USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume II > Part 13
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The Farr Alpaca Company has a direct and human interest in the welfare of its employees. The company provides a recreational audi- torium for its 4,000 workers, who turn out over seven hundred and fifty different kinds of cloth, sometimes as high as one hundred dif- ferent shades of each variety, and who use about one hundred and fifty processes in the making of the Farr Alpaca textiles. These people represent a great variety of abilities, inclinations and tastes, and the company has a diversified recreational program. The auditorium is the center of activities and there are held the dramatic productions, entertainments and dancing sponsored and organized by the employees themselves. The expense of fitting up and maintaining the structure is carried by the company and the building is in actual charge of the employees' Falco Athletic Association, which has one director from each department in the mill.
Aside from the auditorium there is an athletic field, a rest room and a community house. In addition, the company has established a dispensary with a physician and a dentist. This hospital arrange- ment, thoroughly equipped, was planned by one of the largest insur- ance companies in America. When the mills were separated on differ- ent streets, two hospitals were provided instead of one, each complete with waiting rooms, operating and examining rooms, offices, and well- equipped smaller rooms. At one time the company maintained its
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own school for the benefit of those who spoke English poorly, and this school was held in the executive directors' rooms !
Joseph Loftus, of Greystone, Rhode Island, an expert on general textile conditions, wrote the following statement some years ago :
"The Far Alpaca Company has done more for the city of Holyoke than any other firm in many ways. Its wage rate is the highest in the world. Its general treatment of its help has been exceptionally good, and its interest in the wel- fare of its 3,000 employees is one of the best. I have yet to hear a single complaint of ill-treatment from any textile worker in the great plant."
The name "Skinner" has been a household word in America for three generations, wherever fine silks and satins are concerned. The trademark of the head of the famous old Agawam Indian chieftain, Unquomonk, is an indication of the perfection of the silk-weaving art, and these fine materials have been used at many a brilliant social function in colorful gowns and in the linings of coats and wraps. Skinner materials became famous the country over largely through the efforts of its founder, William Skinner.
William Skinner came to the United States at the age of nine- teen with a thorough knowledge of the manufacture of silks. He established a small mill on the banks of the Mill River, seven miles above Northampton, and there began the manufacture of sewing silk in 1848. At this time the silk industry in America was in its infancy, most of the manufactured silk being imported from France and Eng- land. As the years went on business grew in accord with the quality of Skinner silk and a village called "Skinnerville" grew up around the mill.
A calamity struck the thriving business when, on the morning of May 16, 1874, Skinnerville was swept away by the bursting of the Williamsburg Dam, located five miles above the village. About one hundred and twenty-four acres of rushing water were released and swept down the valley, taking over one hundred lives. It was through the heroism of two men that many others were saved from the same fate. These two men, one the reservoir watchman and the other the driver of a milk wagon, raced their horses down the valley ahead of the flood to spread the alarm.
WILLIAM SKINNER & SONS, HOLYOKE
"
SNO
WILLIAM SKINHER
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Many believed that the Skinner silk business had been struck a death blow through the disaster, as the mill had been completely destroyed and his home badly damaged. Yet William Skinner, in the face of these overwhelming odds, was not daunted, but turned his eyes toward Holyoke, and there he built the first Skinner mill in 1874.
From the time that business was again resumed, phenomenal suc- cess came to the company. The plant achieved mammoth propor- tions and occupied several city blocks. A single building 1,000 feet long was one of the largest silk mills under one roof in the world. Hundreds of Holyoke men and women were employed to turn out these famous high-quality fabrics, which are shipped everywhere.
The position of supremacy that Skinner silk holds is an accepted fact. Strangely enough, the very catastrophe that almost destroyed the industry proves today the quality of these fabrics. Farmers in the valley occasionally plow up bobbins of Skinner's silk which were buried by the flood over fifty years ago and although the wooden spools have rotted and crumbled away the silk still retains its life and tensile strength. Skinner's silks and satins were the first in the world to have their name woven into the selvage as a mark of identity. Skinner buyers accept from Japan only the full-sized and strongest raw silk and at the Holyoke mills every yard of fabric is inspected by three sets of inspectors before it is shipped.
The firm of William Skinner & Sons covers its rather limited field completely. For women's wear there are Skinner's crepes and satin crepes in a wide variety of rich colors. These materials are also made especially for lingerie and hats, and there are particularly strong weaves for women's shoes. In men's clothing Skinner fabrics are used in the linings and often in the lapels of dinner jackets. These mate- rials are displayed in a showroom in the office section of the great plant and are also sold in a retail establishment directly to the Hol- yoke consumer.
The American Writing Paper Company is one of the few large industrial organizations in Holyoke which is not built around the personality and individual efforts of any one man. It is a business which has grown through mergers and combinations. This company makes fine paper products of every description ; bonds, writing ledgers,
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book paper, paper matches, milk caps and a host of other commodities of this nature.
In 1899 thirty-one mills throughout the country merged to form the American Writing Paper Company, with headquarters at Spring- field, which later moved to Holyoke. At the time of this gigantic consolidation these mills controlled over seventy per cent. of the fine paper business of the country, producing papers which reached the press rooms of every printer in the country, and the Eagle-A trade- mark was known all over the world.
When the company was reorganized in 1927 there was an imme- diate centralization of all activity and a number of economies in the purchasing and handling of raw materials were put in practice along with increased efficiency in the production department. Advertised mill brands supplanted unprofitable overlapping grades and a ruthless campaign was carried on toward the elimination of all visible and invisible waste.
The Beebe and Holbrook-Wauregan Mill is a splendid example of modernized paper mill design, layout and equipment. The Ameri- can Writing Paper Company operates one of Holyoke's oldest mills, the Parsons Division, which was built in 1853 and still produces nationally known and advertised bond paper of high quality. The Linden Division, built in 1892, is still a large producer of the well- known Acceptance Bond and other grades.
Although the bulk of the business and manufacture of the company is conducted in Holyoke, the American Writing Paper organization has branch offices in seven of the leading industrial cities. The facilities of the company for the manufacture of industrial paper were greatly augmented by the reopening of the Gill Division Mill in Holyoke, and the former giant book paper machine in the mill has been replaced by a thoroughly modern cylinder machine.
Much of the progress of the American Writing Paper Company is due to the fact that its twenty-five leading executives have an aver- age of twenty-three years per man in the paper business. The knowl- edge which these men contribute to the Eagle-A organization has been mellowed by long years of living in a world of papermaking and in the heart of "the paper center of the world."
The plant now includes about twenty-four mills carrying 3,680,000 square feet of floor space, and the power, water and steam together,
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amounts to 22,000 horsepower. The company has eight miles of rail- road track to facilitate the distribution of its products. This great organization employs hundreds of Holyoke people to produce the tons of paper products which leave its various working plants annually.
In the field of sports Holyoke was already an active center. In the last part of the 'seventies the city had a baseball team that was considered to be the equal of any in the country, and the "Sharps" and "Shamrocks" were names to be conjured with in baseball circles. There were some memorable games with the Ware "Sure Pops" and the champion "Bostons," in which the Holyoke teams acquitted them- selves well, some of the players later going to the major leagues when baseball as a sport swept the country in a wave of popularity.
An event of importance came in the middle 'seventies when W. S. Loomis gained control of the Holyoke "Transcript." There were for a time other newspapers, including the "Independent Journal" and the Holyoke "News," each of which had brief careers, but the news- paper history of Holyoke lies in the "Transcript." Many were the controversies thrashed out in it, one in particular being of a bitter nature when a disagreement arose between the board of water com- missioners and the Farr Alpaca Company in the late 'seventies over the extra use of water. Mr. Loomis was an able and forceful editor and one controversy he had with Mr. Ranlet about a printing bill was memorable.
About 1880 the Water Power Company, increasingly progressive under the excellent leadership of W. A. Chase, built a row of brick cottages on Walnut Street, south of Appleton, and sold them on easy terms. The company also built cottages on Cabot Street and later on Beech Street. Mark Wood, an employee of the Farr Alpaca Com- pany, bought one of the houses and found a customer for another. In a short time Mr. Wood opened an office during the evenings for the sale of real estate, and so prosperous did this field become that he left the mill and devoted his entire time to the business. Although others dabbled a little in realty, Mr. Wood may be considered the pioneer of successful real estate men in Holyoke.
The displacing of W. A. Chase as agent of the Holyoke Water Power Company in 1887 by E. S. Waters was responsible for a change in Holyoke history. Mr. Waters was a man of the highest char-
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acter, but was not tuned to the democratic and progressive spirit of the city. Holyoke was going at top speed and its momentum car- ried it along for a few years at what was thought to be the same rapid pace as before, but it was inevitable that it must slacken under a rigid and harsh Water Power Company policy.
In 1888 came the great blizzard. The wind drove the sheets of snow through the streets of Holyoke in a horizontal line and that evening the city was a great snow desert. The following evening, after the storm had stopped, a fire broke out, and the "Transcript" especially commended the skillful driving of "Tim" Harrington through the mountains of snow. Another event of great importance took place during this year in the founding of the H. D. Allyn real estate agency, which seriously challenged the domination of the Wood agency by sheer skill and power of perseverance. This agency sold millions of dollars worth of property and like the Wood agency saw High Street property quintuple in value and the city triple in population.
It was in this year that J. S. Comins built. Browning Hall at the corner where the City Bank Building came later and this building was destroyed in one of the fiercest fires the city has ever seen. Mr. Comins, the owner, carried no insurance, as he did not believe in it, and when the firemen and policemen attempted to stop him from entering the burning building, he knocked them down like tenpins until he was finally overpowered.
Further evidences of municipal prosperity were shown in the 'nineties. Three additional banks came into being, the Dickinson Paper Company and the American Pad Company had become firmly established, and the Mackintosh Mills had reached a high degree of prosperity. The Whiting Street reservoir had already been built by John Delaney, who had accumulated a fortune some time before when his dam at Florence stood while all the others were swept away by the Mill River flood.
There were two industrial failures at this time which shook Holyoke badly. One was the Keating Wheel Company, which was installed in the Mosher Building near the first level canal and the stock of which was reinforced by many dollars from Holyoke people. The investors were never repaid and the mill moved to Middletown,
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Connecticut, to fail there also. The other was the failure of the Winona Paper Company in 1891. This mill had been called the "slaughter house" by expert paper men of Holyoke, because of its loose methods of manufacturing and selling, but the treasurer of the concern always kept a big bank balance and had the horse and carriage equipment worthy of a millionaire. The removal of the Coburn Trolley Company to Willimansett at the turn of the century was a blow industrially. This move was due to the fact that the company could not get a tract of land in Holyoke at a reasonable figure and many of the people blamed the rigid policies of the water company as being indirectly responsible.
Springdale had prospered with the street railway extension and Ingleside Terrace was opened in 1893. A panic came the same year which dealt Holyoke business men a blow, especially those in the building trades, many of whom at this time were Frenchmen. Gilbert Potvin, a well-known builder, was already wealthy and retired at the time of the panic, leaving Louis LaFrance, his partner, to become the foremost builder in Holyoke. It was due to LaFrance's efforts that the tenement system of Holyoke was revolutionized, with the resultant modernizing of tenement quarters for workmen in Ward One and South Holyoke.
In the period from 1887 to 1897 the municipal machinery was becoming more and more cumbersome. The city had grown to nearly 36,000 in 1890, and the old charter, with the aldermanic and councilor committees sharing authority with the mayor, caused a lack of direct responsibility and a consequent slowing of efficiency. After hot discus- sion fraught with much opposition from those against centralization, a new charter was secured in 1896. A. B. Chapin was the first reform mayor under the new charter, and in spite of some personal and political hostility against him, it was generally agreed that he was a competent man for the place. A cool, keen and determined man, remorseless and yet just, he brought the city out of a temporary finan- cial slough and reorganized the city government.
Along with Holyoke's mercantile and industrial development came a number of distinguished men in the legal and medical professions. A notable lawyer of the time was William H. Brooks, who for years was president of the Hampden County bar. Mr. Brooks was once a guest at a papermaker's dinner and in the course of a droll speech
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said his acquaintance with the difficult process of papermaking was confined to the manufacture of promissory notes, and though he thoroughly understood the process, he sometimes found great dif- ficulty in "marketing the product." Another legal personality high in the esteem of Holyokers of that time was Judge Pearsons; and A. A. Tyler for over a quarter of a century was the city's most expert title searcher and conveyancer.
About the end of the century the new board of public works asked the Water Power Company for more favorable terms on a new elec- tric lighting contract, as the old one was about to expire. The reply given by Agent Waters probably cost his company the ownership of the electric and gas plants. He brusquely informed the board that if the contract was renewed at all, it would be renewed at the old rates. This move on the part of the water company was strongly resented by the residents of Holyoke, since it amounted to a threat to throw the city in darkness if the price were not paid. A bill was introduced to the Legislature for the taking over of the plants and in spite of the bitter opposition put up by the company, the manufacturers and the local press, the Holyoke voters twice endorsed the proposition and it became a law, though litigation caused a delay in the actual taking over of the plants until 1902. The city was forced to pay a high price for a plant that was poorly conditioned, but this municipal ownership was vindicated by low electric rates later, after great expenditures in renewing and modernizing the system. Today the city of Holyoke is one of the few in New England which owns an electric and gas plant in successful operation.
The Highland District developed rapidly with the building of the beautiful Highland School in 1900. A teacher in this school, John A. Callahan, was long an important person in the Holyoke educational system and was noted for his high educational aims.
It was in Mayor Avery's administration that the city's spirit became more idealistic. There were few Holyoke parks worthy of note except Hampden Park, acquired in the early town days through the munificence of Jones S. Davis, and Prospect Park, which was laid out in the early 'eighties. Elmwood Park was finally improved and became a place of great beauty, but still the South Holyoke section lacked a natural breathing space until Springdale Park was acquired in 1905. Four years later the Jones farm was taken over and large
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tracts of land purchased for public playgrounds. Two enthusiastic park men who did a great deal of fine work for the city in this respect were W. J. Howes and C. E. Mackintosh, and though their ideals sometimes proved too much for the public purse of the city, the work they did laid a good foundation for the Holyoke of future generations.
The new stone dam was erected by the Holyoke Water Power Company at the turn of the century. For a time a number of children were drowned by falling into the canals, due to insufficient fencing, but the company repaired the fences and eliminated the danger.
A peculiar situation arose during the last part of the century con- cerning territorial rights involving the long narrow strip of land from upper Northampton Street to Mt. Tom Junction, which includes Smiths Ferry. When the boundary between West Springfield and Northampton was laid out there was no Holyoke existent, and the narrow stretch was nearer Northampton than it was to West Spring- field. After the creation of Holyoke the land was in the shadow of Holyoke, while it was about seven miles from Northampton. The jurisdiction of the latter city was municipal, but it owned no land or buildings on the property with the exception of the little Smiths Ferry Schoolhouse. It early became obvious that Holyoke with the greatest of convenience could take care of the section, while Northampton could do so only with difficulty. The Holyoke desire for annexation was natural, but the city, instead of petitioning for the annexation twenty-five years before, delayed until 1895, and Northampton, by a series of legal technicalities, defeated numerous attempts along this line. Northampton's position was a favorable one and understand- able, although it reacted against the city of Holyoke sorely. The Meadow City received a large sum in taxes from this section, only a small part of which it paid out in maintenance, not having bound itself before the Legislature to furnish water, schools, sewerage facili- ties and other municipal functions. The Legislature, after a hearing at which Sidney Whiting presented the facts, finally frowned on this technical advantage held by Northampton, and in 1909 annexation to Holyoke became a fact, after $55,000 had been awarded in damages. The controversy over this raged for a number of years and was the cause at that time for much ill feeling, particularly when Holyoke had to pay what it considered a "ransom" for the section.
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A phenomenon of the beginning of the new century was the apart- ment house craze that swept the city. Hundreds of prospective home- owners in the industrial town became flat dwellers because of the large number of steam-heated apartments that were constructed. The "Flats," a tenement district in the lower section of Holyoke near the mills, sprang up, and here the mill workers were hived in profusion. There was also a racial cycle of mill workers. In the old days the "Yankees" worked in the mills and as laborers. They were followed by the Irish, who in turn yielded in great degree to the French. The Poles, hard-working and thrifty, came next, and took over the mill positions. Today, however, all nationalities are to be found at the machines and in the assembling and cutting rooms of Holyoke.
The beginning of the new century marked a great step forward in living conditions of Holyoke people, as compared with those of thirty years before. In the early days many of the people worked from six in the morning to six at night in the mills. Few houses had sanitary plumbing, gas, or hot water, and there were no telephones, electric cars, phonographs, or automobiles for convenience and pleas- ure. The hard-working younger men on Sunday, their day of rest, would go over to the island in the Connecticut to play baseball, and there would likely be raided by the police for disturbing the decorum of the Sabbath. The roads were in poor state, the jail was unliveable, and the schools were little more than wooden shacks. By 1900 these matters had all been improved and conditions for the mill workers, through social legislation and public opinion, became better.
The burning of the Windsor Hotel and block in 1899 paralyzed business in one of Holyoke's greatest fires and gave added strength to the value of property on High Street. Another large fire was that of the MacAuslan & Wakelin Company, in 1906, which stopped traffic for a time as the flames ravaged the building.
The Holyoke Business Men's Association had been organized earlier on the idea of banding together for the improvement of busi- ness in the city, but despite the hard work of its membership it failed to stay in existence. The Holyoke Board of Trade, later to culminate in the modern and efficient Chamber of Commerce, was organized in 1909 and served the city well, being responsible for much of the healthy and legitimate development of Holyoke industry.
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The playground movement advanced when land located on West Street, Hampden Street and Maple Street was purchased for pub- lic playgrounds, and in 1910 the city government passed an ordi- nance providing for the control of the public playgrounds. A com- mission of nine members was appointed, three of them women. Important municipal developments made an appearance when the first pieces of motor apparatus were purchased for the Holyoke Fire Department.
The Holyoke Municipal Milk Station, the first purely municipal station in New England, was opened in a small shop on Sargeant Street in 1911 and the William Whiting School was erected on Chest- nut Street in the same year. The Holyoke Tuberculosis Hospital was opened on a hill close to the city and the larger reservoir at Fomer was completed. The Holyoke Vocational School at the corner of Sergeant and Pine was also dedicated in this year.
The year 1915 is marked by a fire which destroyed the popular Empire Theatre. The beautiful Nonotuck Hotel was erected and the Knights of Columbus Building on Suffolk Street was dedicated. Another development of communal purposes and aims was the organ- izing of the Holyoke Rotary Club, the two hundred and twelfth chap- ter of this vast organization.
Holyoke responded to the call to arms with full strength and purpose. There had been a preliminary military furor in the city in April of 1916 when Company D was called out to duty on the Mexi- can border. On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany and the city buzzed with excitement as the plants quickened their production and preparations for establishing enlistment posts proceeded rapidly. Two months after the declaration of war, regis- tration for service in the draft army was held at the city hall and nearly 7,000 Holyoke men responded. Holyoke over-subscribed its first Liberty Loan quota of $2,000,000 and in September the 104th Infantry, including Company D of Holyoke, was mobilized at Camp Bartlett, Westfield. Holyoke's quota was 3,500 men in the army, five hundred men in the navy and seventy women engaged in war work for the government, and the entire city responded nobly, enduring the hardships at home with fortitude and aiding in great measure financially by over-subscribing four separate Liberty Loans. A tre- mendous parade and celebration was held in the city at the signing of
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