USA > Iowa > Washington County > History of Washington County, Iowa from the first white settlements to 1908. Also biographical sketches of some prominent citizens of the county, Vol. I > Part 27
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
tubes. A great deal of machinery is now run here by electric motors, day and night, and Washington, which has no water power or coal mines, that used to be deemed essential for manufacturing, is on an equality with towns that have these old advantages.
The city put in a seventeen thousand dollar electric plant in 1002. A special hot election authorized a maximum expenditure of that sum, if needed. and a Davenport firm took twelve thousand dollars in bonds at four per cent, and would take three thousand dollars more later. Both arcs and incan- descents were to be used. The bid to construct was twelve thousand five hundred dollars. In 1907 it cost three thousand four hundred and thirteen dollars and fifty-four cents to run it and in 1908 two thousand nine hundred dollars, exclusive of interest on bonds. The last four per cent bond is due in 1922. St. Clair Lewis has been the efficient head of both water and electric plants many years.
Sewerage .- Within the last ten years, a city council had sense and courage enough to hire an engineer to map a district, make a plan to drain the city. and we are trying to live up to it. First and last, it is estimated by surveyors and ex-city officials, we have, foolishly or wisely, mainly foolishly, spent one hundred thousand dollars on underground sewers, shallow drains, ditches, etc. A sewer is a municipal gut, with laterals-nasty, but a stern necessity. And, really, a big city, catacombed with sewers, hides its chiefest marvels. Ever read Victor Hugo's account of the sewer system of Paris, in "Les Miserables?" If not. don't sleep till you have with him threaded that wonderful under- world. At last, Washington has a Big Sewer, built of brick, tile, Vousir. Its general trend, like that of tornadoes, is from southwest to northeast, from Crooked creek to the water works, and beyond, tapping all that flat region cov- ered by the pearl button factory, seed house, etc. The first section from the brickyard to Len Smouse's corner was two thousand eight hun- dred and twenty eight feet, built by Swift. at a loss, for ten thousand six hundred dollars : egg-shape, three feet across horizontally, five feet perpendicular, for one thousand feet; next eight hundred feet. three feet by four and a half ; the rest, three feet by four ; thence to the rail- road, two feet by three ; from the tracks, one thousand one hundred feet. a thirty-inch tile to Geo. Mckay's. Roy Davis built a one thousand six hundred foot section, cost not available to me. From the brickyard to Perry Hayes' line the sewer is made of Vousir, or four-holed cement blocks, each block an arc of a circle, so that, when laid, the sewer is a perfect circle. These blocks should have been cemented, experts say : each freshet sets them awry, and some of them are now exposed. This section cost ten thousand dollars, and is a bad job, and lacks capacity, having broken during every flood. It is five
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JAMES DAWSON
HE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
thousand two hundred feet from the brickyard to the creek, and that stretch is only three feet in diameter. There are many laterals, as from the court- house, North Marion and Iowa avenues, and from several directions along the route. This intestinal canal accommodates perhaps one-half of our people, together with its laterals and other tributaries. Lesser entrails take the secre- tions from other areas. As a result, hundreds of houses tap these arteries, and kitchen sinks, bath rooms and closets were put in by hundreds, and there are left hardly enough out-houses to go round with mischievous boys on Hallowe'en. Where sewers were not available, cess-pools have been put in, to justify bath and closet, and the sanitary conditions have greatly improved, to say nothing about the multiplication of creature comforts, conveniences, luxuries. We are pretty well civilized now, in the city, and well-to-do farmers, 'building modern houses, are level with us in sanitation. Many a liomo, both in city and country, has realized, at last, the dream of their lives, in extend- 'ing the gracious functions and services of their houses. Yes, life is now well worth living.
Telephone .- Everybody used to walk. Curiously, as the walks got good, we quit walking and "hellooed:"- saving time, but, losing health, in non- exercise. The first telephone installed in this county dates from 1890. Thomas Dupuis put in one of his own make, and soon had several in operation. In '94 he and his son were given a franchise to build and operate a 'phone exchange. He, L. D. Robinson and D. H. Logan organized the Washington Telephone Co. with ten thousand dollars capital. Construction was begun June 1, '94; no pole line leads were constructed, but they built leads over the tops of build- ings around the square, called bridging construction. The Western Telephone Construction Co. made the office equipment. The company began operations November 6, '94, with forty-nine subscribers. Rates for residence one dollar and twenty-five cents per month and two dollars and eight cents for business. In '96 part of the system had to be rebuilt, as it had grown beyond all anticipa- tion, and rates were lowered to one dollar for homes and one dollar and fifty cents for business.
In '97, L. D. Robinson and W. A. Wilson bought all the stock, when there were nearly two hundred 'phones in town. And they rebuilt the whole system, making pole leads and installing three thousand feet of fifty-pair cable and putting in more office equipment. In October, '97, they began building eighty- one miles of toll lines to eleven of the main towns in the county, at a cost of ten thousand dollars. The material used was of the best. In October, '99, a toll line service had been installed to all the towns in the county. On July 10,
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'90, the first rural line was put in, giving service to John and Charles Grif- fith and David McLaughlin.
In June, 1903, the company was incorporated with a capital stock of sixty thousand dollar-, of which fifty thousand dollars was paid up and ten thousand dollars in the treasury. The stockholders were Robinson, Wilson, E. G. Fox, H. M. Eicher, Orville Elder, F. H. Smith, Dr. E. T. Wickham, F. L. Wilson. They made extensive improvements, adding more office equip- ment and putting in over four thousand feet of under-ground cable. and other extensions and improvements.
In May, 1906, additional stock of ten thousand dollars was issued to L. H. Wallace and Ralph Smith, making the sixty thousand dollar stock paid up. In the fall, Robinson and Wilson retired. In January, 1907. the stock was in- creased from sixty thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars, all paid up. In that spring the company made very extensive improvements, rebuild- ing the entire system, putting in approximately forty-five thousand feet of cable of different capacity, from twenty-five-pair cable to one hundred and fifty-pair cable ; also rebuilding their office and adding a new complete office equipment, and building thirty-two miles of copper toll line circuit from Riverside to Brighton, meeting Iowa City at Riverside and Fairfield at Brighton.
On April 1, '08, E. G. Fox, manager and stock-holder, retired, selling his stock to C. J. Wilson, D. W. Mannhardt was engaged as manager. and on February 1, 'og, F. H. Smith sold his stock to Mannhardt.
Up to this time, the telephone business in the county developed very rapidly, as shown by this data obtainable from the different exchanges in the county and some of the adjoining exchanges, as follows :
Brighton Mutual Tele. Co. 438 telephones.
Uniondale Tele. Co., Riverside 400
Kalona Mutual Tele. Co. 212
West Chester Mutual Tele. Co. 230
..
Olds Telephone Co., Crawfordsville. 160 . .
Mutual Tele. Co., Haskins.
I 30
Wayland & Coppeck (in county )
90
..
Ainsworth Telephone Company
260
Wellman Mutual Tele. Co.
500
Mutual Tele. Co. in Keota ( in county )
78
..
Richland Tele. Co. 40
Washington Mutual Tele. Co 149
Washington Tele. Co. I 500
..
..
Total number telephones in county, January 1, '09 4187
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Post-Office .- This is a business that has the smallest competition known. It has cut into the banking and express business, and has them as rivals in sending money and parcels. Still, it is the sole business in every town that is not over-done. For the year ending March 31, '09, our office sent eight thousand three hundred and sixteen money orders and cashed thirty thousand one hundred and ninety-two. The department pays our nine rural carriers eight thousand four hundred and forty-five dollars and the four city carriers three thousand one hundred dollars, and gives this office for wages of hands six thousand four hundred dollars and four hundred and fifty dollars for re- pairs and messengers hauling mail to and from depots, and six hundred and sixty dollars for rent, and for four railroad postal clerks living here five thou- sand five hundred dollars, a total of money spent here of twenty-four thousand five hundred and fifty-five dollars a year. The rural carriers handle on an average sixty-five thousand five hundred pieces each month, that is, each one handles three hundred pieces a day. We ought to have in Washington a fed- eral building for post-office, etc. A good many rural post-offices have quit. Except in the larger centers, the post-office is a vanishing institution.
Seed House .- F. B. Mills & Co., of Syracuse, New York, incorporated in that state, built here in 1907 a three-story brick building forty hy one hundred feet, as a branch seed house. This is their western distributing point, but, funnily, lots of eastern orders come here to be filled, even from parties who are neighbors to Syracuse. They receive here seeds from all the states in the union and from Europe and other foreign countries, packing them and filling orders through the post-office mainly. L. D. Langworthy, the local manager, says the volume of business done this year was double that of last year. He employed ninety-two men, women and youths to do the work from December till June 1. Next year he will have in a complete printing plant, to make the catalogs, seed package inscriptions, labels, etc. The labor pay-roll was heavy this season, girls making eight, nine, and even thirteen dollars some weeks, beating domestic service badly, and it will be continuously harder to get kitchen help, as girls universally feel that such folks are looked down on and are banned and black-balled and discriminated against. The house gets so many postage stamps in payment, it does not buy here over two hundred to three hundred dollars worth, and so, thus far, is no special help to our post-office, but the office got an extra hand or two from the department, to handle the tremendous out-put. One item was a quarter million of one style of small package. The establishment gives us a certain prestige, and we wel- come the big plant among our industrial factors.
Fire Department .- Every town has to burn two or three times before it gets sense. At first it depends on a bucket brigade. All come at an alarm.
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
and those who are not yelling orders and suggestions and doing nothing else, get in line and pass buckets and spill half the water before the rest of it kisses the flame, with a steamy, hissing smack. Others are toting out stuff. All manage to get soaked and muddy. For ages we did that, and could not do otherwise. We had no water works. We dug cisterns in the corners of the square, and ran water from the surrounding roofs into them. Fine places for bull frogs, "crawfish," mosquitoes and muskrats. We lacked water, but had plenty of beer.
Providence kept chiding and chastening us. In '84 half the west side turned into ashes, from the First National Bank corner to what was the Stewart drug store, occupied by Emerson Hoover. It was a seventy-five thousand dollar loss, but need not have been over seventy-five dollars if we had had any means to stand off from the intense heat, say thirty feet, and throw water twenty-five feet high. The "bucket shops" were of no avail. In humiliation we had to let the half block burn. The hoi polloi demanded a fire department. It became an issue-fire-fighting apparatus. Geo. Rod- man, Burrell and two more, have forgotten whom, were elected to the council on that score. We bought for three thousand five hundred dollars a "Rum- sey" brake engine, hose carts and ladder truck. That engine was a splendid gymnastic : to work it taxed one's wind, and in ten minutes one sweat three gallons. It saved thousands of dollars' worth of property. It stopped a bad fire in Harwood's store cellar. The germ of a fire department was a bucket brigade organized in '82: in the next three years after getting the engine, Charles Hebener was chief and a department was set up with 100 men. Charley did good work at fires if he could abstain from mocking 'Squire Burk- holler and Gus Ross. These chiefs followed his wise lead: J. F. Curran, Hugh Kendall, E. S. Mason, H. C. Welch, Sam Hout. J. C. Ford, N. H. Jones, Scott Reister, Chas. Brown, S. R. Davis, John Little, Geo. Graff, Jake Minick, Hugh Teeter, Ralph Dougherty, John Steck, Ora Turner.
Bill Glover was foreman of the first engine company, and Kendall of the ladder truck. The boys got very expert and had lots of fun, drilling and squirting. When we got water works, the machinery was sold for a lot of hose, that was clapped on hydrants and operated by city pressure. City Hall had been built in '83. and the department occupied the lower floor with good machinery, and have a tower for elevating and draining hose by gravity drip. and the old library room upstairs, back of council chamber, is their head- quarters. There are now seventy-seven hydrants. Fire alarms are operated from the telephone station. Folk now feel comfortable and safe, for the fire lads are lively and faithful boys. Their main handicap is-bad roads. They never swear except at "a defective flue," which vainly routs them out to find
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
that its glim is doused just as they arrive after a long haul. The equipment is-two hose carts. the Jonathan Wilson and the Gazelle, twenty-five men cach, a hook and ladder company of twenty-five. But one member of the fire depart- ment has died in service -- Lucian Wagner, in '86.
Storage .- In 1902 Elmer G. Mason built for five thousand dollars, on two lots on the heights, a transfer and storage building one hundred and twenty- eight by forty feet, two stories, in which he also has an extensive machine shop, a very busy place. The plant is a good thing for its owner and for the public. He can lay up your furs and woolens and feathers where moth and rust doth not corrupt, and store fruit, vegetables, furniture and whatnot.
Paving .- In 1904, sixty-five years after the founding of the city, the first paving was laid down in the county-seat, a luxury shared with us by every owner of a country team coming in here. We had boated, and stuck in the mid, around the public square. for over half a century, showing how natural it is for an alleged moving body to keep on in the plane of its motion. That area was paved with vitreous brick, and the streets for a block each way from the park corners. The next year the paving was extended on north Marion and Iowa avenues to the railroad tracks and a bit beyond on Marion, on East Main to H. M. Eicher's residence, and on West Washington street to the entrance to Sunset Park, and the center of that street was boulevarded, or an island of grass, trees, dandelions and other choice weeds was washed by brick on either flank. Such a stimulus to driving, automobiling, promenad- ing! Gospel Ridge used to be a silent street, shaded by giant elms, where lovers foregathered in the gloaming to indulge labial and other symptoms of condition, unseen by the profane ; it was like a deserted village, but now the honk-honk and smoke and smell of mobiles keep us alert as a pitcherful of Egyptian vipers, all their heads reaching out nervously to see what is going on.
Hurry-ups .- Tamed lightning did not appear here as a working force till the railway came in '58. At first, service was at the depot, but stock men forced an office down town, and it used to be about where Eicher & Living- ston's law office is now. There Joe Rader et al. were wont to jerk the frisky tail of a thunderbolt to get the Chicago markets.
I feel quite certain, but not dead sure, that the express business also came in with the railroad. And I think W. H. Jenkins was about the first agent. If so, after him were Norman Everson and Dr. M. C. Parker, and in more modern days the late C. F. Chester, followed by W. D. Shearer in 1900. They served the United States express. In May, 1909, Wells-Fargo came in. making E. G. Fox agent. It is said the former company covers thirty thou- sand two hundred and fifty miles, including electrics and steamboats, but is exceeded by the latter in a mileage of forty-eight thousand seven hundred ; and
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IHISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
the American, forty-four thousand three hundred and sixty miles ; the Adams, thirty thousand eight hundred and eighty ; while the Pacific contents itself with twenty-three thousand miles.
Steam Laundry .- R. F. Smith started one about twenty years ago, get- ting soft water from a sandstone vein one hundred and fifty feet down. J. A. Crawford opened a rival shop in 1896. Smith sold to Major Latta, he to Eddy & Howe, they to Moulton, he to Elliott, and Crawford took it over in 1903, but now sells it to Chas. Means.
Hays & Hartman constitute the Washington Ice Cream Co., formed in 'og, to supply city and country round about with this luxury.
Dairy Products .- Nearly thirty years ago creameries and cheeseries had a great vogue in this county, and who can tell why creameries have quit, here and in many other sections? The old dash and dog churns and all the newer sorts of churns went into privacy in most farm houses, much to the joy of the kids who had to run them and cry that the butter would never come. But bye and bye, after one or two eternities, all of a sudden, a sort of salty, watery sounding noise would come from the churn, like the death-rattle in the throat, and butter clots showed color on the dasher like gold grains in a miner's pan. In the creamery period, a neighborhood sent its milk or cream, mornings and evenings, to the factory, which made lots better butter than ninety-nine out of every hundred farmers' wives could achieve then. More soap-grease than butter was made a generation ago. It was awful paste, threaded with woman's errant hair. Female tresses are usually beautiful-suck-eggs tie a wad of it with a pretty string or narrow ribbon, and stow the sentimental thing away in a book, but not a single hair of that tress looks sweet and appetizing in butter. No, Melissa dear, please exclude your locks from at least my con- signment of the golden fleece from the old brindle cow. You hear me. The creamery product relegated the old axle-grease stuff which used to disgust grocers and consumers. Many farmers' wives make prime butter now. Many have separators, and they are up on cream temperatures and other factors. A good butter-maker can get all the town customers she wants, at twenty-five cents a pound the year round. The creameries set the pace ; they were the missionaries that redeemed heathendom in butterland.
Over five hundred million pounds of creamery butter are made annually in the United States. Farmers who patronize central creameries have invested in hand separators infinitely more than all the central plants cost. In 1905, creameries, cheeseries and condenseries paid farmers thirty-one and three- tenths per cent more for milk than in 1900, but Iowa, that had nine thou- sand and seventy-five plants in 1900, lost two hundred and fifty-two in five years, Wisconsin and Minnesota beating her badly. Her creameries were
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
mostly co-operative, but the central system encroached on the smaller cream- eries and farmers' receipts decreased heavily. Perhaps that destroyed our fac- tories. There was one in Washington ; Crawfordsville had a six thousand dollar one in '92, and so had Keota : Daytonville a butter and cheese company in '81 with two thousand four hundred dollars capital ; Nira in '87 an eighteen hundred dollar factory for both butter and cheese ; Dublin a two thousand dollar cheese factory in '85 : Clay, in '74, a cheese company capitalized at six- teen hundred dollars: West Chester had early, and still has, a flourishing cheese house.
Cows are more plentiful and valuable than ever, but where did the cream- eries go, and why ? The next federal census ought to tell in how many families women and girls have to "pail the cow." It never seemed right to make a woman milk, especially in wet weather. in muddy barn-yards. She cannot dress for it. She has not cowhide boots, and should she trail skirts through mud and worse filth and squat in a puddle? It is not at all fitting. And she cannot swear enough to fill the role creditably. Did you tell her, when court- ing her and saying all those sweet things that you very well knew at the time were confounded lies,-did you tell the angel then that she would have to slop around in an old barn-yard and milk fourteen cows, nights and mornings? Of course not-you would not have dared ; but when she became your property, your chattel, about on a level with the cow, you forced her to do that nasty chore. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Nice old growly, grouchy bear you have become since you were a fraud of a lover! You are worse than a nature faker. The average woman can't talk to the average cow as she needs to be elocuted to. A cow, like an ox, needs "talking to," as well as hammering with a milk-stool when she kicks, or won't give down, or swats one in the face with her tail perfectly solid with burrs, in fly time. Women, if you do not vote for me for president, when you get the ballot, you will be very ungrateful, like average republics.
Canned Goods .- The art of canning fruits and vegetables is a recent art. We used to dry them in the sun and elsewhere, and hang dried apples and pumpkin strips from the rafters, and swell up on dried apples, but now can- ning time is as regular a thing as cleaning house. Not a fruit is skipped. This dainty art prolongs summer and fall into winter and spring, and is as stately a bridge across seasons as Gibbon's History was said to be between ancient and modern ages. And it was so individual an art that all were surprised when a Crawfordsville company incorporated with fifteen thousand dollars stock in '83. Corporations can do most things cheaper and better than individuals. Planters sell cane and beets to factories, farmers sell milk and cream to creameries and cheese factories, cucumbers, onions, etc., to
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
pickle plants, fruits to canneries, fishermen sell salmon to the all-firedest smell- ing chebangs, yet most house-wives sweat and burn themselves and say "Darn it" in a sort of religious way, while canning. preserving, jamming their fruit, and in this county churn their own butter. Groceries are full of canned goods -tomatoes, beans, beets, corn, peas, sweet potatoes, spinach, peaches. cherries. pear, quince, pumpkin, fish, etc., etc.
Incorporations .- It is interesting to glance through the books in the recorder's office, to note the varied things incorporated from the '70s and '8os down to date-church societies, loan and building associations. elevator, pipe organ, heating, hardware and furniture, clothing, mercantile, banana crate and hoop, harness, lumber, floral, pearl button, wagon-box. storage, seed plant, brick and tile, abstracting, city improvement companies -a long procession of them. The range is great, and the capital invested very considerable. Really, a great many things are made and done here, though no one has dignified us with the name "manufacturers" and asked us to yell for a tariff on any infant industries.
We have lost several things-as potteries, foundries, implement factories, grain-weighers, etc. It was a sad day for this city and county when the Wildes pulled out. Judge Ross, ages ago, ran a pottery here -- "vere is dot bottery now?" And where are Mart Kilgore's and Wildes' foundries? And Williams & Shields' woolen mill? By the way, that last story is worth telling.
Hop Williams came here from Wales in the 'Los and settled a mile south of Marshall, now Wayland, his house in Henry county, his barn in Wash- ington county. He bought a great deal of land on Williams creek, on which Ben Goldsmith built a saw mill and worked it several years. In that time. W. J. Williams came, bought out Goldsmith, and in '66 he and John Shields turned it into a woolen mill, made cloth, spun, carded, and after awhile moved the machinery to Washington, into Tom McClean's shop. Father Polluk was interested in it, but finally John Graham took it, got one Jackson to operate it, and W. J. Williams went to Missouri.
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