largest plant of the kind; today there are more than a dozen subsidiary plants, 300 branches around the continent and in the West Indies, trained salesmen everywhere, and sales of over $10,000,000 worth a year.
Significant of the changed tendency of the times was the formation of the Manufacturers' Association of Hartford County in 1904, with Thomas J. Kelley the secretary, as he is now. This stood for the promotion of industry and the better protection of interests of both employers and employees. A state association also was formed, with an office here.
§
While Hartford's name was being carried around the world for its industrial and scientific enterprise, at this the opening of the twentieth century it more than ever was deserving of the name of the world's "Insurance City." Courage and fidelity through the disasters of the past had brought their own reward, and in life insurance the principles of the rugged founders were likely to prevail over the spirit of fierce competition abroad in the land. Thus when in 1906 came the severest tests the institution
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of insurance, fire and life, ever had known, the prestige of the local companies increased rather than otherwise.
By the San Francisco earthquake and fire in April, the loss to American companies meant the loss of all profit from under- writing since 1860 and $80,000,000 more. Hartford met the blow without a whimper. It meant grief for certain individual stock- holders unable to wait for the turn of the tide, but for the rest there was firm conviction that the men at the head of the com- panies would see to it that there was a return of the tide. The Hartford Fire's board briefly inscribed on the records: "Officers are authorized to borrow $2,000,000 to settle claims." The reserve was a bulwark. President John D. Browne of the Connecticut was, in looks, character and bearing, something of a composite of what fancy pictures the rugged founders were. He said: "Gentlemen, we shall need about $2,400,000." The actual figure proved to be $2,370,740, or more than double the capital. Capital thereupon was reduced one-half and then raised to $1,000,000, shares at $100 par calling for $200 cash; the spirit in which they were taken up was a tremendous encomium. The Phoenix faced a $1,771,103 loss unperturbed and paid it without controversy, as did all the others. The National, paying $2,500,000, joined earnestly in preventing what threatened to be a national debacle.
Most conspicuous in the history of the country's life insurance business was the rigid investigation in New York in 1906 by the "Armstrong Committee" of the Legislature, Hon. Charles E. Hughes the attorney. Its prominence and influence was to be credited to the fact that all standard companies do large business in New York State and must comply with its regulations. The attack was directed against certain methods which were as obnoxious to Hartford companies as to any and against certain principles that were open to question. The decision for limiting expense in the field, for segregating non-participating and par- ticipating insurance, for keeping out of European territory and for strengthening the personnel of agents had the close coopera- tion of some of the Hartford officials in the framing, eradicated danger spots and renewed the public's faith.
Death was claiming a heavy toll among the high officials of the companies. The long and varied career of James G. Batter- son, recounted in the biographical volume, was terminated in 1901. His life was a romance from the time he was born in
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Wintonbury. The Congressional Library in Washington and the Capitol in Hartford are examples of his art in granite. The Steam Marble Works he established in New York were the largest in America. It was in 1863, while traveling in England, that he got the idea of accident insurance, a makeshift for which he found over there. He applied his mathematical genius to the subject and forthwith offered to insure a prominent broker, whom he met at the Hartford post office, for 2 cents, he to pay $1,000 if the broker were to be killed in an accident on his way home. From that night on, his history was largely the history of the Travelers, chartered in 1863. Such was the popular acclaim that companies sprang up in other places, but comparatively so lacking in back- ground that they soon were incorporated into the Travelers. When Mr. Batterson had surrounded himself with practical insur- ance men and capitalists like Rodney Dennis (Secretary), G. F. Davis, J. B. Bunce, G. W. Moore, Marshall Jewell, Hugh Harbi- son, Ebenezer Roberts and G. S. Gilman, he made time to interest himself in public affairs and in the Greek classics, his knowledge of which won him wide reputation. Withal he was encouraging art; he brought out the young sculptor Bartholomew, an example of whose work he gave to the Atheneum. On biblical literature he was an authority. He could gage which way the next town or state election would go and was chairman of the Republican State Central Committee when the normally democratic state gave Lin- coln 2,500 majority. During the war he was indefatigable in relief work. When in after years the Constitutional Reform League was formed, Mr. Batterson was made president of it. Time and again, he would drop into a newspaper office, any hour of night or day, sit at the corner of a desk, write out a report of some meeting or transaction and depart as quietly as he had come in. He was like Rev. Dr. Samuel Hart in that and there- fore blessed in the memory of newspaper editors. His daughter Mary E. married Dr. Charles C. Beach, and their children, who are also prominent in Hartford life, are Goodwin B., Watson, and Charles E. Beach ; a daughter of Doctor and Mrs. Beach mar- ried Llewelyn Powell of Schenectady, N. Y. Mr. Batterson's son, bearing his name, became manager of the New York office of the company; his son, Walter E. Batterson, is secretary in the com- pany (fire division), and is now the mayor of the city. Sylvester
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