USA > Iowa > Clinton County > Wolfe's history of Clinton County, Iowa, Volume 1 > Part 36
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The Novelty Iron Works is another plant not to be forgotten in naming the present-day industries. This concern 'does a general iron work business and are founders and manufacturers of marine and stationary engines. Many of the swiftest boats on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers are equipped with their engines and machinery.
The Clinton Paper Company is an old established industry that has always been blessed with prosperity. It manufactures all kinds of straw and rag paper for wrapping purposes and the well known "Red Express" paper. This plant usually operates both day and night to keep up with the demand for its excellent product.
The United States Steel Lock Company is a growing industry. Its product is steel locks and builders' hardware. The goods here made are of
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that quality that find sale in the best markets in the country. About two hun- dred persons are employed and much modern machinery. In many ways this is one of the best factories for the city that is now in operation. It gives steady employment to a large number of men and women in the various de- partments.
T. G. Pelton, North Side, is engaged in the manufacture of gasoline engines of a superior grade that find a regular market and give employment to a number of mechanics.
The Schall-Hutchinson Company makes chocolates, bonbons and can- dies for the trade in large quantities. They were established in 1904 and now give employment to fifty persons.
Watkins, Skellinger & Company make machinery of their own inven- tion. for the production of any and all kinds of wire goods from steel wire.
The flour industry is handled on a large scale by two milling plants, the Model Roller and the Clinton Milling Company. A half dozen men are con- stantly employed in operating these roller mills. There are other smaller mills.
The Clinton Saddlery Company is engaged in an extensive manner in the production of "assembler" harness and saddlery goods for the retail har- ness trade. Their new plant is on Third street and Ninth avenue. They are large jobbers in neck-yokes, saddlery hardware, blankets, robes, etc. Daniel Thompson and other local capitalists are the promoters. Seventy-five men found employment as long ago as 1905.
The Clinton Brewing Company, about 1904. erected at Ringwood (a part of Clinton now) one of the most complete modern breweries in the cen- tral West, its cost being over one hundred thousand dollars, and here large quantities of beer are produced annually.
The Edwards Manufacturing Company. established about 1903-4. car- ries on an exclusive skirt manufactory, employing nearly a hundred persons in the making of mercerized silk skirts: seventy-five machines are kept run- ning constantly. In 1904, over one hundred and twenty-five thousand skirts were made.
The American Wire Cloth Company, capitalized at first. about 1905. for one hundred thousand dollars, erected an immense factory for the production of wire netting and cloth for screen doors and windows. The demand for such goods is always increasing. E. E. Reynolds, from abroad. and local capital headed this gigantic enterprise. The officers of the company were at first, C. F. Curtis, president : James Peterson, vice-president : E. E. Rey- nolds, secretary and manager: Marvin J. Gates, treasurer, who. with Lafay- ette Lamb, constituted the board of directors.
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The Iowa Granite-Brick Company is an industry that is, without ex- ception, one of Clinton's best. It was capitalized for sixty thousand dollars in 1904, and the best known methods of brick-making machinery installed. The Huenneke process is used. Here are made the finest grades of all kinds and shapes in builders' brick and blocks, in an endless variety of shades and colors. Imitations of stone, cut, hammered and dressed, are made. Forty to sixty thousand brick are placed within a huge drum at sundown, and by this wonderful process, at sunrise the following day they are ready for use. Tests have repeatedly been made by the government and since then these brick have become very popular with government contractors. This company had for its president at the start, M. J. Gates, with such men as E. N. Nagel, L. M. Mill's, G. E. Lamb and J. D. Lamb as his associates. The old Lamb stone mill was utilized and, with other buildings added, provided the present plant.
There are two extensive box factories in Clinton, including the one mak- ing almost an endless amount of packing boxes for the general trade.
The Clinton Chair Company is another one of the well established manu- facturing industries of Clinton, that should find a prominent place in the history of the city. It is located on Second street in the old Clinton Paper Company's buildings. Here one finds the best grades of high-class chairs and kindred goods in up-to-date styles.
The glucose works-the plant of the Clinton Sugar Refinery Company- cannot come in for more than its share, when speaking of the large and profitable industries of the city. These works consume an immense amount of corn daily and produce glucose that finds its way into almost all countries of the world, enters into syrups, candies and other household commodities that have an ever increasing demand. It is operated on thoroughly modern principles by men skilled in the art and backed by an unlimited capital for carrying on such an extensive plant.
The wholesale houses of Greater Clinton include two hardwares, two groceries and many other lesser concerns.
Several of the above named industries have already been mentioned as to the detail and as to the "men behind the machines" in the biographical volume of this work, and need not here be repeated.
THE L. ITEN & SONS CRACKER AND BISCUIT FACTORY.
Perhaps no one industry in Clinton has come to the front so rapidly, and made such a great commercial success, of late years, as the Snow White
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Bakery of L. Iten & Sons, whose immense plant is situated on Second street on the main thoroughfare of the Twin Cities. This business was estab- lished in 1892 and has come to be one of national reputation. Here are manu- factured for the wholesale and retail trade of the Middle West, all kinds of crackers, wafers, cookies, ginger snaps and a hundred and more kinds of bis- cuits and crackers, in bulk and packages. They purchase their flour in im- mense cargoes; their sugars all' come direct from the great plantations of the South, and honey is bought direct from the hives in many ton lots. Lard of the purest grade only is employed-hence the high grade of their goods. The machinery of this wonderful plant is run by individual motors, clean and safe. Only the latest machinery known to the cracker and biscuit-mak- ing world is installed here. The water used is from an individual artesian well on the premises. Their annual output is prodigious.
The founder, L. Iten, is now deceased, but the three sons are trained experts in their line. They are Frank J., Louis C. and John J. Iten. When the business started it was in a building forty by one hundred and ninety feet, but today it occupies a brick structure, erected in 1905, measuring one hun- dred and forty by one hundred and seventy-five feet, three stories high and a basement. The total floor space is seventy thousand feet.
THE LUMBER INDUSTRY.
For many years the great industry in Clinton, and the one which built up the city, was the sawing of lumber. For about five miles the river front was largely devoted to this business, and it is not boasting to claim that in the production of lumber Clinton led the world. Probably there was more lum- ber manufactured at this point during about twenty years than anywhere else in the same area. Clinton was the leading lumber town between Minne- apolis and St. Louis, and in some years cut more lumber than any other city in the United States.
But the forests were depleted, and the log supply at last failed, the Mis- sissippi, the Clinton lumbermen's dependence, became erratic in its flow of water (though as soon as the lumber industry had disappeared the fickle river began to furnish good boating water again), the railroads began to be a com- peting factor even in the lumber business, and one by one the chimneys ceased to smoke and the saws to hum, and millions of capital accumulated by the lumber kings was transferred to new points where virgin forests awaited them, and hundreds after hundreds of Clinton's citizens, trained to the milling business from boyhood, followed the transference of the lumber industry. A
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history of Clinton, to be complete, must give prominent mention to the lum- ber industry, its rise, and its passing.
EARLY MILLS-THE BEGINNINGS OF THE INDUSTRY.
The first steam sawmill in the county was built by William G. Haun in 1849 at the mouth of Elk river, ten miles from Clinton. This was a small mill, with a maximum capacity of eight thousand feet per day, and cut only for local use. The logs were obtained from small rafts which came from the Black and Chippewa rivers. This mill ceased operations in 1858. Earlier a watermill had been operated on Elk river by Thomas Calderwood for the cut- ting of hardwood timber.
The first mill at Clinton was built by Ohio people in the fall of 1855, was purchased in 1856 by James Cassidy, who ran it for a year in cutting hardwood, then, losing money, in 1857 dismantled the mill. In 1856 Charles A. Lombard built a mill on what is now railroad ground, near the west bridge pier, but did not run it long. In 1856 A. J. Parmlee built a mill in South Clinton, which was not very successful, was sold to Joseph B. Davis and soon afterward destroyed by fire.
C. LAMB & SONS.
Gray & Lunt, from Maine, bought the mill of Charles Lombard in Jan- uary, 1857, sold the machinery to the railroad, and began to rebuild the mill under the supervision of a partner, who later, so prominent in all the affairs of Clinton, was introduced to the people by the Herald as "Chancy Lamb, an experienced millwright and lumberman from New York, who, after its com- pletion, would attend exclusively to manufacturing lumber." A little later Mr. Lamb purchased the entire mill, but had scarcely gotten it into good run- ning order when it was burned, October 6, 1859. He at once rebuilt on the site of his later brick mill, and by the beginning of the season of 1860 was ready with a mill of daily capacity of forty thousand feet. In 1868 C. Lamb & Sons ( for by this time he had taken his sons, Artemus and Lafayette, into the business) built what was known as the stone mill, with a capacity of ten million feet yearly. This was known as Mill A, the 1860 mill as Mill B. In 1876 the Mill B was burned, but was immediately rebuilt, with an increased capacity of one hundred and twenty-five thousand feet per day.
In 1857 Alfred Cobb, of Syracuse, New York, built a mill about two miles south of Clinton, soon sold out to Coan & Smith, who sold to Bom-
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gardner & Byng, who later sold to the Lamb-Byng Company, C. Lamb & Sons purchasing an interest and finally the whole property. This mill. D. was destroyed by fire on January 4, 1877, but was rebuilt with a capacity of fifty thousand feet daily, and resumed operations in 1879. In 1879 the of- fices and lumber yards burned, making a total loss by fire in twenty years of three hundred thousand dollars. In this same locality, later called Riverside and Chancy, Wheeler & Warner had erected a mill in 1869 with a daily ca- pacity of fifty thousand feet, which was purchased by the Lamb-Byng Com- pany in 1873, and by C. Lamb & Sons in 1878, and became Mill C. This mill was remodeled in 1886, and its capacity increased to one hundred and twenty- five thousand feet per day. These four mills had a capacity combined of four hundred and fifty thousand feet of lumber, ninety thousand shingles and sixty thousand laths per day, or an aggregate of eighty million to one hun- dred million feet of lumber, ten million shingles, and ten million laths per year.
Mr. Lamb was quick to see the advantages of suggested improvements and willing to try their efficiency. It is claimed that the first band mill ever operated in white pine timber was placed by him in the Mill B in 1884. He soon adopted the plan of towing rafts by steamboat, and built a full fleet of raft steamers. C. Lamb & Sons became interested in other enterprises of Clinton, and have been since their inception one of the most important firms doing business in Clinton. Their milling operations were closed about 1905. up to which year they continued one mill running, and did a wholesale and jobbing business.
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W. J. YOUNG & CO.
In 1858 William J. Young opened a yard at Clinton for the retailing of lumber which was manufactured by the Ohio Mill at La Crosse, Wisconsin. This mill was not a paying venture, and, on the advice of Mr. Young, the company moved it to Clinton, where the mill was set up under the name of W. J. Young & Company. This mill had a capacity of six to eight thousand feet per day, and was succeeded in 1860 by one of much greater capacity. In 1866 Mr. Young built the great mill which was for many years reputed as the largest mill in the world. at the junction of the river and Beaver Island slough, with a capacity at that time of fifty million feet of lumber. twenty million shingles, and fifteen million laths per year, operated by an enormous one-thousand-horse-power engine.
Up to 1865 the log rafts from up the river, the stock for which was ob- tained from the booms of Black river at La Crosse, of the Chippewa at Beef Slough, and West Newton, and from the St. Croix river at Stillwater, Minne-
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sota, were floated to the mill's by the natural current of the stream, but about this time Mr. Young inaugurated the successful experiment of expediting matters by towing with a steamboat, pushing the rafts, saving weeks of time and the necessity of employing so many men as when the rafts were floated. In the construction of rafts, the many augur holes bored into the timber, un- der the supposition of a necessity for holding the raft together with pins, was a serious impairment of the value of the timber, and Mr. Young introduced what has since been known as the "brailed" raft system in which loose logs, arranged in tiers or ranks, are merely surrounded by booms and towed safely by the boats. Under the old system it was necessary to secure the rafts with poles and pins to a solidity, enabling the building of a shanty for the use of the men, and to provide a firm footing in the use of poles for keeping the raft from the banks and shoals. To accomplish this, most of the logs were bored with two inch or larger augur holes, in order to pin the raft, and this involved the loss of a considerable per cent of the lumber. causing it to be thrown into lower grades.
Mr. Young was first in partnership with the Cincinnati men for whom he had moved the original mill, later purchased their interests and formed a connection with John McGraw, of Ithaca. New York, a large Eastern lum- berman. whose interests he later purchased. Mr. Young steadily improved his machinery and extended his operations, the growth of his business being shown by the fact that in 1874 the cut was thirty million feet of lumber and seventeen million shingles; in 1875 thirty-five million feet of lumber and fourteen million shingles; in 1880 fifty million feet of lumber and twenty million shingles; while in the year of the maximum production of his mills they produced approximately one hundred million feet of lumber and forty million shingles, the increased production being accounted for mostly by im- provements in machinery. The mills were not operated after 1897, and were dismantled, the machinery being shipped elsewhere. while his sons turned their attention to other enterprises in Clinton and elsewhere.
THE CLINTON LUMBER COMPANY.
This company began in 1857 when Hosford & Miller built a mill at Lyons, but, having no railroad facilities, removed the mill to Clinton in 1859. and rebuilt it. Again they enlarged it in 1861 to a capacity of fifty thousand feet of lumber and twenty thousand laths per day. In January. 1866, A. P. Hosford. G. C. Smith, Abraham Siddle, Jerome Scofield, L. W. Buck and S. J. Bishop incorporated the Clinton Lumber Company, purchased the Hos-
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ford & Miller property, and erected a new mill. In 1880 L. B. Wadleigh bought a controlling interest, tore down the old mills, and built a new one with yearly capacity of twenty-five million feet of lumber, four million shingles and six million five hundred thousand laths. This mill continued in operation until the close of the season of 1893.
THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER LOGGING COMPANY.
In the early seventies the necessity was foreseen of forestalling a possible insufficient supply of logs for the devouring Clinton mills. So the Mississippi River Logging Company was formed, in which Messrs. C. Lamb, David Joyce and W. J. Young were among the most prominent members, and a supply of logs secured from the Chippewa, and Beef Slough used by the com- pany virtually as a distributing reservoir for logs. The local mill men of the Chippewa tried in the courts to prevent this company from running loose logs down the stream, on the ground of interfering with navigation, but the Mississippi men conquered and obtained a sufficient supply of logs except when low water prevented. This company, the Chippewa Lumber and Boom Company, a similar organization in which these same men were interested, and the Beef Slough Manufacturing, Booming and Driving Association handled all the logs which passed to the mills below the junction of the Chippewa and the Mississippi, for many years.
MILLS OPERATED AT LYONS.
The pioneer mill at Lyons was built by Samuel Cox and G. W. Stum- baugh upon the site later occupied by the machine shop of Cummings Broth- ers, in 1854. This mill burned in 1856 and was rebuilt by Stumbaugh, who ran it alone until his death; in 1867 it was dismantled.
Cox, Johnson & Cox built a mill in 1855, which failed in the panic of 1857. The same year John Pickering built a mill along Ringwood slough, above the location of the Joyce mill later, which ran till about 1860. Captain Beckwith built a mill near the upper debouchment of the slough into the river, and operated it erratically until war times. A. T. Cross about the same time built a mill on the site of the later paper mill. In 1856 Daniel Dean and Wil- liam Swanson built a shingle mill above the Stockwell site, and in 1857 Hos- ford & Miller built the mill afterwards moved to Clinton. In 1860 Ira Stockwell purchased the Cox mill and in 1867 the Stumbaugh mill, which he ran until 1870, when he added the machinery of the latter mill to the
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former, giving it a capacity of one hundred thousand feet daily. This mill was burned May 19, 1876, was not rebuilt, and the loss was great to Lyons industry.
GARDINER, BATCHELDER & WELLES.
In the spring of 1874 the old Haun property was purchased by L. B. Wadleigh, E. P. Welles and D. J. Batchelder, and reconstructed, making a mill of sixty thousand feet daily capacity. In 1877 the firm of Welles, Gard- iner & Company began, Stimson S. Gardiner and his sons, Silas W. and George S., purchasing Mr. Wadleigh's interest. In 1878 the Gardiners and Batch- elder bought out the interest of E. P. Welles, but did not change the firm name. In 1879 C. F. Welles became a member of the company, which was incorporated as Gardiner, Batchelder & Welles. In 1881 they built another mill above the first one with a capacity of one hundred thousand feet of lum- ber, forty thousand shingles and thirty thousand laths daily. In 1887 the mills were further improved, until they had a combined capacity of two hun- dred and twenty-five thousand feet per day, or forty million feet of lumber and ten million shingles in a season. These mills closed in 1894, having ex- hausted the timber supply of the company. Mr. Gardiner had before his purchase of interests in these mills been concerned in the Lamb-Byng Com- pany at Clinton, and since the closing up of the mills the Gardiner interests have been chiefly in the lumbering business of Eastman, Gardiner & Com- pany, organized by Mr. Gardiner and his sons, and Lauren C. and Charles S. Eastman, operating in long leaf yellow pine at Laurel, Mississippi.
DAVID JOYCE.
David Joyce came to Lyons in 1861 and leased the Stumbaugh mill, purchasing his log stock in the raft and disposing of his lumber in a retail yard. In 1869 he went into partnership with S. I. Smith, and Joyce & Smith erected a sawmill on Ringwood slough, with capacity of fifty thousand feet of lumber and twenty-five thousand shingles daily. In 1873 Mr. Joyce pur- chased the interest of his partner and became sole owner, and as his opera- tions increased became one of the most influential lumbermen of the Missis- sippi valley, becoming interested in the manufacture of lumber at several other points. In July, 1888, his mill was burned, but by the opening of the next season another had been erected, ready to begin operations, with a capacity of one hundred thousand feet of lumber, forty thousand shingles and twenty thousand laths per day. This mill he operated until his death in 1895, after
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which his son, W. T. Joyce, carried on the business, and this mill was running as the last of the big mills of Clinton. In connection with the Joyce mill was a planing mill, and for many years a sash, door and blind industry was car- ried on in connection. The Joyces had many and varied business interests, in Clinton as well as in many other places.
Anthony & McLoskey had. in 1875, a mill at Camanche which recorded a cut that year of four million feet of lumber and two million shingles. This was for many years the largest industry in that town, and was destroyed by the burning of the mill.
CURTIS BROTHERS & COMPANY.
In 1866 Charles F. Curtis and W. G. Hemingway bought the interests of Claussen and Thornburg in the firm of Claussen, Thornburg & Smith, who were running a small sash, door and planing factory at Seventh and Front streets. In 1867 George M. Curtis bought out the interest of Smith and the same year they bought out Hemingway. The next year Judson E. Carpen- ter. their uncle, was taken into the business, and the firm name, Curtis Broth- ers & Company, then adopted, has not been changed since. They began in 1866 with three men, a superintendent, engineer and planing room man. and their chief business was the dressing of lumber. In 1869 they bought out the factory of C. H. Toll at Thirteenth avenue and Second street, the present location. At that time they employed about fifty men and boys, and made about seventy-five doors and two hundred and fifty windows a day. The business has steadily increased. In 1879 they employed one hundred and eighty men, in 1886 three hundred. in 1910 employ about three hundred and seventy-five, and turn out one thousand doors and two thousand five hun- dred windows a day, and other mill work in proportion.
In 1881 Fowler Stone and Cornelius S. Curtis were taken into the com- pany. which was then incorporated, and a branch factory started at Wausau, Wisconsin, which has about the same capacity as the Clinton factory. In 1890 this branch and a sales warehouse at Minneapolis were sold to the Curtis & Yale Company. The companies have three jobbing houses under different designations at Sioux City, Lincoln, Nebraska, and Oklahoma City. The products of the sash and door factory go to nearly every state in the union. The Clinton office and warehouse covers an area eighty by three hundred feet. with a three-story and basement building, and the factory is three hundred by two hundred and seventy-five feet. besides the sheds. The pine lumber used now comes mostly from California, from a mill in which the brothers are
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stockholders; it formerly was obtained in Wisconsin and Michigan. The great increase in the volume of the product is due to the employment of in- proved machinery, for the company has employed almost as many men as now for many years.
LYONS.
Lyons, once a separate city, but now included within the municipality of Clinton. had a history before she had a neighbor by the name of Clinton, having labored alone for eighteen years before Clinton was platted. Lyons was platted in April, 1837, by Elijah Buell, George W. Harlan, Dennis War- ren. Chalkley A. Hoag and Suel Foster and named the place "Lyons" after the city of that name by the waters of the rushing Rhone, in France. The land was entered and a patent received from the government in 1840, when other adjoining lands were added to the original plat. In the meantime set- tlements were effected at Fulton, Illinois. and a ferry boat established between the two places. though no mail crossed the river until 1843. Order prevailed. the good seeds of education and religion were sown, and all the inhabitants were full of hope. Political meetings were not neglected. but partisan ani- mosity did not run to a high pitch, though there was an unusual amount of enthusiasm at the time of the Harrison campaign.
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