USA > Indiana > Lake County > A standard history of Lake County, Indiana, and the Calumet region, Volume I > Part 29
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F. S. BETZ MANUFACTORY
One of the largest of the Hammond manufactories which has been founded within the past ten years is that operated by the F. S. Betz Company, north of the Calumet River and northeast of the Simplex establishment. Since its establishment in 1904 the plant has expanded to four massive buildings, one of them a four-story structure of rein- forced concrete and steel, and does an annual business of nearly two million dollars. Over one million dollars has been invested in the manu- factories, which constantly employ from five to six hundred people. The output of the Betz Company comprises hospital supplies, surgical, dental and veterinary instruments, orthopedic apparatus, including wooden limbs and all kinds of braces, as well as hospital and office furniture.
AMERICAN MAIZE COMPANY
The magnitude of the manufacture of food products is well shown in the operations of several of the Hammond factories. The corporation known as the American Maize Company has a plant at that point on which about one million dollars has been expended and the possibilities of corn in all its manufactured forms wonderfully illustrated. Some six hundred employees are engaged in making that exposition, and over six hundred thousand dollars is expended by the management annually to support them.
FOOD PRODUCTS OF REID, MURDOCH & COMPANY
In 1905 the wholesale grocery firm of Reid, Murdoch & Company, Chicago, established a factory at Hammond, with complete facilities for receiving raw materials and shipping the finished products. Tons upon tons of fruits and vegetables are received from auxiliary stations in Indiana, Michigan and other neighboring states, and are shipped to the central establishment in Chicago as preserves, jams, jellies, pickles. sauces, vinegars and other table condiments. It is one of the big Ham- mond industries, and expends over a third of a million dollars annually among some four hundred employees.
CHAMPION POTATO MACHINES
The Champion Potato Machinery Company is peculiarly a home product. The plant manufactures machines which plant and dig pota- toes, and its products are the invention of the founder and president of
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the company, Otto Knoerzer. He was born on a farm just south of the city limits, and learned the trade of wagon making and blacksmithing in Hammond. Then he patented a potato machine and a peanut digger, interested some of the moneyed men of the city and finally built his fac- tory on the north side of the Calumet convenient to the belt lines. The plant now covers four acres and about two hundred thousand dollars has gone into the property.
STAUBE PIANO PLANT
The Staube Piano Company has a factory covering five acres at the Monon and Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville railways. The plant, which was moved from Chicago in 1904, manufactures about three-quarters of a million dollars' worth of pianos every year, employs about one hun- dred and fifty men, pays them $125,000 yearly for their services, and turns out twelve complete pianos every working day of the year.
THE HAMMOND DISTILLERY
Since December, 1901, the Hammond Distilling Company has oper- ated a modern plant on the Indiana Harbor Belt and Michigan Central railroads, on the northern banks of the Grand Calumet. Its capacity is about fifty thousand gallons daily and its annual business $6,000,000. The distillery covers about an acre and a half of the six acres owned by the company. The property is valued at $475,000, and some $250,000 is annually paid to 100 employees.
THE HAMMOND ELEVATOR
Adjoining the Hammond Distillery on the east is the large grain warehouse of the Hammond Elevator Company, with a storage capacity of more than a million bushels. For some time previous to the com- pletion of the canal through East Chicago and Indiana Harbor, thie locality marked the head of navigation. The Hammond Elevator Com- pany was organized in December, 1902, and the elevator was completed in the following year. It has a transfer capacity of fifty cars a day and is by far the largest structure of its kind in the state. Its location on the Michigan Central, the Indiana Harbor Belt and the Elgin, Joliet & East- ern lines, with its long dock frontage on the Calumet River, gives it fine facilities for handling grain.
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ENTERPRISE BED COMPANY
The Enterprise Bed Company conducts one of the largest establish- ments in the United States given over exclusively to the manufacture of bed springs. Its large plant on Marble Street covers three acres and gives steady employment to about two hundred men. Some two hundred thousand dollars is invested in the factory and the employees receive in wages and salaries more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually. The specialty of the business is the well-known Hygeia spring.
EAST CHICAGO FOUNDED
Some time in the early '60s Jacob Forsythe, an official of the Erie Railroad, built a sawmill at Poplar Point, now the Lake Michigan gate- way to Indiana Harbor, and also purchased several sections inland toward the Grand Calumet. George W. Clarke, of Chicago, his brother- in-law, had also been investing in Calumet lands, and it was probably through his exploitation of the region that Gen. J. T. Torrence, of that city, became impressed with the future importance of the Forsythe lands. At all events, in the late '80s the general approached Mr. For- sythe with his plan to found a city around the splendid harbor at Poplar Point, a small settlement called Cassella having already been formed there.
General Torrence next interested M. M. Towle in the enterprise. Mr. Towle was then a wealthy man, thought well of the scheme and, with his characteristic promptness and enthusiasm added capital to Mr. Forsythe's land and the general's plan to found a city. In brief, these were the steps which brought to life East Chicago, which Mr. Towle succeeded in organizing as a town in 1889. The details of its slow growth for the succeeding dozen years do not belong here; the founding of the modern municipality and the great industries which have so added to the fame of the Calumet region falls within the past twelve or thirteen years.
THE INLAND STEEL COMPANY'S WORKS
In 1901 the Inland Steel Company, one of the largest independent plants of the kind in the world, located at Cassella and commenced to build their mills. The harbor improvements commenced at the same time; in fact, comprised a necessary sequence to the founding of this first great industry. In 1901-02 the dredging and breakwater-building or the first work on the outer harbor, were pushed along, but operations
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on the canal were not commenced until 1903, and little progress was made until 1906. The most remarkable development in the East Chicago and Indiana Harbor district has been accomplished since that year.
INDIANA HARBOR INDUSTRIES
Since 1901 the portion of the corporation of East Chicago east of the canal has been called Indiana Harbor. Although the division is arbi- trary, it is still popular, and the industries to be noted will therefore be grouped accordingly.
Starting from the mouth of the harbor east of the main canal, the first great plant is that of the Inland Steel Company, whose docks, coke
VIEW OF INDUSTRIAL SECTION
ovens, furnaces and immense mills cover 120 acres of ground, employ 4,000 men, supply the employees with $4,000,000 annually in wages and salaries, and represent an investment of $20.000,000. The chief prod- uct of the plant is sheet and structural steel. Bolts and spikes are also manufactured in immense quantities. The company owns its own mines and boats, and has direct railroad connection with nearly all the trunk lines which pass through the Calumet region.
AMERICAN STEEL FOUNDRIES
In 1904 the American Steel Foundries located between the canal and Michigan Avenue, on the northwestern outskirts of Indiana Habor, and Vol. I-20
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have since expanded into the largest and best equipped plant for the production of open-hearth steel castings in the country, ranging in weight from a few pounds each to twenty-five tons. The shops, mills, furnaces, cranes, moulding machines, testing laboratory, and all the other build- ings and appliances which go to make up this noteworthy industry now cover a 50-acre site and give employment to 1,200 hands. The plant has an annual capacity of 25,000 tons of finished castings; the estimated yearly payroll is $1,300,000 and the total investment $3,000,000.
OTHER STEEL PLANTS
South of the Inland Steel Company is the plant of the MeClintic- Marshall Construction Company. It occupies fifty aeres and is engaged in bridge building and manufacturing structural steel.
Southeast of the American Steel Foundries are the buildings of the Standard Forgings Company, spread over twelve acres of ground. That industry gives employment to 450 men, to whom is paid $480,000 annually on a capital investment of $500,000.
Going still southward, and keeping east of the canal. one may visit the workshops of the Buckeye Steel Castings Company (a Columbus concern), the yards of the Indiana Harbor Belt Line and the plants of the Indiana Car and Equipment Company and the German-American Car Company, car builders and repairers. The latter two factories are spread over twenty acres of ground.
GREEN ENGINEERING COMPANY
South of the Buckeye Steel Castings Company's works are the shops of the Green Engineering Company, situated at Kennedy Avenue and the Fort Wayne tracks. The executive offices are in Chicago. The plant employs 300 people and comprises a foundry, pattern and machine shops, warehouses and a laboratory for testing fire brick and analyzing iron and coal. The chief products of the plant are chain-grate stokers and pneumatie ash handlers. On an average of 300 men are employed in the shops and foundry, at an annual payroll of $240,000. the total investment being computed at $300,000.
ALUMINUM FACTORY
Still south of this plant is that of the United States Reduction Company. employing fifty men upon an investment of $100.000, and producing aluminum bullion.
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REFINING COMPANIES
In the southwestern section of the Indiana Harbor manufacturing district is an interesting group of industries comprising the manu- factories of the International Lead Refining Company, Goldschmidt Detinning Company and the United States Metals Refining Company. The refining companies are natural and keen competitors. The Inter- national Lead Refining Company, the latest comer, owns sixty-three acres at the canal and One Hundred and Fifty-first Street, employs 125 hands, disburses about $120,000 annually and values its property at $750,000: the United States Metals Refining Company occupies over eighty aeres in a bend of the Calumet, west of the Grasselli Chemical Works, employs some 200 men, pays them annually nearly $190,000, and estimates the value of its plant at half a million dollars.
UTILIZATION OF TIN "WASTE. "
The Goldschmidt Detinning Company employs 150 skilled mechanics and chemists at its large manufactory on One Hundred and Fifty-first Street, between the International and United States refining plants. It is one of many present-day illustrations of that commercial and industrial wisdom which realizes wealth through the scientific manipu- lation of what the average person would call "waste." At this plant, tin from old cans and other refuse tinware is, by chemical process, subtracted from the metal which it covers and molded into bullion form. The metal is also saved and disposed of for commercial pur- poses.
THE GRASSELLI CHEMICAL WORKS
The seventy buildings covering nearly two-thirds of a square mile along the northern banks of the Grand Calumet, between the United States Metals Refinery and the Dutch Cleanser plant of the Cudahy Packing Company, represent the Grasselli Chemical Company and one of the great industries of the region. The company located its first factory in the spring of 1893, three or four years after the Standard Oil Company had founded the great Whiting plant, to which, from the first, quite a large portion of the Grasselli output has been sold. The chemicals manufactured are necessities to many industries throughout the United States, not to confine the statement to the special needs of the Calumet region. They include chemically pure acids for labora- tories and drug stores; silica of soda. sold to soap and paper mannfac-
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turers; muriatic and sulphuric acids, used by iron and steel manufac- turers and oil refiners; chloride of ammonia, purchased by tin-plate factories; chloride of zinc, used by the railroads to preserve their ties; acetic acid, a form of vinegar; salt-cake, for the manufacture of glass; battery zinc, bought by telegraph and telephone companies, and other products required in various manufacturing processes. The territory for the sale of such products is virtually unlimited. The latest infor- mation indicates that the Grasselli Chemical Company is employing about eight hundred people, at a wage and salary expense of more than $525,000, and that fully $5,000,000 is invested in the property.
CUDAHY PRODUCTS
Although one of the newer industries, that of the Cudahy Packing Company, in the southeastern corner of the Indiana Harbor district, between the Gary & Interurban line and the Calumet River, the prod- ucts of the plant comprise the Old Dutch Cleanser, washing powders, soaps, hair materials and glycerine. The company also maintains a large car repair shop. Altogether, 400 men are employed in these operations, $375,000 is the estimated payroll and $700,000 the amount invested in the buildings, equipment and real estate.
PENNSYLVANIA COMPANY'S CAR REPAIR SHOPS
The Indiana Harbor Car Repair Shops are located on the northeast of the main line of the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railway, just west of the canal at Indiana Harbor, and cover an area of approximately forty-six acres. There are twelve buildings, among which are an oil house, tool house, office and storage building, rest house, hose house, blacksmith shop, machine shop, planing mill and power house. These are all modern fire proof buildings with plenty of light and are equipped with the latest lockers, sanitary plumbing and fire protection apparatus. There is also a 100,000 gallon steel water tank which supplies water through a system of pipes to all buildings where necessary and to numerous fire hydrants about the yard.
There are about eleven miles of track in the yard and when the plant is running full capacity, it will provide employment for about three hundred men. The plant will be completed about January 15, 1915.
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EAST CHICAGO DOCKS
Most of the territory in East Chicago west of the main canal, and between the east and west branch and Lake Michigan, is given up to the great docks of H. C. Frick and the Standard Oil Company and various railway tracks. South of the waterway projected to Lake George is a district well lined by the belt roads and containing the city docks.
INTERSTATE IRON AND STEEL PLANT
Below this to the south is the first large industry west of the main canal to the Grand Calumet. Reference is made to the Interstate Iron and Steel Company's plant between One Hundred and Forty-first and One Hundred and Forty-fourth streets. It occupies a site of about fifty acres, employs approximately 1,000 men, has an annual payroll of $840,000, and a yearly output of 125,000 tons of iron and steel bars, bands and plates.
HUBBARD STEEL FOUNDRIES
Directly south of the Interstate plant are the Hubbard Steel Foun- dries, covering about thirty acres; the latter include one open-hearth furnace, three air furnaces and two annealing furnaces, the entire "battery" being employed in the production of other air furnaces, iron castings and chill and sand rolls for rolling mills. The capacity of the plant is about 800 tons of steel castings and 500 tons of iron monthly. The number of employees will average 200 and the annual payroll $190,000, while nearly a third of a million dollars is invested in the entire property.
THE LIMBERT WORKS
Southwest of the Hubbard Steel Foundries, on the other side of Railroad Avenue, is the foundry of the George B. Limbert Company, which turns out pipe fittings and cuttings. In that line of manufacture 125 men are employed.
REPUBLIC IRON AND STEEL WORKS
The Republic Iron and Steel Company conducts one of the oldest manufactories of the kind in East Chicago, iron and steel bars being the specialty of its plant. The works cover sixteen acres and employ
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1,000 men, whose wages and salaries will average $1,000 apiece; the capital invested in the business is placed at half a million dollars.
MAKERS OF STEEL TANKS
Southwest of the Republic Iron and Steel Works and the factory of the American Conduit Company are the Graver Tank Works and the establishment conducted by the Famous Manufacturing Company, builders of hay presses, auto trucks and agricultural implements. The former, manufacturers of steel tanks, is by far the larger industry, ' employing 125 men.
ASPHALT ELECTRIC CONDUITS
Near the works of the Republie Iron and Steel Company, further to the south, is rather a small plant operated by the American Conduit Company for the manufacture of asphalt electrie conduits.
ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS
The power plant of the Northern Indiana Gas and Electric Com- pany, at East Chicago, is located between the Indiana Harbor and Elgin, Joliet & Eastern belt lines, the Grand Calumet River and the canal. It has a site of nineteen acres and represents a property valu- ation of $1,000,000.
RIVET AND BOLT MANUFACTORY
Adjoining the belt lines on the north and northwest of the electric power plant is an area of nearly fourteen aeres occupied by the works of the Champion Rivet Company, manufacturers of rivets and bolts. The property is valned at $300,000, and the industry contributes $100,- 000 yearly to the support of its 125 employees.
COMING INDUSTRIES -
The Baldwin Locomotive Works, Schlesinger Steel Plant, Buckeye Steel Castings Company and MeClintic-Marshall Construction Company have all purchased sites at East Chicago and Indiana Harbor.
The Baldwin Works, in addition to this, have fenced their entire property in the southern part of Indiana Harbor and during the year 1913 built a heavy concrete foundation ready for steel construction for a
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building approximately six hundred and fifty by twelve hundred feet. This work was finished during the early part of 1914 and there were also laid side-tracks connecting with all the belt lines in the locality, but owing to general conditions of the preceding year, nothing further has been accomplished.
Regarding the Schlesinger plant -- the East Chicago Company at the time it sold the land to that concern agreed to extend the waterway west to their purchase. This work has practically been completed and two lift bridges have been built over the west branch of the canal, but nothing has been done toward the construction of the plant itself.
A LARGE SUBJECT
The foregoing is but an attempt to give a running picture of the chief industries of the East Chicago and Indiana Harbor district; it is impossible to mention all and, unintentionally, some of greater impor- tance than those included in these sketches may have been omitted. Such statements, admitting the magnitude of the subject, apply also to Hammond, Gary, Whiting and the region as a whole. The industries of the Calumet region certainly constitute a subject almost bewildering in detail.
STANDARD OIL PLANT AT WHITING
When the holdings of the Standard Oil Company at Whiting have been explained and described, virtually the industrial life of the place has been traced. More than a square mile is covered by the refinery proper, huge storage tanks, can manufactory, acid works, boiler shops, pipe shops, brass foundry and large shops for the construction and repair of oil tank cars. At the present time the mammoth industry at Whiting, second only to the interests of the United States Steel Corpo- ration at Gary, represents an annual payroll of $2,100,000 and a $50,000,- 000 investment. The Standard Oil Company employs from 2,000 to 2.300 people at Whiting. Its output is some 30,000 carloads per month.
HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE
Dr. R. E. Humphrey, the head chemist of the Standard Oil Com- pany, has written the following sketch of the Whiting plant, incorpo- rating much which is of interest, both from the standpoint of history and condensed description :
"After the discovery by Herman Frasch of a method of desulphur-
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izing the Ohio crude oils, the Standard Oil Company purchased his patents and initiated them at Lima, Ohio, and afterward at its new plant at Whiting. The erection of the Whiting works began in the year 1889, and the refining petroleum was begun in the fall of 1890. The con- struction embraced 80 600-barrel crude stills, which number was after- wards increased to 150. The Frasch method of 'sweetening' the Ohio crudes was to pass the hot vapors of petroleum over copper oxide con- tained in chambers and stirred with cylindrical brushes during distil- lation. Afterwards it was discovered that the oxide served a better pur- pose if put directly into the still and the oil distilled over it. Four sweetening stills were erected and afterwards added to until the number became 34. The entire plant was gradually increased and at present covers 640 acres, and besides the refinery apparatus proper, it embraces large car shops for the construction and repair of oil tank ears, pipe shops, brass foundry, boiler shops, can manufactory and acid works. Mr. George France was the first superintendent. He was suc- ceeded by Dr. W. M. Burton, the present incumbent.
"The Whiting plant is considered the largest and most modern oil refinery in the world. One million eight hundred thousand gallons of crude oil can be charged to the stills daily, and the monthly shipments of kerosene oils have reached the enormous total of 24,000,000 gallons. At first only a small quantity of gasoline was manufactured, 6 or 7 per cent of the crude being a large production. The demand was very light. At the present time gasoline, naphthas and spirits have become the chief portion of the production. The demand for motor spirits became so pressing that the natural supply was not sufficient. During the last year there was perfected at the Whiting laboratory a method of con- verting the heavy oils, which were of no considerable value, into light, volatile spirits which were capable of substituting gasoline for internal combustion motors. This is considered by authorities to be the most important development ever made in the history of petroleum refining. One hundred and twenty converters are now in process of erection at the Whiting works, and the construction is being planned for other refineries. This will result in doubling the production of gasoline by these refineries.
"One of the largest candle factories is included in the Whiting works. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of candles go from this fac- tory. The manufacture of Christmas candles is an important part of the production, and is carried on throughout the entire year. The wax refinery supplies wax to the world for candles, wax papers, domestic purposes, etc.
"Enormous quantities of road oils and paving materials are pro-
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duced. A method has been invented for making asphalt oils for road construction that have the characteristics of the natural asphalts, and these are now used in large quanties in substitution for natural asphalts. They are also used, together with special pitches, for saturating roofing papers and shingles.
"The Ohio and Indiana fields have long since become exhausted, and the Whiting refinery is now using crudes from the Kansas and Okla- homa fields. These are pumped directly through 8 and 10-inch pipe lines.
"The Standard Oil Company was the first corporation to recognize the wonderful possibilities the situation of the Calumet region held for great manufacturing plants. In the twenty-four years since its con- struction began at Whiting, it has witnessed the most amazing growth in industrial operations any section ever had. In the importance of its products, the magnitude of its plant, the value of its shipments, the far- sightedness and progressiveness of its officers, and the prosperity and contentment of its employes, the Whiting works of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana is now, as always, one of the leading industries of the Calumet district."
ORIGINAL OWNERS OF THE WHITING PLAT
The dimensions of the Standard Oil Company's plant at Whiting are so overshadowing to everything local that there are few people who know anything about the original owners of the land upon which the industry and the city now stand. In 1850-55 George W. Clarke bought thousands of acres of swamp lands in the northwestern part of the Cal- umet region, and soon afterwards George M. Roberts acquired such large tracts in the same locality that nearly all of what we now know as North Township was held by them as landlords. Mr. Clarke died in 1866 and left his Lake County property to his sister, who had married Jacob Forsythe, general freight and passenger agent of the Erie Railroad in Chicago. Mr. Forsythe added to the original holdings of his wife, so that within the next twenty years he controlled the present site of East Chicago, and considerable of the land platted as Whiting by the Standard Oil Company in 1889.
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