USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 34
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MASSACHUSETTS, COMMISSION ON TAXATION, 1896 .- Report of the Com- mission Appointed to Inquire into the 'Expediency of Revising and Amending the Laws of the Commonwealth Relating to Taxation (Bos- ton, 1897).
MASSACHUSETTS, COMMISSION ON TAXATION, 1907 .- Report of the Commis- sion Appointed to Investigate the Subject of Taxation and to Codify, Revise and Amend the Laws Relating thereto (Boston, 1908).
MASSACHUSETTS, COMMISSION ON TAXATION, 1909 .- Report of the Com- mission Appointed to Investigate the Laws Relating to Taxation (Bos- ton, 1909).
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
MASSACHUSETTS, COMMISSIONER OF CORPORATIONS AND TAXATION .- Annual Report (Boston, 1918, and later years)-Earlier reports issued by the Bureau of Statistics. Public document no. 79.
MASSACHUSETTS, DEPARTMENT OF CORPORATIONS AND TAXATION .- Special Report Relative to Municipal Expenditures, Indebtedness, Accounts, Budgets, Assessments and Betterments (Boston, 1927)-House docu- ment no. 192.
MASSACHUSETTS, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES .- Annual Report (Bos- ton, 1920 and later years)-Earlier reports by the Public Service Commission. Public document no. 14.
MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT AUDITOR .- Report (Boston, 1849 and later years)-Gives details of debt, revenue and expenditure. Later reports issued by Commission on Administration and Finance. Public document no. 6.
MASSACHUSETTS, GOVERNOR .- Annual Address of the Governor to the Gen- eral Court .- This is regularly issued as Senate Document no. 1.
MASSACHUSETTS, GOVERNOR .- Budget Recommendations to the General
Court for the Fiscal Year (Boston, 1919 and later years)-House document : no. 185 in 1919; no. 1000 in later years.
MASSACHUSETTS, INSURANCE DEPARTMENT .- Annual Report (Boston, 1855 and later years)-Contain full statistical tables; and refer to special events and legislation. Public document no. 9.
MASSACHUSETTS, JOINT SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON MUNICIPAL FINANCE .- Re- port (Boston, 1913)-House document no. 1803.
MASSACHUSETTS, PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION .- Annual Report (Boston, 1914-1920)-Earlier reports by the Board of Gas and Electric Light Commissioners and the Board of Railroad Commissioners. Later re- ports by the Department of Public Utilities. Public document no. 14. MASSACHUSETTS, SPECIAL COMMISSION ON REVISION OF BANKING LAWS .- Report of the Special Commission (Boston, 1922).
MASSACHUSETTS, SPECIAL COMMISSION ON TAXATION, 1915 .- Report (Bos- ton, 1916).
MASSACHUSETTS, SPECIAL COMMISSION ON TAXATION, 1928 .- Report of the Special Commission to Investigate the Entire Subject of State, County, and Local Taxation (Boston, 1929)-House document no. 1075.
MASSACHUSETTS, SPECIAL COMMISSION ON TAXATION, 1929 .- Report of the Special Commission to Continue the Entire Subject of State, County and Local Taxation and Revenue from Fees and Other Sources (Bos- ton, 1929)-House document no. 900.
PATTERSON, EDWIN WILHITE .- The Insurance Commissioner in the United States (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1927)-Comprehensive study of insurance regulation.
SMITH, EDWIN S .- " 'Cash and Carry' Life Insurance" (Nation, 1930, Vol. CXXX, pp. 149-150)-Description of savings-bank life insurance in Massachusetts.
STONE, EDWIN A .- A Century of Boston Banking (Boston, Rockwell & Churchill, 1894)-Detailed history of Boston banks to date of publica- tion.
UNITED STATES, COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY .- Annual Report (Wash- ington, 1865 and later years)-Include statistical tables on national banks.
UNITED STATES, COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY .- Abstract of Reports of Condition of National Banks (Washington, 1901 and later years).
WARREN, NATHAN .- "Insurance in Massachusetts" (WILLIAM THOMAS
DAVIS, editor, The New England States, 4 vols., Boston, Hurd, 1897)- See Vol. IV, chap. CXL.
WASHBURN, CHARLES GRENFILL .- The Life of John W. Weeks (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1928).
CHAPTER XII
TWENTIETH-CENTURY MANUFACTURES (1890-1930)
BY JOHN WINTHROP HAMMOND Historical Publicist, General Electric Company
EXPANSION IN MODERN MACHINERY
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the day of the machine in Massachusetts industrial life moved toward its zenith. And with it came the era of quantity manufacturing; of large corporations, seeking efficiency in management and methods ; of extensive labor movements, seeking the humaniz- ing of what is somewhat grossly termed the "machine age."
As was to be expected, machinery intensified the manu- facturing activities of the people everywhere, and especially in Massachusetts. Appearing gradually and spreading in diversity during the years following the Civil War, it symbol- ized conquest,-enthralling, significant conquest. Many a manufacturing process which seemed forever fated to be manually performed yielded at last to the human genius for invention.
Financiers and executives, whose courageous initiative had already dotted the Massachusetts horizon with factory chim- neys, possessed amply the imagination to perceive the possi- bilities which machinery created; and forthwith they put their faith and their money more extensively than ever into the industrial enterprises of the Commonwealth.
The expansion thus precipitated forked in two directions. Existing industries grew as machine methods were applied to their operations, with a tendency toward fewer but larger plants. And there arose many a new venture concerned solely with the building of machines with which to supply the long- established industries engaged in producing commodities for public consumption.
Through years of incessant adjustment and readjustment,
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NEW TYPES OF MACHINES
years of unretarded net progress, Massachusetts thus fitted herself to maintain her national markets and enhance her ex- port trade. Her manufactured products show this in their ascending market value : $1,035,000,000 in 1890, and $3,426,- 000,000 in 1925, with every expectation of exceeding $4,000,- 000,000 in 1929.
Before the passing of the eighties, Massachusetts was strid- ing on toward modern industrialism. The dominance of manu- facturing, which since the middle of the nineteenth century has supported fully half the total population, kept abreast of the nation's growth. The supremacy of the State in fine textiles, worsteds, woolens, boots, shoes, and high-grade writing paper did not appreciably languish when competition appeared in other sections. And the Yankee facility for inventing things was flowering in many forms, most of them affecting the in- dustrial trend.
NEW TYPES OF MACHINES (1885-1930)
A decade or so before the modern period opened, F. B. Norton, a studious potter in Worcester, spent several years learning how to produce a superior emery wheel, to be driven at high speed by mechanical power. This craftsman, in associ- ation with others, in 1885 organized a company which gradu- ally came to specialize in grinding machines. Its resultant pre- eminence sprang from the work of a group of brilliant inventors, especially another of the Nortons-Charles H. Norton, called "the father of cylindrical grinding."
At the turn of the century the production of grinding wheels and grinding machines at Worcester was already a high art. These machines would do the extraordinary; they would perform work of unbelievable precision. By their means, finely tempered mechanical products, true to the fortieth part of a hair, could be economically manufactured in quantity for the needs of high-speed transportation. By their means, also, machine tools for producing other mechanical products of superbly fine quality could be constructed.
Here was the very spirit of modern Massachusetts indus- trialism-the grinding process, fundamental in its influence upon twentieth-century manufacturing, in the nation itself
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20TH CENTURY MANUFACTURES
as well as in this Commonwealth. Scores of famous Massa- chusetts products have achieved greater excellence and re- tained their economic status because of modern grinding machines produced in their very midst.
Machine building itself is essentially new in Massachusetts within the last seventy-five years-and in its most marvelous refinements it is more particularly a twentieth-century develop- ment. Cotton goods, woolens and silks, boots and shoes, paper and cordage, furniture and confectionery were all once made by hand. But the great textile mills of Massachusetts have long depended upon power looms, much of this equip- ment coming from places within the state, from Hopedale, Lowell, Worcester, and Northbridge. Shoe machinery has been obtained for years by every large shoe factory in Massa- chusetts from an immense plant at Beverly, and from other machine makers in Boston and Waltham. The machines that have equipped Massachusetts confectionery establishments come largely from Springfield. Paper-mill machinery is built at Holyoke, Pittsfield, Lawrence, and Worcester.
NEW FORMS OF POWER (1895-1919)
In the last decade of the nineteenth century came another influence-new power units, typified in the steam turbine and the electric motor. Both represented economy combined with efficiency, especially the electric drive, which obviated the necessity of a power plant on the premises. Soon the electric public utilities expanded sufficiently to make the generation and distribution of power an industry in its own right.
The total horse power of steam engines employed dropped off between 1914 and 1919, and the increase of electric motors accounted for this change. In 1914 electric motors were less than one sixth of the total, while steam engines were almost two thirds of the total. In 1919 the motors handled one third of the total, and steam engines supplied a slightly larger pro- portion, while steam turbines represented one sixth of the total.
That form of power which is cheapest of all in its operating cost and oldest of all in its availability-water power-has remained dominant to a large extent wherever found. It is
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a development of recent years that not all the mill power on the banks of these foaming streams comes direct from the rivers themselves. Less water power and more steam and electric power has been the trend for fully a generation.
Yet water power was originally the lure that brought into existence the State's great textile industry ; and the production of textile goods is still the largest manufacturing enterprise in Massachusetts. It stands first among numerous conspicuous industrial achievements of the Bay State. Never once in the last forty years has this leadership been threatened.
Spindles and looms have steadily multiplied at those ideal water-power sites on the Merrimack, the Quequechan, and the Acushnet, where teeming industrial cities have arisen within a few generations-Lawrence, Lowell, Fall River, New Bed- ford. Changing conditions have not been able to change the economic status of these places, nor unseat the Commonwealth from its place as first of the textile-manufacturing States; although the competition in the South has, since the middle 'nineties, been an increasing problem to the Massachusetts mill owner.
Certainly no indications appear of a collapse in the Massa- chusetts textile industry. Nearly six million spindles were whirling in 1890; ten years later almost eight million were counted. Today Massachusetts has in excess of twelve million, and her cotton mills produce more than a fourth of the total value of America's cotton goods.
Within the borders of the State stands the premier spindle city of the nation-Fall River, whose one-hundred-odd cotton manufactories represent fifty millions of invested capital and keep busy four million spindles. No other cotton-manufactur- ing city in the United States can equal that.
The years have brought industrial preeminence also to Lawrence. What Fall River is in cotton manufacturing, Law- rence is in woolen. Thousands of looms stand in her mills, and the value of her annual woolen output, which was twenty- nine million dollars in 1890, is close to one hundred and fifteen million at the present time. Nearly two hundred million yards of cloth, both woolen and cotton, are contributed to the domes- tic and foreign markets by this community of weavers created by the Essex Company, the original water-power group, and
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20TH CENTURY MAUFACTURES
named for Abbott and Amos Lawrence, conspicuous leaders in that enterprise.
WOOLENS AND SILKS (1890-1930)
The woolen industry in Massachusetts in its latest develop- ment is particularly distinguished by an unusual and yet a typical modern enterprise at Andover, known as the Shaw- sheen Village unit. It represents the ideal of the late William M. Wood, and is distinguished by its production facilities as well as by the particularly definite concept of human relations among the individuals who form the entire personnel, no matter in what position they are working. It is encouraging to the fraternal doctrines of the sociologists and a credit to the industrial life of the nation, as well as that of the State.
MODERN TEXTILE PROBLEMS (1895-1930)
Until the last ten years, the manufacture of silk cloth in Massachusetts had gone quietly along as a minor branch of the textile industry, handled in a score or more of plants in Boston, New Bedford, and Fall River. Then came the dis- covery of rayon, the Philippine fibre from which is produced imitation silk of fine sheen and glowing colors. It had all the elements of wide popularity, as Massachusetts mill operators readily learned.
Experimentation began immediately. Several progressive and courageous manufacturers succeeded in producing rayon for the commercial market, and a large New Bedford mill adapted its entire plant for converting rayon threads and yarns into the forms required by the textile industry. The in- stant demand that developed gave to this product a romantic fascination. It is one of the astonishing events in the present- day textile world of Massachusetts, and possibilities of the future appear unbounded.
IMPROVEMENT IN PROCESSES
The last ten years have revealed a progressive spirit in textile development. It has been evident in the careful study of the public's mind, the readiness to try new methods, the
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SOUTHERN COMPETITION
desire to negotiate with labor instead of necessarily fighting it, the promptness with which the improved forms of machin- ery have been adopted, and the refusal to feel downhearted over the competition of the southern mills. Automatic machines and especially the multiple-loom system have become determining factors in the day's operations of all the larger mills. More conciliatory tactics have been exhibited by both the management and the workers to avoid the demoralizing labor struggles of the past. Lawrence, once a turbulent center of the labor war, has recovered its industrial peace these many years.
SOUTHERN COMPETITION (1893-1930)
The bugbear of southern competition has been more or less of a cloud on the horizon for the better part of twenty years. Textile mills were first established in South Carolina in 1893, increasing steadily in that State and in North Caro- lina, Georgia, and Alabama, throughout the 'nineties. These mills put in electric motors from the beginning. Indeed, they were pioneers in adopting the electric drive. New England mills, more conservative, were nearly all electrically lighted, but for a long time they could not bring themselves to believe that electricity was competent to operate machines-or at least that it could do so economically. In addition to this advantage, the southern mills were aided in manufacturing coarse cotton goods by humidifying processes and by ventilat- ing systems, which created atmospheric conditions required by the product and beneficial to the operatives. Lower living costs, too, had their effect upon the investment necessary for labor.
Thus textile competition, possessing sufficient possibilities to make it appear formidable, came forward in the South. In time it led to a comparative investigation, inaugurated about 1919 by Massachusetts textile concerns, into conditions in the industry both in Massachusetts and the southern States. This study laid some stress upon the absence of individual power plants in most of the southern mills. The power for operating those mills was purchased from electric power com- panies, and that practice meant energy at a lower cost per horse power.
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20TH CENTURY MANUFACTURES
Other advantages favored the South-lower freight rates; lower local taxes (at least at that moment) ; the proximity of raw material; greater cooperation and understanding between employer and employee, arising from the smaller mill units, and the predominance of workers of native ancestry. To be sure, the southern worker was earning less-32 cents per hour, on an average, in Virginia; 29 cents in North Carolina; 24 cents in Georgia; 22 cents in South Carolina; 21 cents in Alabama-compared with 40 cents in Massachusetts.
The actual supremacy of Massachusetts continued as strik- ing as it has always been. Although North Carolina, the leading southern textile State, in 1921 actually possessed a larger number of cotton mills-343, as compared to 182 in Massa- chusetts,-it employed but 66,000 workers in these mills, while Massachusetts could report 106,000. Furthermore, the value of textiles manufactured in Massachusetts in that year was more than $300,000,000, compared with $190,000,000 in North Carolina. That Massachusetts has held her own through more than three decades of this sectional rivalry is eloquent of the ever-expanding markets and doubly eloquent of the inherent vitality of this industry of the Old Bay State.
THE MACHINE AGE IN SHOEMAKING (1890-1910)
The shoe manufacturers of Massachusetts went through a struggle fully as sharp, a struggle singularly parallel in its essential aspects. For generations prior to 1890, Massachu- setts shoes were nationally famous. The industry possessed the proud heritage of having supplied the bulk of the national demand; but this was when the population of America was not yet so overwhelming nor so widely distributed.
Even during the 'eighties the shoe salesmen of Lynn, Brock- ton, Haverhill, Marblehead, and Worcester penetrated to the Mississippi and beyond, exhibiting a variety of smart styles and taking orders amounting to millions of dollars. The first shoe machines had come in during the preceding twenty years : the Mckay sole-sewing machine, the Gallahue shoe-pegging device, the Mckay channeler, and the Mckay nailer. The progress that these inventions inaugurated in manufacturing methods has continued with increasing ingenuity ever since.
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EXTERNAL COMPETITION
Mckay leased his machines on a royalty basis, so that they remained his property; and he organized a service staff to go wherever needed in case machines broke down. Around 1890, so great was the advantage of this machinery, many shoe manufacturers bought their own machines; but these did not have the benefit of a repair service, which remained a distinct need. Finally, Sidney W. Winslow and George W. Brown established control of all machines for bottoming shoes. They built up a corporation which maintained a highly skilled service organization and in addition introduced still newer types of machines to perform operations which were previously manual.
As early as 1891 thirty-three distinct types of machines were in use in the shoe factories of Massachusetts. Today there is scarcely a process that has not yielded to machinery. The resulting transformation has been epochal. Shoemaking at the present time is as unlike shoemaking fifty years ago as can well be imagined. And the great changes in machinery and in factory systems in use all over the world were origi- nated in Massachusetts.
Moreover, Massachusetts is the style center for the foot- wear of the nation. With all the competition of other locali- ties, the authority as to new styles has remained in this State, the original seat of the industry and still the great workshop from which comes the largest proportion of the product.
EXTERNAL COMPETITION IN THE SHOE TRADE
Not until the middle 'nineties did the Massachusetts shoe industry encounter serious competition. New York State then began to produce shoes in volume, almost simultaneously with the establishment of factories in the Middle West. In both cases the underlying force was the development of nearby markets, springing from the tremendous increase in popula- tion. This is a permanent factor which must be reckoned with. No intelligent Massachusetts shoe manufacturer will decry this natural trend or bemoan his misfortune in encountering such rivalry. If Massachusetts now were to shoe the nation- as the State once did, practically speaking-it would require factory facilities greater than could be financed at home, and transportation service beyond the physical possibilities of exist- ing railroads.
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20TH CENTURY MANUFACTURES
Actually it is not the rise of sectional competition in boot- and-shoe manufacture that so profoundly impresses the imagi- nation; such a development was inevitable as the country grew. It is rather the unshaken stability of Massachusetts as the nation's shoe center in the face of this competition and in the face of transportation difficulties which grew as the nation grew. More people meant larger markets, regardless of geo- graphical rivalry, and the goods simply had to be transported. Freight congestion and inequitable freight rates were perhaps unavoidable, although none the less unfortunate.
Against such conditions the Massachusetts record is one of undeniable industrial achievement. In the total value of the product the steady gross gain is apparent: $117,000,000 in 1890; $188,000,000 in 1910; $442,000,000 in 1920. The last phenomenal increase was largely the result of war con- ditions.
However, the story assumes a different aspect when the relation of Massachusetts to the rest of the United States is viewed, for this is a record of a decreasing hold, although it is still dominant. Massachusetts in 1900 was producing 44.9 per cent of the nation's output of boots and shoes; in 1909 her percentage was down to 41.4 per cent, in 1914 it was 39.4 per cent, and in 1919 it was only 35.3 per cent; it rose slightly in 1923 to 35.5 per cent.
LABOR CONDITIONS IN THE SHOE INDUSTRY (1880-1930)
Doubtless the traditional conditions peculiar to shoemaking have had their share in complicating the modern problems of this great industry. An occupation which began in little home shops, and was carried on for a long period largely in the homes of the shoemakers, was sure to develop a heritage of assertiveness among the workers. When labor organizations took root, as they did at a fairly early period, they found men with well-defined feelings as to their relation to the industry and their economic status in society.
The labor-union movement in the shoe factories during recent years simply succeeded to the previous activities of the Knights of St. Crispin and the Knights of Labor, which grew
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DISTRIBUTION AND CONDITIONS
up at a time when shoe workers were fearful of being crowded out of employment by the adoption of machine methods.
There have been times aplenty when the labor organizations and the proprietors in the boot and shoe industry could not agree, and deadlocks have adversely affected the industry in consequence. When sectional competition arose and trans- portation problems multiplied, any lack of harmony between the employers and employees naturally made itself felt dis- astrously.
Within the decade from 1920 to 1930, however, evidences of intelligent mutual cooperation in the common cause for the common good have repeatedly appeared. In proportion as this attitude has gained acceptance with both of the principals in the case, in like proportion has the shoe industry of Massa- chusetts shown itself capable of achieving its own salvation by greater efficiency, scientific marketing, and the lowering of production costs-which latter does not necessarily mean a low level of earnings by the individual workers. The rela- tions between capital and labor, including the main fields of labor, are described in the chapter on labor in this volume.
At times there have been serious, although momentary, local contingencies. Labor disturbances have occurred at one time or another in nearly all the large centers. And twice the great commercial shoe district of Boston has been fire-swept -on November 9, 1872, and again on March 10, 1893. A great fire in Lynn, on November 26, 1889, destroyed more than half of the city's shoe factories. Haverhill suffered simi- larly on February 17, 1882.
SHOE DISTRIBUTION AND CONDITIONS (1890-1930)
In the main the distribution of the industry has remained unchanged for all the last forty years. Brockton, Haverhill, and Worcester are the great centers for the making of men's shoes; Lynn is supreme in the manufacture of women's foot- wear; and Marblehead produces most of the children's shoes made in Massachusetts.
These are the great markets for leather, the raw material of shoe-making. And this contributary occupation in turn absorbs a great volume of domestic and foreign hides. In
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