USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 39
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Industrial Springfield
CHAPTER XXIX
Industrial Springfield
The early history of the Springfield Armory is closely interwoven with that of the early history of Springfield itself and has been given in former pages. Since 1865 the armory has settled down to a defi- nite policy, both the army and the civilian having learned through hard experience what are each other's rights and duties, and probably never again will there be disturbances of the peace, civil suits and courts martial as there were previous to that date. The civilian employees are occupied with production and administration and the executive positions are filled by ordnance officers, while a detachment of enlisted men performs the military duties about the plant. The trade of armorer is a highly skilled trade and tends to be handed down from father to son. It has been said by some that the armory mechanics gave to the world the main contribution of America to industry, namely, the idea of interchangeable parts, which has made possible the Elgin watch and the Ford car, as well as the Springfield rifle. With interchangeability established and the coming of machine methods of production, a new era opened for the armory. The steam engine released it from the dominance of uncertain waterpower, and steam- boats on the Connecticut and later the steam engine on the railroad cut down costs of transportation. In war time work was speeded up and skilled laborers drawn into the city, and when the war was over many of the skilled men remained to be drawn into other industries. The products of the city have always reflected this overflow from the armory. Revolvers, machine guns, skates, magnetos, motorcycles, street cars, airplanes are all commodities which an expert gunsmith could easily learn to produce, but which could not be turned out except by skilled labor.
Besides supplying arms to the United States in time of war, and serving as a storage plant in times of peace, the armory has been of
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great service to the Nation through the experiments in arms manu- facture carried on there. It has contributed quality to both the indus- trial and social life of the city, and must be considered as more than a factory.
The armory today owns nearly three hundred acres of valuable property. The oldest building now in use dates back to 1808 and is known as the West Arsenal and used as the enlisted men's barracks. Building after building has been constructed since that date to line the quadrangle. Besides various arsenal buildings they include a model shop, an interesting small arms museum, a hospital and machine and woodworking shops, as well as quarters. Expansion in the water- shops plant has accompanied that on the hill, and in 1900 an act of Congress provided the necessary funds for new buildings and machin- ery. During the period of the World War the experimental building in Armory Square and the chemical laboratory in Federal Square were erected and equipped. In 1918 manufacturing activities at the armory reached the highest point in its existence. In June, 1917, the average daily production of rifles was one hundred and seventy-five, but by November of the next year it had reached the enormous total of 1,500. This included spare parts and assembling and packing ready for shipment. 5,38 1 employees were on the payroll. If war comes again to the United States the armory is prepared to play its part as in the past and in the meantime its peacetime activities in manufacture and experiments will be carried on.
Springfield has been a marked and significant railroad center ever since the Civil War. The earlier railroads which established them- selves here were not parts of a vast railroad chain, but rather indi- vidual railroads. The original Boston and Albany started with a capi- tal of $20,000,000, and to the north the Connecticut River Railroad began with a capital of only $2,370,000. This road, long out of existence, traveled from Springfield to South Vernon, with short branches at Chicopee Falls and Easthampton. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, so important today in passenger and freight transportation through Springfield, started with a capital of only $15,500,000, but with able management later absorbed most of the smaller roads.
The old Western Line was the first railroad to link Albany to Springfield, back in the middle of the last century. Trains left Spring-
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field in the morning, reached Albany after a five-hour trip, and returned in the evening. This old line, although primitive and crude compared to our modern stream-lined, air-conditioned trains, did its work well.
All coupling was done by hand. Mail bags hung on metal frames built near the tracks and as the train approached it slowed down, so that some one could lean out and pluck the bag of mail from the frame. Another danger, particularly to brakemen, was that the bridges were of wood and their roofs low. There were no warning tassels hanging in front of the bridge as there were in later times, and on a foggy or stormy night, when vision was poor, the brakeman ran a good chance of striking his head against a wooden beam.
There were many snow hazards on this Springfield-Albany line. The few wooden plows available were almost wholly inadequate to clean away the snow, and along the road were wooden fences designed to keep the snow from drifting onto the tracks. There were no cozy cabs for engineers and firemen. These men stayed in the open, rain or shine, and even the conductor was unprotected at times since the cars did not open into each other, and he passed from one car to another by means of a wooden plank.
When the line first opened, the cars were heated by small wood stoves. Protests on the part of the chilled passengers forced the com- pany to place a stove at each end of the car, instead of only one in the middle. The baggage car was not heated for fear of fire, and the baggagemaster and express messenger often ran races around the car in order to keep warm.
Wood was the fuel used before coal came in, and there were wood stations all along the line. At each station a woodchopper was employed by the company to saw and split wood so that the trains could proceed without delay. The train employees had no distinctive uniforms, but wore ordinary grey suits, their official positions being designated by tags on their hats. The old Western had four cars to a train, a baggage car, then a first-class coach, and finally two second- class coaches. On this line were carried at one time or another Presi- dent Van Buren, Horace Greeley, and "Commodore" Vanderbilt.
In 1886 most of the engines used on railroads through Springfield had been made in the old Eddy shops located in the city, and Wilson Eddy, since the late 'fifties, had turned out some three hundred engines
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in all for the Boston and Albany Railroad alone. Mr. Eddy gave each engine a name, starting with countries, then states, until he finally had to get down to officers and other men in the shops.
A change felt by many occurred in 1908, with the abandoning of the free ride to Boston to attend the annual stockholders' meeting. This free ride was anticipated by hosts of women, who felt it their duty to "show their passes to the railroad" on the pretext of going to the meetings, but their real object was to attend the fall style openings in Boston and spend the period in a shopping orgy. For many years "Stockholders' Day" meant a free excursion for a gala holiday of buy- ing, and when this disappeared forever the disappointment was keen.
In 1889 the east side depot was built. In many respects this depot was not a model one, for with a platform crossing the tracks between the two buildings, life was in constant danger. In the spring of the following year the stone arch over Main Street was built, and there was some agitation at first because it was feared that when horses on the road heard the rumbling of trains overhead they would become frantic and run away. Instances of this nature did happen, but after a few trips beneath the structure under a tight rein and firm bit, the horses became used to the noise.
Some of the crack trains of America, with their air-conditioned cars, luxurious drawing and smoking rooms, and exactness as to schedule, pass through Springfield. Among these are the famous Twentieth Century, which runs from Boston to Chicago in twenty and one-half hours. There are names which are famous, too, at least in Springfield railroading. Lucius S. Storrs was for several years execu- tive head of the great Springfield railway system. Another deserving of mention was Colonel James Rumrill, an able corporation law- yer, and a recognized leader in railroad affairs. He was for a long time vice-president of the Boston and Albany Railroad, director of the Chapin and Agawam banks, and one of the founders of the old Spring- field Club.
Some of the railroads in Springfield were small in scope, springing up like mushroom growths and then disappearing. One of these was the Springfield and Longmeadow Railroad, boasting of only a few miles of track, and its directors were Springfield men. A railroad venture with a strange ending came when a company began to lay track for a Springfield to Providence railroad, but the project was
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abandoned before it was completed, and has left behind miles of unfin- ished railroad.
In the later 'seventies Springfield had shaken off the effects of the Civil War and begun an accelerated industrial development. Fac- tories, once merely a room or two rented in buildings, now branched out and built places of their own. Smith and Wesson, Milton Brad- ley, the Wason Manufacturing Company, and many others made products which traveled far beyond the limits of the city. Smith and Wesson revolvers were used in the Civil War and later by the military forces and police of countries across the sea, as well as throughout America. Its founder, Daniel Baird Wesson, is really responsible for the perfection of modern small arms. It was Wesson's ingenuity and mechanical skill that made possible the metallic cartridge commercially, as well as the breech loading rifle and revolver. He also developed the tubular magazine action which later became the famous Winches- ter repeating rifle.
Springfield is credited with having produced the first sleeping car, T. W. Wason and Company, later the Wason Manufacturing Com- pany, having built it several years before the Civil War. T. T. Wood- ruff, of Alton, Illinois, is supposed to be the inventor, but the same claim is made for Asa Hapgood, a native of Massachusetts. George C. Fisk, former president of the Wason Company, said Woodruff came into the company's office one day with his model, upon which he had received a patent, done up in a bandana handkerchief. The Wasons built a car for him, having twenty-eight seats which could be thrown into couches, for a cost of about $4,000. That was in 1857, and in 1890 the famous palace car "Boston," costing $50,000, was built by the same company. Other outputs of the same car manu- facturers are motor boats and steel framed dining cars, followers of the old horse-drawn lunch cart, which also originated in Springfield. In 1860 the Wason Company built what was called the "most beau- tiful car in the world" for the Viceroy of India.
Everett H. Barney, founder of the Barney and Berry Company, skate manufacturers, was an accomplished skater from his early youth. He was born at Framingham, December 7, 1835, the son of a locomo- tive builder. He disliked the cumbersome wooden skate with its binding straps and when only a boy of fourteen invented and made a metal skate with a clamp. This was operated at first with a key, but
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later he did away with that and invented the lever. Mr. Barney was a fancy skater as well as a swift one, and could make grapevines, Mal- tese crosses, balls of twine or any ice figure known. On his seventieth birthday he is said to have complained because there was no ice to skate on.
Mr. Barney formed his skatemaking company in 1864 and induced his old friend John Berry to join him in the venture. They made five hundred skates the first season in their little shop and by 1878 were turning out 80,000 pairs a year, which included all sorts and styles.
Other forms of athletics interested Mr. Barney, especially canoe- ing and camping. In 1882 he bought a large tract of unimproved land on the edge of the city overlooking the river and built his home. A part of his purchase belonged in the town of Longmeadow and so anxious was he to have all his property included in his beloved Spring- field that he induced the Legislature to change the city boundaries. On this estate were set out trees and shrubs from many foreign lands.
Mr. Barney's only son died of tuberculosis in 1889 and was buried on Laurel Hill, where his father had planned to build him a house. The mausoleum there which contains also the bodies of Mr. Barney and his second wife was designed by Mr. Barney himself. The loss of his son was a great blow to Mr. Barney and was perhaps the main reason for his deeding his estate of one hundred and nine and one-half acres to the city. He reserved the right to use his resi- dence as long as he or his wife lived, but that, too, eventually became Springfield property.
It was not until he was about fifty years of age that Mr. Barney became interested in canoeing. He built, according to his own ideas, the canoe "Pecousic," and against the advice of friends sailed it in the international regatta at Thousand Islands and won the race. It was later split in half and one side mounted in the Springfield Yacht Club and lost when their building burned, but the other half is owned by the Connecticut Valley Historical Society.
The showy and spectacular always appealed to Mr. Barney and he enjoyed going out on the river in his canoe and tipping over when he knew he had an audience on the bank. For years a salute of three shots were fired from the Barney property whenever a boatload of picnickers went up or down the river.
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Mr. Everett Barney died in Florida, March 31, 1916, reputed the richest man in Springfield. In January, 1935, twelve buildings of the old skate company, once the scene of great activity, were razed on Broad Street.
Milton Bradley came to Springfield in 1856 as a young man look- ing for work. His first position was as draftsman at the locomotive works of the Wason Company.
With the training that he received on that job, Bradley later opened his own office for doing mechanical drawing and securing patents. Bradley, however, did not wholly sever his connection with the Wason Company at that time. One of his best known accomplish- ments was to make the mechanical drawings and superintend the construction of a $10,000 car which the company had contracted to build for the Pasha of Egypt. It had three separate apartments, and was an elegant affair in those days, attracting considerable attention far and wide.
It was a lithograph made of this car by a Hartford firm that stimulated Bradley's interest in lithography. He negotiated with a firm in Providence to buy a press, and traveled to that city to learn how to run it, paying an old Scotchman ten dollars for personal instruction. He came back to Springfield and set up the press, but immediately had trouble with his pressmen. One of them, Jack Rid- dle, went off to the Civil War during a slack business period and returned with shoulder straps, but with one arm missing. Another, Jack Kelly, was an excellent pressman when he was sober, which was rarely, and this man quit Bradley's employ when he discovered that work interfered with his drinking. This event placed Bradley in rather a difficult situation. Good pressmen were rare, the business of lithographing being only in its infancy, and the instruction that Bradley had received from the old Scotchman was meagre. Bradley had to make a number of prints of "Christ Blessing Little Children" for Gurdon Bill, and he worked the press himself, with Bill hinting that the quality of the prints didn't seem to be anywhere near as fine as they had been previously.
One of the most profitable moves was to lithograph the portrait of Abraham Lincoln, who had just received the nomination for Presi- dent. The original picture from which the prints were made was
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brought to Springfield by Samuel Bowles, and copies of the picture are still treasured in the company's office as representing the first really important Bradley lithographing job.
The widely-known game industry of the company got its start from a visit which Bradley paid one evening to the home of G. W. Tapley, then a bookbinder in the employ of Samuel Bowles, but later for many years the president of the Milton Bradley Company. The two men were engaged in a simple game, when the idea came to Brad- ley of getting up a new game which could be lithographed. Bradley originated "The Checkered Game of Life" and took a few samples through New York State, where money was a little more plentiful. Because of his expert salesmanship and the novelty of his merchandise he was able to sell all his goods and was flooded with orders for more. They continued to grow until in 1870 a new building for the firm was erected at Harrison and Dwight streets.
An item in the rapid expansion of the company was the rise in popularity of croquet. The sale of the sets was enormous and Milton Bradley and Company were among the first in the field. It was Bradley who devised the permanent wooden wicket holders, and also issued the first manual for croquet players. Another game which the company could not turn out fast enough to fill its orders was the "Terrible Fif- teen Puzzle," a mind challenging game which caught the popular fancy. And it was Bradley who developed the "Zeotrope" or "Wheel of Life," the original motion picture machine. This was a scientific toy, which caused simple figures on strips of paper to become animated. In 1878 the Milton Bradley Company received genteel and yet enthusi- astic plaudits from two of the best known and most popular magazines of the day, "The Eclectic" and "Godey's Ladies' Book."
A neighbor of Bradley's, Edward Wiebe, a German music teacher and an educated man, wrote a book on kindergartens and wanted Bradley to print it for him. This type of child-education work was practically unknown in this country and was just beginning to gain a foothold in Europe, and Bradley was uninterested in it at first. An early pioneer in this new education delivered a lecture on it in Spring- field, which Bradley and his father attended. When the two men walked out after the talk, Bradley was thoughtful and preoccupied, and a short time later he published Wiebe's manuscript, "Paradise of Childhood and Practical Guide to Kindergartners." Soon Bradley
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began to manufacture kindergarten supplies, a procedure which people thought was a bold and rash venture and could end only in financial disaster. But gradually public interest in this new educational trend increased, and the illustrated guide to the kindergarten received an honorable mention at the Philadelphia Exposition for being the first of its kind ever published in the English language.
A development rising out of this unusual industry was the exten- sive manufacture and use of water colors. Colored paper in great quantities was needed. Milton Bradley experimented with various pigments, grinding them at first on a small scale in a chemist's muller and mixing them in an ice cream freezer. Orders for the new colors kept pouring in, so that the freezer was abandoned and regular paint grinders used to meet the demand. From this start came the famous Bradley water colors, of which "Bradley Blue" is best known.
In 188 1 the company moved into the large building it now occupies on Willow, Cross and Park streets, and in this building are contained all the various types of businesses which Milton Bradley made famous in those early days.
The Chapman Valve Company, incorporated in 1874, soon made extensive enlargements of their factory space in order to handle the rapidly increasing business. The Chapman Company, then as now, had the finest type of cast-iron and brass foundries, and its valves are in a host of dams, locks and sewage systems everywhere.
Elisha Morgan, a direct descendant of that rugged pioneer, Miles Morgan, was the founder of the Morgan Envelope Company on Har- rison Avenue. They were the original contractors for furnishing the United States Government with post cards and started the papeterie industry in Springfield which grew to such proportions that the city produced more than any other city in the country. In 1898 the busi- ness was merged in the United States Envelope Company and Mr. Morgan became vice-president. Springfield now has the general offices of the company, as well as the P. P. Kellogg division, in their big plant on Cypress Street.
The first postal card in the United States to go through the mails was printed by the Morgan Envelope Company of Springfield and mailed on May 12, 1873, by S. S. Bumstead, coal dealer, to Henry M. Burt, founder and editor of the "New England Homestead." The card was lost to sight for many years, but was exhibited recently
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by a son of the recipient at a meeting of the Springfield Stamp Club.
In conjunction with industry, the city's business activity prospered. The stores were for the most part not specialty shops, but general stores, carrying stocks as great in items, although infinitely less in quantity, than the modern department stores. There were, however, a number of stores that were taking on a modern tinge, and slowly confining themselves to specialties. Smith and Murray, and Forbes and Wallace, were making names for themselves in dry goods; D. H. Brigham and Company carried a fine stock of men's wear before they went into ladies' clothing in 1888; and O. D. Morse's "Great Family Shoe Store," later called the "Central Shoe Store," occu- pied the new Shaw and Kirkham building on Main Street. This store, in 1895, developed into the present Morse and Haynes, with a long tradition of carrying the finest in shoes and boots.
It was a familiar sight in Springfield, in the 'seventies and 'eighties, to see farmers come in from the country once a week or twice a month to do their buying, and the advertisements carried in the newspapers of the time directed their publicity to these country people quite as much as to those who lived in Springfield. An advertising circular put out by the Central Shoe Store includes "some special features designed to promote the comfort of our 'Country Trade,' including a quiet corner where you can discuss the merits of your good wife's little lunch should you desire." Serge buskins and serge congress shoes were a big item in the "Central Shoe Store" stock, and later gave way in public favor to ladies' wear. Kid and calf boots and brogans were worn by the dandies of the city, and button shoes for both men and women were long a standard of merchandise in this establishment.
In 1877 Franz G. Jensen, Sr., a young man of twenty-five, went into the candy retailing business with George Hartman, with a joint capital of $400. Despite his youth, Jensen was a progressive busi- ness man, and knew well the value of a firm name when it was asso- ciated with only the highest quality of merchandise. There were other stores in Springfield selling candy at the time, but Jensen took care that his confections were always richer and tastier than those of his competitors. The business gradually prospered and finally Jensen bought Hartman's interest.
An outstanding characteristic of Jensen was that he always tried to keep pace with what was new. He was the first to introduce wax
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paper in Springfield for the purpose of wrapping confections. Pre- vious to this the customer had great difficulty in peeling the paper from the candy, especially on hot days.
In the early 'eighties, when the incandescent lamp was new, Mr. Jensen installed the first electric generator to be used in lighting a retail store in the city, many people making their purchases in the store so that they could observe the new lighting system.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Jensen made further use of electricity by using it in the manufacture of ice cream. Up to that time the heavy work of making ice cream had been done entirely by hand power. He further gained the gratitude of his employees in his work for better working conditions by establishing a model candy factory on Temple Street.
When the company's candy store in the Springfield National Bank Building was destroyed by fire in February, 1932, Mr. Jensen decided to reopen on Bridge Street, and today the store, with its gleaming mirrors and fountain, attractive luncheon tables, and long counters filled with rich confections of every kind is still foremost in its field in Springfield.
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