USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Detroit > The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Vol. I > Part 55
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was naturally one of the first industries to be organized on a large scale, and the saw mill was the first method of this development. In the early '50s the river front in Detroit and Springwells was lined with saw mills and the foundations of several good family fortunes were laid in this business. Statistics of this industry were not regularly compiled, but in 1859 there were eleven mills in operation with a cut of 30,000,000 feet a year. The industry lasted into the Twentieth Century, lasted, in fact, until the log supply from the Lake Huron shore was exhausted, and Canadian export restrictions had cut off the supply from the Georgian Bay district.
CAR BUILDING
Manufactures in which wood was the chief material greatly surpassed the saw mill in importance. Among these, car building was among the first and for many years far the largest. In 1853 George B. Russell and other parties secured premises on the Gratiot Road and commenced the manufacture of twenty-five cars for the Detroit and Pontiac Railway. This was the inauguration of car building west of Albany. In 1854 the co-partnership became Robinson, Russell & Company, which was, in 1868, merged into an incorporated concern-the Detroit Car & Manufacturing Company-the works having been removed from Gratiot Road to the foot of Beaubien Street. In 1856 the company built shops on Croghan Street. At that time there were no houses in that vicinity, and the subsequent settlement of that portion of the city is directly traceable to the location of these works.
In 1871 the business was sold to the Pullman Company, which, in a few years, enlarged the works so as to cover the whole block between Croghan Street, (now Monroe Avenue), St. Aubin and Macomb streets and the Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad. Then came an incident characteristic of the Detroit authorities of those days. The company wanted to expand their works over much larger space, and asked that Macomb Street be vacated for a single block. The common council refused; the company began to look elsewhere for a site, and finally located near Chicago, founding the town of Pullman. It retained, the shops here as a branch till 1893, when they were abandoned. The Detroit Car Company built, in 1872, extensive works on Adair Street but did not last many years. Meantime the Michigan Car Company, organized in 1864, built large works at Grand Trunk Junction, and the Peninsular Car Works followed in 1885 at Milwaukee Junction. The Michigan Central and the Grand Trunk railroads had car shops in or near the city and the street railway company fol- lowed at a later period. The Russel Wheel & Foundry Company also did an extensive business in the building of logging cars.
The Detroit branch of the great manufacturing institution, the American Car & Foundry Company, is comprised of what was formerly known as the Peninsular Car Company, located at Ferry and Russell streets, the Michigan Car Company, the Detroit Car Wheel Company and Detroit Pipe & Foundry Company, located at Michigan and Clark avenues, and the Baugh Steam Forge, located on the river at the foot of Clark Avenue. All of these properties were merged into the Michigan-Peninsular Car Company in September, 1892, and in March, 1899, were acquired by the American Car & Foundry Company with other plants located in Chicago, St. Louis, Buffalo and other cities. The plants in Detroit are designated as the Peninsular Department, Michigan Department and Forge Department. In 1884 the Peninsular Car Company purchased
4
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twenty-five acres of land at Ferry and Russell streets, erected buildings and installed first-class equipment. Then it was only necessary to arrange for the construction of wooden cars. When the demand for steel cars made it apparent that eventually the wooden car would give way to the car of steel construction, large shops were erected at this plant and equipped with machinery adapted to this work. The buildings alone now cover about twenty acres and the total acreage occupied is fifty-two. There are also foundries at this plant in which are made the wheels and castings for cars turned out. The Michigan Depart- ment, at Michigan and Clark avenues, occupies thirty-nine acres. The Forge Department occupies nine acres on the Detroit River. Statistics of the state department of labor show that in 1919 there were 2,423 people employed at the Detroit plants of this company. The company's general offices are in St. Louis, Missouri. Representative Detroit capitalists who were formerly identified with the car building industry in Detroit are: Col. Frank J. Hecker, C. L. Freer and James McGregor, and the late James McMillan, John S. Newberry, Christian H. Buhl, Theodore D. Buhl, Russell A. Alger, James F. Joy, and William C. McMillan. The car business reached its high water mark in 1907, when it em- ployed over 9,000 men and had a production valued at $28,000,000. The two big freight car plants were then building 100 cars a day. During the late war the immense plant of the American Car & Foundry was given over to the making of munitions and when fully organized was turning out war materials in tre- mendous quantities.
During the period of its ascendancy, car building added more to Detroit's fame as a manufacturing center than any other industry. Its products rolled over the rails in every state and territory in this country and were sent also to Canada, Mexico, Spain and Russia. In its latest stages it was much more of a metal than a wood industry, but was always a large consumer of forest products.
Ship building was the next great industry in which wood was the chief raw material, but this is deserving of treatment in a section by itself. For hulls, iron, steel and, latterly, concrete have since displaced wood. Next to house building the greatest use of wood in the city is in the making of automobile bodies and following that is furniture making, both very important industries. Originally the whole country was heavily wooded. From its forests there came not only valuable house and shipbuilding timber, but the wood that for half a century furnished the fuel for its brick kilns and charcoal iron furnaces.
A PIONEER IN IRON MANUFACTURE
Surprise has often been expressed that Detroit, with all its varied industries, in many of which iron is the basic material for manufacture, should not have taken a more prominent position in the making of iron itself. It was in fact among the pioneers in various phases of this industry. The first iron blast fur- nace in this country west of Pittsburgh was built in Hamtramck in 1856 by Dr. George B. Russel. From that time till 1905 "The Hamtramck Iron Works" was one of the landmarks of Eastern Detroit industry. The site of this plant, now over three miles within the city limits, was at the foot of Concord Avenue on land now occupied by Morgan & Wright.
Beyond the city on the west, in the large township of Ecorse, Capt. E. B. Ward established in 1854 the Eureka Iron & Steel Works. That and the Wyan- dotte Rolling Mills, whose construction followed, constituted for many years the largest industrial plant in the county. They were built partly with Detroit
.
Thomas Berry
Merrill I. Mills
Daniel Scotten
Christian H. Buhl
OLD PORTRAITS OF PROMINENT DETROIT MEN
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capital, but were located in what is now the city of Wyandotte, because that was on the edge of one of the finest tracts of woodland then left in Southern Michigan, whose thousands of acres promised a supply of charcoal for many years to come. It is an interesting fact of local history that the first steel rails made in this country were rolled at the Wyandotte Mills, and that the first Bessemer steel produced in this country came from the same mills. In 1862 William Franklin Durfee, who had studied the Bessemer steel process in England, went to Lake Superior to test the suitability of its iron ores for the manufacture of steel, under a process invented by Mr. William Kelley. He succeeded in making ingots of steel, and established the fact that some of the best Bessemer ores in the country were in the Lake Superior district. He interested Captain Ward in his experiments, and the first steel rails made in this country were rolled at the Wyandotte mills, May 25, 1865. Mr. Durfee also constructed at that point the first analytical laboratory built in the United States as an adjunct to steel works. It was a great aid in the study of the Bessemer process and in the use of regenerative furnaces. After the success of Mr. Durfee's plan for making steel rails became apparent, the Wyandotte mills were found not to have suffi- cient capacity for their economical production. A difference of opinion arose between Captain Ward and his associates, as to the advisability of enlarging the plant. The result of the disagreement was the withdrawal of two members who were largely interested in the concern, and the establishment of the South Chicago Rolling Mills. This enterprise afterwards developed into the Illinois Steel Company's immense works, the largest steel rail producers in the world. This was not the first, nor was it the last time that Detroit lost an important industry through lack of the timely foresight and enterprise required to take quick advantage of a passing opportunity. The mills at Wyandotte ceased oper- ations in the '90s, after about thirty years of successful operation.
It has long been a theory of commercial writers that Detroit should be a large manufacturer of coke iron as well as of charcoal iron. The arguments to support this position have been numerous and apparently convincing. The answer to them was for a long time short but conclusive. The freight rate on iron ore from the Lake Superior region to Lake Erie ports was the same as to Detroit, while the former were much nearer to the coal fields. It requires about one and one half tons of ore and two tons of coke to make one ton of iron, and the advantage was, therefore, with the Lake Erie ports. An expert who made a thorough examination of the whole subject in 1903 said that when pig iron sold at $28.00 a ton it might have been made very profitably in Detroit, but when it came down again to $14.00 or $15.00 a ton, which was the price then ruling, it could not be profitably made here with Pennsylvania coke; nor could coal be advan- tageously coked at this point except under especially favorable conditions. These favorable conditions had then arisen, and the same gentleman who formerly advised against the establishment of coke iron furnaces became the chief pro- motor of the initial enterprise of this character. These conditions are, first, the opening of new railroad connections with the coal fields of Ohio and West Vir- ginia; second, and much more important, the building of coke ovens in connec- nection with the great alkali manufactories in this district. The economic use of heat, power, and material which this combination secures makes it possible to lay down at the door of the furnace a superior quality of coke that will enable Detroit to compete with any of the lake cities in the production of coke pig. The initial enterprise of this kind, the Detroit Iron & Steel Company, established
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and incorporated in 1902, located on Zug Island, has had a successful career but remains thus far without an imitator. That, and the Detroit Iron Furnace plant on Wight Street, successor to three of the old charcoal iron companies, are the sole produeers of "pig" in this eity.
Detroit is, however, one of the largest consumers of pig iron in the country. Among its numerous and varied manufactures, those into which steel enter as among the most important materials form no inconsiderable portion. Its im- mense shipbuilding interests, its automobile plants, now the most important in the country, its stove works, its steel spring works, its manufactories of spring beds, its structural steel works, its bridge building, its steam fitting and heating its malleable iron and grey iron works, and a host of others are constantly using or manipulating iron or steel in some form. The monthly export tables mention nearly 150 classes, including thousands of individual articles, in which iron is an essential part.
PRODUCTS OF THE SALT BEDS
It is very rarely, except on the discovery of precious metals or diamonds, that a new industry comes into such sudden and so great prominence as that achieved by the salt and soda industry of the "Down River district" in Wayne County. Up to 1SSS there was no district along the eastern shore of Michigan that appeared to be less promising than the river front from Fort Wayne to Wyandotte, and again from the other side of Wyandotte to Trenton. There was an old glass factory on the east bank of the tortuous and sluggish River Rouge. There was a sawmill, which had seen its most active days, at Ecorse and one at Wyandotte. For the rest, the fifteen miles of marsh fronting on the most magnificent waterway of the continent, was put to but little industrial use. A few reels and tumble-down shanties indicated occupation during the com- paratively short season, when eommereial fishing could be carried on at a profit. At the two mouths of the Rouge, and at some other points along Detroit River, the amateur sportsman took a few bass and perch, and swapped many lies or · fired at the elusive duek. With these exceptions the only frequenters of the marsh that watched the mighty fleet of vessels, passing and repassing on the river, were the frog, the muskrat, and the mudhen. In summer a few vessels were towed up the muddy Rouge to the manufactories on the higher ground beyond the marsh.
Borings were made below Wyandotte in the hope of finding gas or oil for use in the iron works at that point, but salt was found instead, and that laid the foundation of a new industry. The pioneer work in the development of the salt beds was done by Capt. J. B. Ford of Ford City, Pennsylvania, a large manu- facturer of plate glass, and consequently a large consumer of soda ash, for which the country was then dependent upon Belgian and English manufacturers. A series of borings followed by very careful examinations of the salt brought up, of the water from the river, and of the limestone, which crops out a few miles distant, convinced the captain that this was the ideal place for the manufacture of soda ash, and in 1889 work was commenced, which beeame Plant No. 1 of the Michigan Alkali Company.
There was then only one manufactory of that product in the country and the officers were very close-mouthed, in reference to methods, as all the alkali manu- facturers have been since. The new concern had to feel its way along through various experiments with the ammonia process, and as an officer of the company
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says, expended over a million dollars before it began to get any practical and satisfactory results. One of the things it had to contend with was the desperate competition of the English manufacturers, who pooled together and put their product on the American market at less than cost in order to break down the manufacturers in this country. Captain Ford, however, was a man of grit as well as capital, and maintained a sturdy fight. Finally, the pendency of the Dingley tariff bill afforded an opportinuty to check that kind of English compe- tition, which was done by levying a duty on three-eighths of a cent a pound on soda ash, and three-fourths of a cent on bi-carbonate of soda and caustic soda.
After the experimental stage was over the works became very prosperous, and it was upon the foundation thus laid that the immense chemical plants at Wyandotte and Ford City were built. In 1895 the Solvay Process Company of Syracuse, New York, purchased the old exposition grounds of sixty-seven acres, with the buildings standing thereon, for a manufacturing site, and Brady Island, just across the Rouge, comprising 232 acres, was added. They began the development of the salt beds underlying Zug Island, and now this is much the largest industry in the Delray district.
The discoverers and patentees of the ammonia, or Solvay, process in the soda ash industry were two brothers, Ernest and Alfred Solvay, of Brussels, Belgium, and the process was perfected in 1863. By this process, ash, under ammonia treatment, is made from a purified solution of salt, charged with ammonia and treated with purified carbonic acid. After filtering and drying, it is ready for market as an exceedingly fine carbonate of soda. This is used in bleaching, purification of oils, tanning of leather, desulphurization of ores, purification of gas, scouring of wool, tempering of steel and principally in the making of glass. It is an essential raw material for soda, baking powder, borax, lye, paper, paint, soap and varnish. These are just a few of the principal uses among hundreds for the manufactured product.
The Solvay Process Company, the Semet Solvay Company, the Michigan Alkali Company, the Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company, and the Detroit Rock Salt Company are incorporated companies manufacturing soda ash and salt products in Detroit, Wyandotte and River Rouge districts. In a period of good production the various industries of this class in the down river district employ over ten thousand men, with a product running high into the millions in value. This industry has a national as well as a local significance and value. The year before the companies mentioned commenced to put their product on the market in quantities, Detroit imported 450,000,000 pounds of soda ash and exported none. In 1918 the city exported 238,435,000 pounds and imported none. In the latter year, 97,378,000 pounds of caustic soda and 40,969,000 of other sodas were also exported. The manufacturing establish- ments engaged in this industry in Wayne County are either a part of, or con- trolled by, national corporations of vast extent.
SHIP BUILDING A STANDARD INDUSTRY
A "forty-niner," who was first a miner and afterwards a vessel owner and explorer along the coasts and up the rivers of California and Oregon, told on his return to Detroit years afterwards of a queer craft which he saw enter the harbor of San Francisco in the early '50s. The vessel was built originally upon the lines common in those days for an ocean-going schooner, but was flattened amidships as if pressed in an immense vise. Examination showed that she had
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been shaved off on either side, so that for some distance along the waist her lines were straight and parallel. Inquiry brought out the fact that she was built in Detroit for ocean travel. She proved to be too wide for the locks in the Welland Canal. Accordingly, her master had her planed off inch by inch until she could barely pass through the narrowest locks, the tightest squeeze, doubtless, that any vessel ever had in that passageway. This was only one of the ingenious devices employed by Detroit builders in an industry that deserves a place here, for boat and shipbuilding as classed in the government tables as manufactories.
The founders of Detroit made the first approach to the site of their settle- ment in batteaux and they and their successors have been engaged in construet- ing some sort of river or lake craft ever since. They have passed through all the successive steps from the canoe and the dugout to the largest of modern craft, even to the steel ocean-going freighter. Work at Detroit yards has included tugs, two, three and four masted schooners, coarse freight wooden steamers, package freight and passenger steamers with wooden hulls, steam barges, passenger ferry steamers, the largest car ferries, iron and steel freighters of every class, ice erushers, a floating drydock, pleasure yachts, and the finest side-wheel passenger carriers that sail any waters.
The first merchant sail vessel was built here in 1769 and was called the Enterprise. The Angelica, of forty-five tons, followed in 1771. In 1782 there were nine armed vessels afloat in these waters, all built in Detroit and all in good order, the largest, a brig named the Gage, having fourteen guns: the others were the Dunmore, Hope, Angelica, Felicity, Faith, Wyandotte, Adven- ture, and a gun boat. In 1796 twelve merchant vessels were owned here, as well as numerous brigs, sloops and schooners. In 1797 the United States schooner Wilkinson was built at Detroit under the direction of Captain Curry. This boat was later renamed the Amelia and became part of Commodore Perry's squadron.
The Argo, in 1827, was the first steamer built in Detroit, followed in 1833 · by the Michigan, built by Oliver Newberry. The Mayflower, owned by the Michigan Central Railroad, was launched on the 16th of November, 1848. She was a vessel of 1,354 tons. The Mayflower sunk December 11, 1851, while steaming from Buffalo to Detroit, after having been damaged by floating ice. Silas Farmer, in his History of Detroit, gives a list of over 175 steamboats constructed at this port between 1827 and 1887.
The modern great ship building industry goes back in its roots to the middle of the last century. The construction of drydocks began also about the same time. The floating dock of O. M. Hyde was completed in December, 1852, and at the same time the docks of the Detroit Dry Doek Company were con- structed at the foot of Orleans Street. Under the names of G. Campbell & Company, Campbell & Owen, Detroit Dry Dock Company, and the Detroit Shipbuilding Company, business has been conducted at the same location ever since, the Wyandotte yard (established by E. B. Ward in 1872) having been added in 1879. The company is now a part of the large American Ship Building Company. It retains its old name, however, and was last incorporated March 31, 1899, and now has an authorized capital stock of $1,450,000. The Detroit plant at the foot of Orleans Street covers fifteen acres and is equipped with docks, drydock and shops. The Wyandotte plant, covering twenty-four acres along the river, has two large building berths and shops. Recent reports of
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the state labor bureau indicate that in 1919, 3,010 men were employed by the Detroit Shipbuilding Company. Merton E. Farr is the president of the company.
In 1863 the firm of Cowie, Hodge & Company commenced the building of marine and other classes of engines at the foot of Rivard Street. Under the successive names of Hodge & Christie, Samuel F. Hodge, and the Riverside Iron Works, the same business was continued and expanded until 1902, when the property was acquired by the Great Lakes Engineering Works. A shipyard was equipped at Ecorse, subsequently another was purchased at St. Clair and the work of the Rivard Street shops was turned almost entirely into marine channels. In 1910 the St. Clair yards were abandoned and extensive works were commenced at Ashtabula, Ohio. In September, 1920, New York interests headed by Antonio C. Passano purchased the property of the Great Lakes Engineering Works for $1,850,000.
Prior to the advent of the last-named company, Detroit had been second or third among the lake ship building ports in the amount of work turned out in any given year. But with the coming of the new company, it jumped at once to the front rank. In 1905, the lake ship yards launched thirty-one big freighters with a total tonnage of 285,400. Of these the two Detroit companies were credited with fourteen and a tonnage of 134,400. The nearest com- petitors were the Cleveland companies, which, at their yards in Cleveland and Lorain, launched ten vessels with a tonnage of 85,500. Amid various fluctu- ations in the demand for this kind of tonnage since then, the Detroit companies have kept well to the front.
The season of 1911 brought an unique feature to lake shipbuilding. This was in the form of contracts for the construction of steamers and barges for the Atlantic trade. Two factors brought these contracts this way. The first was the ability to build vessels of the type wanted more quickly than the ocean ship yards were able to do it, and the other was the lower cost at which the work could be done here. The vessels are limited in size to the capacity of the Welland Canal. During 1917 and 1918 almost the entire construction work at both companies was in vessels built under government direction, for ocean service.
The increase in tonnage of vessels built here has been almost as striking as the change in material and type of construction. In 1882 the record cargo of iron ore was 1,604 gross tons; in 1SS5, 2,254; in 1890, 2,744; in 1895, 3,843; in 1900, 7,045; in 1905, 10,629; in 1906, 13,294. That very nearly reached the limit of cargo possible with the present depth of channels, though in 1919 a maximum of 14,000 tons was reached. The record cargo of wheat from 1839 to 1845 was that of the Osceola, Chicago to Buffalo, with 3,678 bushels. Recent cargoes have exceeded 420,000 bushels.
WORLD'S STOVE-MAKING CENTER
Detroit ranks as the greatest stove-producing city in the world and has held this position for nearly a half century. Cooking stoves and ranges, heating stoves, gas ranges and heaters, electric heaters, and furnaces of all kinds are manufactured in the city by five great companies, one of them the largest in the world. These five companies are: The Michigan Stove Company, the Detroit Stove Works, Peninsular Stove Company, Detroit Vapor Stove Company, and the Art Stove Company. The combined annual output of all Detroit stove Vol. 1-35
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