USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 3 The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut > Part 29
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Consumption of cigars, and therefore the market for Connecticut leaf, fell off sharply after 1920. While the trend of cigar consumption has been downward there have been temporary periods of revival. After having dropped to six and seven-tenths billions in 1921, produc- tion rose to nearly seven billions in 1923, only to fall
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again in 1925 to less than six and five-tenths billions. With the reduction of the internal revenue tax on cigars in 1926 the cigar industry barely managed to maintain itself until 1929 when consumption amounted to but six and five-tenths billions. The two succeeding calendar years witnessed a steady drop to five and three-tenths billions in 1931. Production in 1932 amounted to less than four and five-tenths billions.
These figures show definitely that there has been a distinct decline in the demand for Connecticut valley cigar leaf. Analysis of the consumption of cigars by price class will further indicate that Connecticut wrapper is slowly losing its place in the field. While Class A cigars (listed as such by the internal revenue bureau for tax purposes because they represent those retailing at five cents or less) represented twenty-two and five-tenths per cent of the total consumed in 1920, they rapidly gained so that in 1925, forty-two per cent of the nation's output were those in Class A. By 1931 the sales of Class A products in the United States amounted to practically seventy per cent of the total. The chief significance of these figures lies in the fact that only a small percentage of Connecticut shade leaf can be used to wrap the cigars representing the largest market in the United States- the nickel variety. The reason for this is that Connecticut shade is a high-cost crop and can not be profitably sold at prices which will attract Class A manufacturers. Further- more, for various reasons, Connecticut outdoor tobacco is seldom used for wrapper. Therefore, the conclusion is justified that the chief hope of Connecticut cigar-leaf growers lies in the reduction of costs and in the revival of a market for high-priced cigars.
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THE United States department of agriculture and the Connecticut department of agriculture and its affiliates have cooperated fully with the farmers in the Connecti- cut valley to grow a better leaf from improved strains. Often they have taken the lead in experimental work. Of particular note is the work of the Connecticut Tobacco Sub-Station at Windsor under the direction of Dr. Paul J. Anderson. Much has been done at this station to im- prove strains and prepare fertilizer mixtures for different types of soils. Valuable statistical reviews of markets and crops have been prepared by Dr. Howard B. Boyd of Connecticut State College and his colleagues. Dr. Boyd is at present serving as a tobacco specialist with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in Washington. The information supplied by the substation at Windsor and by Connecticut State College has been well dissemi- nated to interested parties by the Hartford County Farm Bureau through its former secretary, Mr. Charles D. Lewis. Mr. Lewis's knowledge of the problems of Con- necticut tobacco growers has also won him a position as senior economist of the Tobacco Section, Agricultural Adjustment Administration at Washington.
Also of particular note is the activity of the Connecti- cut department of labor and factory inspection under the leadership of Commissioner Joseph M. Tone. With the assistance of several of the more influential growers in Hartford and vicinity, Commissioner Tone has been able to effect a written agreement on the part of those who raise more than ninety-five per cent of the shade leaf in Connecticut that children under fourteen years of age should not be employed. This agreement, signed in December, 1932, was a notable achievement inasmuch as
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tobacco raising is considered as agriculture in Connecti- cut, and is, therefore, not subject to labor laws and state regulation.
Little can be said of changes in marketing systems in Connecticut. Most of the shade leaf is packed by the growers and sold by them to jobbers or cigar manufac- turers. In the outdoor field the small grower usually sells to the representative of some packing-house, which in turn sells direct to cigar manufacturers. At present there is no cooperative marketing agency of any size in the Connecticut valley. The last of the larger cooperatives was the Connecticut Valley Tobacco Growers' Associa- tion, which had a short existence in the early 1920's. Little can be said of this last attempt because of the conflicting testimony as to its usefulness. It is probable, however, that there will be another cooperative attempt in the near future, as there has been at least one in nearly every decade since 1850.
As the tobacco industry of Connecticut found means to surmount the difficulties in earlier crises, it is reason- able to anticipate that Connecticut ingenuity, skill, and enterprise will find satisfactory solutions for the present problems and restore tobacco growing to its place of importance in the state.
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Bibliographical Note
FURTHER information on the tobacco industry in Con- necticut may be found in Elizabeth Ramsay, History of tobacco production in the Connecticut valley (Smith College studies in history, vol. 15, nos. 3-4, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1930), which contains a useful bibliog- raphy; in Carl A. Werner, Tobaccoland, a book about tobacco (New York, 1922); in Reavis Cox, Competition in the American tobacco industry, 1922-1932 (Columbia Uni- versity, Studies in history, economics, and public law, no. 381, New York, 1932); in Paul J. Anderson, Tobacco culture in Connecticut (Connecticut Agricultural Experi- ment Station, Bulletin, no. 364, New Haven, 1934), and in Clarence I. Hendrickson, History of tobacco production in New England (Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin, no. 174, Storrs, Connecticut, 1930), which con- tains an extensive bibliography. The author's unpub- lished master's thesis, Tariff on wrapper tobacco, with special reference to the Connecticut valley (Wesleyan Uni- versity, 1933) may be consulted in the Wesleyan Univer- sity Library.
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TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
OUI
SUSTINET
TRANSTULIT
COMMITTEE ON
HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
LIII Connecticut's Contribution to the Development of the Steamboat PENROSE ROBINSON HOOPES
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1936
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
LIII Connecticut's Contribution to the Development of the Steamboat PENROSE ROBINSON HOOPES
I O N August 22, 1787, the Constitutional Con- vention, then in session in Philadelphia to lay the foundations for a new political state, adjourned its meeting to permit its members to witness the trial of a little steamboat on the Delaware river. That boat marked the first successful application of steam to water transportation and was the forerunner of a technical revolution destined to be quite as impor- tant for the future of the new nation as the political revolution which the American colonists had just brought to a successful conclusion. Perhaps none of the delegates who saw the experiment realized its full significance or foresaw the profound social changes which the new mode of transportation was to bring to the American conti- nent. To them it appeared as but another demonstration of Yankee ingenuity to be politely patronized, rather than as a revolutionary technical advance which pre- saged the coming of a new commercial and industrial era.
Technical advances invariably have their roots in
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contemporary social conditions and, in a very real sense, the inventor is a product of his social environment. The object of inventive effort is determined by current eco- nomic conditions but the success of the effort and the rapidity with which the invention is brought to practical fulfilment is largely dependent upon the state of the related technical arts at the moment. This is not to belittle the rôle of personal genius in conceiving and carrying to completion the technical synthesis inherent in all inventions, for the inventor is by no means a mere passive instrument of external social and technical forces.
Nowhere in the history of American invention is this more clearly evidenced than in the life of John Fitch and his achievement in designing and building the first steam- boat. To appreciate the significance of that accomplish- ment requires a knowledge of the man himself, his train- ing, experience, and personal limitations, no less than of the historical circumstances which led to his under- taking the work, the current technical factors which operated to further or to retard his progress, and the social pressures which on the one hand drove him for- ward to meet an urgent social need, and on the other placed innumerable obstacles in his path to success.
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JOHN FITCH was born in Windsor (now South Windsor), Connecticut, on January 21, 1743 (O.S.), in a house situated near the boundary line between South Windsor and East Hartford. A few months of formal schooling supplemented by a study of Hodder's Arithmetic and Salmon's Geography and by instruction from his father and from the local schoolmaster in the elements of sur- veying; plenty of hard work on the farm; a year as a clerk in a country store; and a brief trip as roustabout
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on a coasting vessel, occupied the greater part of his boyhood. He was apprenticed at the age of eighteen to Benjamin Cheney, a maker of wooden clocks in East Hartford, with whom he lived for two years, continuing for another year with Benjamin's brother Timothy, a clockmaker, silversmith, and brass worker. In later years Fitch referred bitterly to the superficial character of his early training, but it was in reality perfectly typical of the education available at the time to the average farm- bred lad of central Connecticut.
By borrowing a few shillings and securing some credit he was able at the completion of his apprenticeship to establish himself in business as a brass founder, and two years of application to that trade sufficed to pay his debts and provide him with a capital of fifty pounds.
On December 29, 1767, he married Lucy Roberts who, he recorded, was "rather inclining to be an old maid" but "was deaceant woman enough and no ways ugly, but delicate in her make." Home life failed to appeal to him, however, and on January 16, 1769, he deserted his family and became a wanderer. Many years later he wrote to his friend, Nathaniel Irwin:
I know of nothing so perplexing and vexatious to a man of fealings as a turbulant Wife and Steamboat building. I experi- enced the former, and quit in season, and had I been in my right sences, I should undoubtedly treated the latter in the same manner; but for one man to be teised with Both, he must be looked on as the most unfortunate man of the world.
His travels took him to Pittsfield, Albany, New York, and finally to Trenton, New Jersey, where he settled in May, 1769. Meanwhile, he supported himself by making brass buttons and cleaning clocks. For a time he was employed by a local silversmith and after acquiring that trade he opened a shop of his own in Trenton. He suc-
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ceeded so well that by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he found himself worth £800. During the early months of the war he was active as a gunsmith in Tren- ton, but at the end of 1776, with the advance of the British forces on Trenton, he hastily removed to Bucks county, Pennsylvania. During the encampment of the American army at Valley Forge he made a small fortune by buying up supplies of tobacco and beer in Baltimore, Lancaster, and York, carting them to the camp, and disposing of them at high prices to the troops. It is said that he cleared as much as £150 a week during this period, but the business came to an end with the removal of the army in June, 1778.
What to do with his newly acquired wealth was a serious problem. It was all in the form of Continental currency, and that currency was depreciating rapidly. When it had dropped to less than one per cent of its nominal value, Fitch followed the example set by some of his shrewder contemporaries and invested what re- mained in land warrants entitling him to take up some sixteen hundred acres of land in the West.
To convert these warrants into deeds for land it was necessary to go west, pick out the most valuable loca- tions, survey the property, and record the surveys. A commission as deputy surveyor was secured through the influence of Dr. John Ewing, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and in the spring of 1780 Fitch traveled to the banks of the Ohio river. Extensive explorations were undertaken with the help of an experienced woods- man, and after a year devoted to this work he returned to Richmond, Virginia, and recorded his surveys of choice land in Jefferson, Nelson, Lincoln, and Fayette counties.
Greatly impressed with the prospective growth and
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development of the Western territory, and beset with visions of an immense fortune to be derived from that source, he devoted a few months to settling old accounts in Pennsylvania and to collecting as much ready cash as possible with a view to additional purchases of Ken- tucky lands. The spring of 1782 saw him again on the Ohio river, but unluckily he was promptly captured by Indians and after innumerable adventures and hard- ships found himself a prisoner of the British in Canada. His exchange and return to Pennsylvania were effected in 1783.
His own resources were now exhausted but his faith in the potentialities of the West was stronger than ever. He, therefore, organized a company of speculators to carry out an extensive presurvey of a hundred thousand acres of Western land in order that he and his associates might be in a position to acquire the choicest sites when the lands were offered for sale by congress. For his serv- ices in carrying on this survey Fitch was to receive a half interest in the territory finally acquired, his expenses meanwhile being met by the members of the company. The first trip was successful in locating large tracts of valuable land, and a second expedition early in 1785 added two hundred and fifty thousand acres to the terri- tory already surveyed. Upon his return to Pennsylvania he applied to congress for an appointment as official surveyor of Western lands, hoping thereby to strengthen the position of the company when the anticipated offer- ing of land was made.
While awaiting a decision on this application (which was ultimately denied) Fitch occupied himself with further study of the problems of the West. Although at that period he could not foresee the eventual failure of the land scheme, the leaders of the new nation were even
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then making plans of their own for the disposition of the Western lands, plans which were to result in depriving Fitch and his company of the supposed advantages gained from his presurveys. When, later in the year 1785, these plans were enacted into law, Fitch could only express his disappointment and resign himself to the loss with the remark: "Thus was an immense fortune reduced to nothing at one blow." Meanwhile, however, he had engraved and published a map of the territory, and in April, 1785, while pondering over the difficulties of travel through Kentucky and Ohio, Fitch hit upon the idea of utilizing a steam engine in a boat.
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THIS conception of a new mode of transportation was to dominate his activities during the next ten years. He saw clearly the necessity for the settlement and physical development of the West if the anticipated speculative land values were to be realized. Many of the early specu- lative holders of land warrants were no more concerned with the development of the new lands than the modern stock speculator is with the physical problems of the corporations in whose securities he hopes to make a profit. Not so Fitch. To him it was obvious that the future of the West must be dependent upon growth in population and upon an expanding industry and commerce which could be assured only by cheap and rapid transportation facilities. Time and again in later years he stressed this in his private letters and petitions to the state legis- latures. The steamboat "would not only make the Mis- sissippi as navigable as Tide water, but would make our vast Territory on those waters an inconceivable fund in the Treasury of the United States," he wrote in 1786; and again in 1790, "The western waters of the United
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States, which have hitherto been navigated with great difficulty and expence, may now be ascended with safety, conveniency, and great velocity, consequently, by these means an immediate increased value will be given to the Western Territory."
Fitch made no claim to being the first to conceive of a steamboat. The idea was widely current throughout Europe and America some years before he undertook to demonstrate it in practice. As early as 1736 Jonathan Hulls of England had published elaborate drawings and descriptions of a boat making use of the Newcomen atmospheric engine as a source of power. Both before and after that date similar schemes were proposed, but so far as is now known none of them was put into execu- tion prior to 1787 when Fitch made his first practical demonstration on the Delaware river. The atmospheric engine was essentially a pumping device, and due to its size and weight in proportion to the power developed, it was incapable of any significant development as a port- able power plant adaptable to use in a vessel. Not until 1769, when James Watt patented the steam engine with separate condenser, did the problem become technically solvable, and only in 1782, after Watt had invented the double-acting engine, was steam navigation brought within the realm of practical possibility.
Reports of Watt's inventions were early circulated in Pennsylvania and the thought of applying the steam engine to navigation occurred to many of the ingenious men of the time. Fitch himself wrote:
In October [1785] I called on the ingenious Mr. [William] Henry, of Lancaster, to take his opinion on my drafts, who informed me, that I was not the first person who had thought of applying Steam to vessels; that he had conversed with Mr. Andrew Ellicott as early as the year 1775, and that Mr. Paine,
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author of Common Sense, had suggested the same thing to him in the winter of 1778; that some time after, he [Mr. Henry] thinking more seriously of the matter, was of opinion it might be easily perfected and accordingly made some drafts which he proposed to lay before the [American] Philosophical Society and which he then showed me, but added as he had neglected to bring them to public view, and as I had first published the plan to the world, he would lay no claim to the invention.
While Fitch was thus not the first to recognize the advantages of steam navigation, he seems to have arrived at the concept independently and to have de- rived little or nothing from the speculations of those who had preceded him. His accomplishment, as distinct from those of his predecessors, was that he first translated a vague speculation into a useful machine, drawing to- gether and materializing the disconnected threads of ideas implicit in the state of the technical arts and social imperatives of the year 1785.
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THE first step in reducing the idea of steam navigation to practice was to construct a model embodying a method of ship propulsion adapted to the capabilities of a steam engine. No working model of an engine was attempted, but a miniature boat equipped with paddle wheels was built and successfully tested. Owing to the scale of the experiment the wheels were necessarily small in diameter and the paddles consequently struck the surface of the water at such a high angle as to result in great loss of power. This paddle-wheel model was nevertheless the basis upon which Fitch first solicited patronage for large- scale experiments.
The logical simplicity of the plan as embodied in the model seems to have appealed strongly to the scientific
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men to whom he exhibited it. Dr. John Ewing, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote on August 20, 1785 :
I have examined Mr. Fitche's machine for rowing a Boat, by the alternate operation of steam, and the atmosphere, and am of opinion that his principles are proper, and Philosophical, and have no doubt of the success of the scheme if executed by a skilful workman. It is certain that the extensive force of Water, when converted into steam, is equal to any obstruction that can be laid in its way, so as to burst any metalick vessel in which we would endeavour to confine it, and the application of this force to turn a wheel in the water, so as to answer the purpose of Oars, seems easy and natural by the machine which he proposes, and of which he has shown me a rough model. . . . The project deserves a trial to be made of it, to see how far the execution will answer the theory.
A week later Dr. Samuel S. Smith, professor in the College of New Jersey and later its president, wrote: "Mr. Fitch has shown me a model of an instrument to row a Boat against streams, which appears to me to be constructed on just and Philosophical principles." William C. Houston, a former professor in the College of New Jersey and a member of congress, in a letter of August 25, 1785, to Lambert Cadwallader, wrote:
I have examined the Principles and construction of Mr. Fitche's steamboat, and though not troubled with a Penchant for projects, cannot help approving the simplicity of the plan. The greatest objections to most pretensions of this sort, is the delicacy and complication of the machinery. This does not seem liable to such objections. . .. I cannot help expressing a wish that it may be practicable to do something toward pro- curing an experiment.
Gardoqui, the Spanish minister to the United States, thought well enough of the plan to make a tentative offer of assistance conditioned upon Fitch giving the
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benefit of the invention to the Spanish king, but the inventor declined to enter into such an arrangement, for the steamboat project was still intimately associated in his mind with the future of his Western landholdings. A vague appeal to congress for "encouragement" was without results, and on September 27, 1785, Fitch pre- sented the model of the boat, together with a drawing and description of it, to the American Philosophical Society. The papers have long since disappeared, but the model itself is still in the possession of the society. The paddle wheels with which it is equipped consist of two small rotary drums over which chains carrying the paddles are passed, the general design being somewhat similar to the modern type of chain flight conveyer. It is not the practical form of wheel subsequently used by Morey, Fulton, and their successors, although con- temporary references to it as a "paddle wheel" have led many modern commentators to assume that such was originally the case.
On April 17, 1786, Fitch went to Philadelphia to organize a company for financing experiments on a com- mercial scale. It is a tribute to his talents as a promoter that within a week he obtained enough subscriptions to justify a beginning. The leading subscribers were the members of the land company out of whose activity the realization of the necessity for improved Western trans- portation had arisen in Fitch's mind. The capital of the company consisted of forty shares, of which Fitch retained one half, each subscriber being expected to pay assessments on his shares as money was needed during the progress of the work, and an initial payment of twenty dollars a share gave the inventor funds in excess of three hundred dollars with which to commence opera- tions. Had he foreseen but a few of the difficulties with
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which he was soon to be faced, it is doubtful whether he would have undertaken the task.
Much of the difficulty encountered in building an operative engine was due to the primitive machinery and inexperienced mechanics available. Industrial equip- ment of the period was constructed largely of wood and the standards of workmanship were, in general, of the crudest. Watt himself, working in England with the most highly developed machinery and most expert workmen to be found anywhere, was obliged to be content with cylinders bored as much as three eighths of an inch out of round. It is small wonder, therefore, that Fitch was forced to struggle with loose pistons, leaky cylinder heads, and bursting boilers. His results were limited by the ability of the Philadelphia foundries to cast only the simplest shapes, by the necessity of avoiding stand- ards of workmanship with which blacksmiths, carpenters, and coppersmiths were unfamiliar, and by the lack of suitable machine tools with which to bore, turn, and drill comparatively large metal parts. These limitations account for the use which he made of wood as a material for such parts as the cylinder heads and boiler casings. They explain the attempts to construct boilers and con- densers of excessively thin copper sheets soldered to- gether, and they tell much of the story behind the increasing difficulties encountered in building larger and larger engines. The cylinders were probably bored on one of the upright boring mills used during the Revolu- tionary War in the production of cannon. The steam valves and small fittings were of brass and presumably presented no serious problems to one with Fitch's experi- ence, being simple castings machined by the methods which he had learned during his apprenticeship. The driving mechanism and paddles were of wood, reinforced
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