USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Naugatuck > History of Naugatuck, Connecticut > Part 10
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Yet the span of years from 1844 to 1893 includes a period
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PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND PRIVATE LIFE
in which much of America was shifting from a rural to an urban point of view, and even a small New England town could not escape the effects. From the day in 1852 when the town voted to permit no circuses or entertainers to come to Naugatuck to the time in 1887 when voters established a set fee to be charged outside theatrical companies for the use of the "Gem Opera House"-which was actually the large room with its stage in the Town Hall-townspeople had come close to a revolution in their ideas of what was permissible in a Christian community. Dancing, once sus- pect, by the seventies was perfectly respectable, and occasion- ally hostesses sent out formal printed invitations to dances. In fact, even in the late fifties the local toy and candy shop proprietor, a negro named Noble Weston, began to be called upon to play his guitar and sing at parties! More often, game parties for young people and afternoon tea parties for their mothers supplanted the quilting and husking bees of an earlier generation.
The publication of a newspaper in town probably marks as sharply as any other one development the changes occur- ring in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Enter- prise, a weekly published from 1877 on by a well-informed, though somewhat eccentric citizen, lasted for over thirty- five years; but other papers started not long after had brief careers. Of these short-lived sheets most interesting is the Agitator. It was a workingman's paper published on a co- operative plan by the Knights of Labor. That a town of less than 6,000 people should see the rise of a labor paper is proof both of the enthusiasm the Knights of Labor were able to command in their heyday in 1886 and of the belief that Naugatuck was destined shortly to expand enormously as a manufacturing town. But the Agitator was unable to survive any length of time even after it merged with the Re- view and, under new management, as the Citizen endeavored still to offer Naugatuck an honest, radical newspaper. Only the Advocate fared better, perhaps because it was a daily. It
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was printed by Naugatuck's new job printer, F. K. Perry. In 1894 it sold out as a going enterprise to the Daily News corporation. Naugatuck citizens for years had had New Haven and Waterbury newspapers to read, so that a locally published paper was not essential for keeping people in- formed of the world at large. But a local sheet was a boon to local merchants, called attention to local civic issues, and was a source of pleasure to its readers. The every-day life of the town, faithfully reflected in news items and advertising, was changing in character, and the newspapers at once has- tened the process and registered the change.
To Naugatuck's population, before 1844 virtually exclu- sively Yankee, expanding industries had added a great many Irish, some British, Germans, Swedes, and a few Poles, al- together over half of the 6,200 inhabitants of 1893. The lecture courses and concerts of the 1880's and early nineties had given the town a surprisingly wide cultural background, while Naugatuck's particular industrial connections had created a kind of cosmopolitanism as unusual as it was stimu- lating. The quiet village had become a vigorous small city.
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CHAPTER VIII
From Shop to Factory
F ROM 1844 to 1893 America saw more dramatic changes than in any other one half-century of its history. While Naugatuck's economic development in these years illustrates the most essential changes all America was experiencing, the smallness of the town and some peculiari- ties of its manufacturing program saved it from suffering the worst consequences of the new order. Its industries expanded with relatively healthy growth, without the sudden mush- rooming that brought to many small towns thousands of polyglot peoples to crowd into tenements designed for a handful. Yet Naugatuck too was marked by the inroads of industrialization. The village of about 300 families in 1844, virtually all Yankee, all Protestant, almost all in reasonably comfortable circumstances, with a common, simple standard of living, had become by 1893 a town of about 1, 100 families, nearly half of them foreign-born and Roman Catholic in religion. Most striking difference of all was the disparity in wealth.
Though before midcentury some men were distinctly bet- ter off than their neighbors, owned more land and had more various and prosperous manufacturing interests, economic differences were not sharply noticeable. The community was homogeneous. Nearly fifty years later Naugatuck still had no slums like those in many New England cities; the most sordid forms of poverty had not invaded the town. But factory owner and shop hand were no longer social equals. A few men had amassed fortunes; others were barely able to feed their families from day to day. A proletariat in the strict sense found no place in this small manufacturing city, but the man earning $1.25 a day could not now provide a
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family with more than the barest necessities of life, while his employers lived in elegance, unostentatious but patent. That the disparities between rich and poor were not more obvious is probably due to the fact that the successful manu- facturers of Naugatuck lived in Naugatuck, saw with their own eyes the conditions of their employees, and, despite their acceptance of the new industrial pattern of America, still could not reject completely responsibility for the community of which they were a part.
The emergence of the Lewis family as an economic power serves as a good example of the changes in Naugatuck in these years. The first Lewis, to be sure, had laid the founda- tion of the family fortune in the eighteenth century by ac- quiring wide acres of land and developing a flourishing export trade; but not until his great grandson, Milo, started his cotton mill did the Lewis family begin on its long success- ful career in industry which set its members apart as indus- trial leaders and men of wealth. To the money Milo made in his warp mill before Salem became Naugatuck, he and his sons added in the 1840's profits from the rubber shoe shop as well as from the farm. When William DeForest had to assign his property in the woolen mill, Thomas Lewis took charge and from that source also made money. Stock in the Tuttle Manufacturing Company, makers of farm imple- ments, paid dividends. Investment in a second rubber com- pany may have been less profitable, but by Milo's death the Lewises controlled or had large interests in four of the six most important industrial enterprises in Naugatuck.
A curious document, found in the archives of the United States Rubber Company, shows how closely the family bound together its interests. In about 1845 Milo, and his sons, William, Samuel, and Thomas, entered into "Articles of Agreement" among themselves, pooling their resources and responsibilities into a literally closed family "corpora- tion." Milo and William were to be in charge of "the farm- ing business of such concern," Thomas of the cotton mill,
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FROM SHOP TO FACTORY
and Samuel of the India Rubber Shoe business. "In prosecut- ing all the varieties of business in which the above named parties may be engaged, there shall be no separate or private interest whatever except the clothing for each one's self and family." And before undertaking any new transaction aside from his regular business each member of the "Company" must submit his proposal and have it approved by a majority of the Company. How large a part this family compact played in solidifying the family position in Naugatuck we can only guess. When the buildings of the shoe shop, of the Union Rubber Company on Maple Street, and of the satinet mill burned in the fifties, these Lewis enterprises were obviously not crippled by the disasters. The plants were rebuilt and, while a new company took over the Union rubber shop, the satinet factory still under Lewis ownership ran for another twenty years. The cotton warp mill also burned after the Civil War, only to be rebuilt and to resume operations, pre- sumably on a profitable basis until 1872. And always there was The Goodyear's Metallic Rubber Shoe Company, as the original Samuel J. Lewis Company was called after 1845. Heavy stockholders in this booming pioneer concern, the Lewises, father, sons, and grandsons, could scarcely fail to be securely entrenched in the New England industrial world. Members of the well-to-do farming family of the early nine- teenth century had become business magnates.
While success like the Lewises was the exception, it was not unique, for the opportunities of building up great in- dustries were created by the peculiar conditions of that era of the nineteenth century. Chance entered in occasionally, but imagination, judgment, courage, and singleness of pur- pose were greater factors in making the careers of Nauga- tuck's industrial leaders. Irrespective of the individuals involved in the town's manufacturing developments, Nauga- tuck must have changed as the years went on. What might have happened had a few men of the town made different decisions from what they did? Had the Lewises and DeForest
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not risked supporting Goodyear's vulcanized rubber proj- ect, Naugatuck might never have become the first rubber town of America. Had Bronson Tuttle not had the vision to push malleable iron manufacture when his father's hoe shop burned, Naugatuck might not have developed its great foundries. But while the men who directed Naugatuck's economic life might have altered the course of events in particulars, it is inconceivable that they could have affected for long the general trend. For Naugatuck, by its setting and the inheritance of its people, was bound to be caught up in the tide of American industrialism.
The first step in this process of converting the rural village into a modern manufacturing community was the introduc- tion of rubber manufacture. The first shop, the Samuel J. Lewis Company, began operations in the fall of 1843, the moment Milo Lewis, his son Samuel, and Milo's brother-in- law, William DeForest, had been convinced of the impor- tance of Goodyear's invention. In 1845 the company was reincorporated as The Goodyear's Metallic Rubber Shoe Company. Meanwhile these same men, supported financially by a few others, formed a second company, the Naugatuck India Rubber Company, later called the Union Rubber Company, which for some years made rubber clothing and later merged with the footwear company. The original capi- talization of these two companies was unusually high, $30,000 for the footwear unit, $40,000 for the other. Yet after only a few months of operation, in 1845, the value of their manu- factures was set at $120,000 a year. The woolen mill and the cotton warp mill at that time valued their annual production at $110,000 and $23,500 respectively, and these were well- established concerns. By 1850 the two rubber companies to- gether had run the volume of business up to nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year and employed about 130 people, over three times the number of hands in any other one shop. So from the very beginning the rubber shops assumed a significant role in the town's industrial life.
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For a decade or more the inventor, Charles Goodyear, as technical advisor kept in close touch with the Naugatuck factories; but apart from his experimentation on further improvements of "metallized gum elastic" he was not active in the companies' affairs. Still Goodyear was very useful to the new enterprises. Almost fanatically sure of the revolu- tionizing importance of the material vulcanizing now put at the disposal of manufacturers and consumers, he vigor- ously publicized the various uses of rubber. In a pamphlet published in October of 1844, he named over fifty types of articles in which "metallic gum elastic" would be superior to any other material-leather, silk, cotton, wool, or wood- and he undertook to demonstrate "by ocular and irresistable evidence" the extraordinary, valuable qualities of the new composition. His imagination, in fact, encompassed practi- cally all the uses to which later generations were to put rub- ber, with the sole exception of the pneumatic tire. Once manufacture had begun and the American public could put vulcanized rubber products to the test of use, Goodyear's enthusiasm proved contagious. A market for Naugatuck's rubber goods was therefore never wanting.
But threat to Naugatuck's infant industry sprang up al- most at once in the form of patent infringement, when Hor- ace H. Day of New Jersey, after manufacturing for several years without license, attempted to have Goodyear's patent declared invalid. This challenge gave birth to one of the first trade associations in America. The Goodyear Shoe Association, composed of the five principal companies li- censed by Goodyear to use his patent, undertook to defend his title. Having induced the inventor to accept a reduction of royalty from three cents to one-half cent per pair of rubber shoes manufactured, the Association raised a fund, employed Daniel Webster as counsel for the then enormous fee of $15,000, and plunged into legal battle. It was a famous case, both because of the basic issue and because of the reputations of the opposing lawyers, Rufus Choate, at one time Webster's
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distinguished successor as Senator from Massachusetts, re- tained by Day, and the broken but still eloquent Webster representing Goodyear's interests. The $15,000 legal fee paid out by the Shoe Associates, a sum large enough to have fi- nanced at least half a dozen manufacturing shops in Nauga- tuck at that time, may be an index of how far-reaching the influence of the rubber companies was in transforming the Yankee village into an industrial town where "big" business held sway. In 1852 the Court decided in Goodyear's favor and the Naugatuck enterprises were free to carry on without further fear of pirate competition. Thus the worst danger was passed. In spite of the obvious benefits of collabora- tion between the competing members of the Shoe Associa- tion, the merger proposed in 1853 and at intervals there- after did not materialize for nearly another forty years. In the interim the Association functioned as a group only to standardize styles and regulate prices.
The men who launched rubber manufacture in Nauga- tuck combined various qualities in their characters. In addi- tion to the ambitious, shrewd Lewises there were William DeForest and Goodyear himself. Emmet A. Saunders who grew up in Naugatuck and became in time superintendent of the footwear plant described these two:
Here was DeForest, a man of immense energy, fine bodily pres- ence, not much education, but with a tremendous faculty for trading and swapping. He was my "beau ideal" of a "fine old gentlemen." Large frame, fairly pleasant face (red, red, very red) buff waistcoat, tail coat and brass buttons and tall hat, usually brown with long furry glistening nap, very shiny. He always spoke of Goodyear with a wholly loving, but half contemptuous accent, as if he were a dearly beloved "enfant terrible" that should not be held responsible for anything except to be his own blessed self.
And there was Goodyear, a dreamer, reaching for the moon, careless about such small and entirely material things as food, shelter and clothing for himself and family. He would be depend- ent for these upon any friend. He would give any one anything
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he had if they wanted it more than he did just then, and he would take from any one, borrow from any one, not because he was a mendicant or "dead beat" but because these things were of little importance and sometime "when his ship came in" he would fix it all, immaterial and temporary. DeForest fed and housed him and his family when they had no other refuge. He was not the man to keep account and store up items-but when Goodyear had anything that could be sold or traded because of DeForest's competence and Goodyear's incompetence, DeForest would take hold and help.
In 1858 Samuel J. Lewis, first head of The Goodyear's Metallic Rubber Shoe Company, died, and two years later Charles Goodyear. No one could of course fill Goodyear's place, but Lewis was succeeded by James E. English as presi- dent of the shoe company. English, already a man of wealth and political fame in Connecticut, three times state Gover- nor and later Representative and Senator, never came to Naugatuck to live. But the other officers of the company continued to make Naugatuck their home. Samuel Lewis' son George became secretary of the company in 1864 and twenty-six years later president. George A. Lewis, though a hard-headed Yankee like his forebears, had a perception of his responsibility for the welfare of company employees that tempered his business attitudes with kindliness. Even after the United States Rubber Company was formed local men remained in control of the footwear plant, and Nauga- tuck was spared the consequences of absenteeism in her larg- est industry.
Meanwhile from the mid-forties onward all kinds of rub- ber manufacture in Naugatuck throve. To the first two com- panies a third was added in 1847 when The Goodyear's India Rubber Glove Manufacturing Company moved from Litchfield to Naugatuck and set up in a building across the street from the footwear company. Though always a smaller concern than the shoe company, the glove enterprise grew quickly. With the outbreak of the Civil War the manufac-
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ture of ponchos, blankets, and rubber clothing began in addi- tion to the original mainstay, gloves and mittens. One con- temporary recalled seeing coats on hangers "marching like a platoon of soldiers into the vulcanizer." In the 1860's dress shields were another important item of manufacture. By 1870 with some $200,000 invested, and an annual payroll of about $40,000, the company was doing a $200,000 a year busi- ness, increased ten years later to over $670,000 a year. In 1876 the company began to make footwear also, and in 1894 entered the merger of the United States Rubber Company.
For forty years the market for rubber shoes and boots con- tinued to expand. Introduction in 1856 of the cloth-top arc- tic, an invention of Thomas Wales, one of the shoe company directors, entrenched the product of the local shoe shop firmly in public favor, and in the seventies the use of gay red and blue woolen fabrics for arctic linings had wide popular appeal, foreshadowing the style consciousness of the boot- makers of the twentieth century. By 1880 the company had a business of about $975,000 a year. A large new plant, built near the river at the southern end of the village in 1886 after the town had abated the company's taxes, increased the shop capacity to 25,000 pairs of boots and shoes a day and made Naugatuck more than ever the "first rubber town in Amer- ica."
The quality of rubber goods made in Naugatuck gave their makers a deservedly high reputation and encouraged other manufacturers to start up here. The possibility of finding an experienced labor supply in a community famil- iar with vulcanizing rubber probably explained the coming of new enterprises. So six new rubber companies began oper- ations in Naugatuck in the course of thirty years. Three, the most famous of which became the successful Seamless Rub- ber Company of New Haven, moved to other places, one company was forced out of business, and the others were ab- sorbed by the powerful original Goodyear companies. In 1892, when the shoe company's capital had mounted to
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FROM SHOP TO FACTORY
$1,000,000 and its payroll to nearly a thousand people, it chose to merge its interests with other members of the Rub- ber Shoe Association formed in the fifties, and the United States Rubber Company came into being. Two years later the glove company also entered the combine. But local au- tonomy was not greatly affected, and local plant officials, unfettered by corporation policies, still dealt direct with their own employees.
For the working people of Naugatuck the rubber shops spelled a good many advantages. In the first place, wages were always higher than in most plants in the vicinity: a foreman in the early fifties earned as much as "eight shil- lings per day, New England currency," or about $2.00. In 1880 unskilled labor averaged $1.50 a day in the rubber plants, whereas $1.00 or $1.25 a day was customary in most other factories. Hours were long, eleven hours a day six days a week till near the end of the century, but such a sched- ule was universal. Working conditions were no more dis- agreeable than in any other factory, and photographs taken in the shops from Civil War days onward show groups of employees looking well cared for and not unpleased with life.
At the glove shop the rules were as follows:
1. All employed in this factory to remain one year-or forfeit the amount hereinafter specified, and to make such kinds of work as the market demands.
2. Each one is to allow eight cents on each day's wages to be kept back till the end of the year when the full amount will be paid.
3. If anyone leaves before the end of the year for any other reason than sickness to work anywhere, or marriage, the eight cents per day reserved is to be forfeited and the balance of pay- ment to be at the piece work price from the beginning.
4. All to do a day's work anyway, and if work is needed very much to do all they can, and defer leaving for business, recrea- tion, or visiting if possible till we get through the hurry.
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5. Damaged or bad work to be charged to the one making it, after or on the day's work.
6. In work hours all to attend strictly to their work and give a good example of correct deportment to others, and where neces- sary to leave the factory for a longer time than 15 minutes, per- mission must be obtained from the Foreman, and always permis- sion must be obtained for absence of half a day or more. All to be in their places when the bell stops ringing.
7. We wish and expect all to attend some place of Public Wor- ship on the Sabbath.
Monthly wage payments were customary in all factories, and the daily deduction of eight cents, designed to keep the labor force stable, was apparently no affliction. Moreover, rule four clearly hints at a casualness about attendance quite for- eign to the age of the time clock. Scarcely a word of any dis- contents among rubber workers of the early decades has come down to us. Today a faint memory runs of a lock-out in one shop in the middle eighties which ended when the company announced that thenceforward only women would be em- ployed on that particular work and any man wishing his old job back should go home and put on petticoats. So the affair was turned into a joke and was soon lost sight of entirely. Men and women employed in Naugatuck's rubber shops evidently considered themselves well off; many stayed on for twenty and thirty years of service, and some families today have been employed for four generations. Certainly com- pared to the employees in New England textile and paper mills or bootshops, they were indeed well off.
There was one major drawback to employment in the rubber shops, however, a factor that was to make increasing difficulties for the community after farming and the opera- tion of many small manufacturing establishments ceased to offer alternate occupations to Naugatuck's working people. For the rubber companies found their products seasonal, and in consequence closed down their shops for six, eight, or even ten weeks every year. The public would not buy rubbers or
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arctics in the summer months, tennis shoes and other rubber- soled footwear were still unknown, and no other articles, hot-water bottles, surgeon's gloves, ponchos, or items for in- dustrial use, were in great enough demand to warrant year- round production. So employees of the shoe and glove plants every year had weeks of unemployment to face, a situation that the high wages of the remaining months of the year could not wholly mitigate. Before the end of the nineteenth century the burden of the layoffs was less heavy than it be- came later. Farmers needed help in haying, the foundry usually was ready to hire rubber workers temporarily, and the builders, whose busy season was in the summer months, could use additional hands. The women employed in the rubber industry might tide over the slack periods by some kind of domestic service. The problem for Naugatuck created by this seasonal employment detracted greatly from the ad- vantages of being the "first rubber town" of America, but no one knew how to remedy the situation. It was accepted as unavoidable. And in spite of this, more than any other one industry rubber manufacture gave Naugatuck her liveli- hood.
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