USA > New Jersey > Hudson County > Jersey City > History of Jersey City, N.J. : a record of its early settlement and corporate progress, sketches of the towns and cities that were absorbed in the growth of the present municipality, its business, finance, manufactures and form of government, with some notice of the men who built the city > Part 61
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NEW YORK, LAKE ERIE AND WESTERN RAILWAY STATION, JERSEY CITY.
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ERIE NOWESTERN R.Y
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CHAPTER XXXIV.
SOME OF THE LEADING MANUFACTURING ESTABLISHMENTS AND BUSINESS INTERESTS OF THE CITY, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR FORMATION AND PROGRESS.
HE Erie Railway is the pioneer American Trunk Line, and its history is exception- ally interesting, being to a great extent the history of railway progress. The construction of the Erie is the most important epoch in the evolution of American transportation. Sixty-eight years ago-two generations past-the Erie Canal was opened, and the great West began to unfold. Over millions of prairie-acres wild grasses waved, trampled by herds of buffalo-iron and copper veining the rocks of the Lake region were undreamed of-pine forests clothed the nearer ridges, underlaid with coal almost unused, and oil reservoirs as yet unknown. To touch and quicken these sources of wealth a system of canal transportation was inadequate. Only the magician Steam could unlock those treasures, and the timely creation of railroads gave man a grasp on the stores pro- vided by nature for his use.
The West of that day began at the gateway of Lake Erie, and the present centre of popu- lation and activity for the Union was then the outpost of a wilderness. Emigration poured in too rapidly for cultivation to overtake it, and for some years the means of living were supplied from the seaboard. As the region filled and flourished, the prize of western trade attracted capital and enterprise from the far-seeing East. The Allegheny River was then the key to the whole business movement of the West, and to win its control by approaching railroads became the aim of merchants and statesmen in the great eastern cities. Pennsylvania led in the crea- tion of a system of works controlled by the State, starting with the Columbia & Philadelphia Railroad, and has ever since steadily aided and fostered its transportation lines. Maryland adopted and has constantly cherished the Baltimore & Ohio road as its pet and protege. The State of New York, last to enter the race, and too great for unity of interest, chose no single line of transit, dividing its energies between the Erie Canal, the central counties chain of roads and the Erie Railroad traversing the southern tier. These counties demanded equal advan- tages with the central ones, and the City of New York aspired to rear there the greatest mart of the Union. But the banking capital of New York at that date was only equal to that of Baltimore and less than half that of Philadelphia. Its wealth was largely embarked in foreign commerce, and it was to the needs and energy of the southern counties more than to the aid of the city that the Erie road owed its inception. What they at first asked was a State turnpike road, for which surveys were made in 1825. Even so late as 1833 grave publications by eminent engineers advised building a horse railroad over the entire route. For years after the grant of the charter the work languished. Subscriptions came slowly ; the great fire of 1835 and the financial crash of 1837 checked it ; the intense jealousy and opposition of the canal counties prevented State aid, and the enterprise became the football of politics, both State and national. It was not really until 1845, after a grant of $3,000,000 had been wrung from the State on hard conditions, that a revived and sustained interest in the plan impelled it to completion.
The charter of the New York & Erie Railroad Company became a law just sixty-three years ago, in 1832. The first sod of its bed was turned near Deposit, November 5, 1835, and in May. 1851, a train bearing the President of the United States and his Cabinet traversed the com- pleted road. It was designed to run from Piermont, on the Hudson, to Dunkirk, on Lake Erie. for 446 miles, and to cost $10,000,000. The compulsion of natural laws and commercial condi- tions so greatly modified the plan, that within twenty years from its opening its cost had been $40,000,000 ; its length was, with branches, 1,400 miles, and its termini were the seaport of New York and the lake port of Buffalo. Before the road had been ten years in operation the annual earnings exceeded the amount it was originally intended to spend in building it.
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HISTORY OF JERSEY CITY.
Delays in construction were not all to its disadvantage, since intended errors were avoided and unexpected resources gained. The hope that the road would interseet five canals was for- gotten when its opening met twelve tributary railroads. The first design was to build 200 miles on piles, for which, it was urged, the soft western soil gave great facilities, and much of it was so built and abandoned later. The early idea of ownership, applied for some years on the Pennsylvania lines, was that anyone might use the track with his own cars, the company furnishing engines, with a charge for tolls and motive power. The road was planned as a patchwork, to be built by local subscriptions in the several counties, and much of it was so paid for. It was a fixed condition that the State might take possession after a term of years. While the road was completing railroad policy was working itself clearer, and in the end more correct conclusions on all these points prevailed. In 1845, when the road was fairly set on the way to completion, only 35 miles were in use, from Piermont to Middletown. It was extended eight miles to Otisville in 1846, 139 miles to Binghamton in 1848, 58.5 miles in 1849 to Elmira; in the following year 594 miles were built to Hornellsville, and the remaining seetion to Dunkirk was finished, for 128 miles, in 1851. A continuous telegraph line had also been placed when it was opened.
At once upon its completion the volume of business far surpassed in its rapid increase the dreams of its projectors, and quickly exceeded its capacity. Relief and expansion were de- manded, and very soon, in spite of strenuous opposi- tion from the river coun- ties, the slow and costly transit from Piermont by the Hudson was exchanged for a cut across by the shorter side of a triangle, through a lease of continu- ous New Jersey lines, giv- ing direct and rapid access to the port of New York. This approach was per- fected by the purchase of extensive water-front at Long Dock in 1856, and by piercing the solid rock of Bergen Hill in 1859 with a mile of tunnel-a work unparalleled at that time, FERRYBOAT JOHN J. M'CULLOUGH. costing over $1,000,000- nearly four times as much as the appliances of modern science would need to expend for the purpose. The outlay re- quired for this and other improvements embarrassed the company's finances, and the New York & Erie Company passed into a receiver's hands in the tenth year after its road was finished, emerging as the Erie Railway Company.
The Civil War immediately following brought, with the Government's pressure for transit of troops and supplies, a large and sudden increase of its revenue, giving the means and the impulse for inerease of its capacity in various directions. Within a few years its western out- lets and tributaries more than doubled in importance. The lease of the Buffalo, New York & Erie road in 1863 was practically the transfer of its lake terminus from Dunkirk to the grow- ing eity of Buffalo, already a great railroad centre. Its Suspension Bridge road was built in 1868, linking it with Niagara and the rapidly-growing Canadian systems of roads. And in the year after control was gained of the Union Steamboat Company, then holding by its boats, as it has since maintained, the lead of the commercial fleets of the lakes in point of tonnage, speed and model. In this decade, too, began the development of the Erie road as a great coal carrier. The first shipment of Pennsylvania coal to New York was that of a few tons by the Delaware & Hudson Canal in 1829, three years before the Erie was chartered. In the earliest
ERIE VESTIBULED LIMITED.
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HISTORY OF JERSEY CITY.
days of the Erie, in 1836, permanent sources of business were anticipated in connections to be formed with the coal measures of the adjoining State, and while it was building, in 1849, the argument of their importance was strongly pressed. These ideas now took shape by the lease of the Hawley branch, Icading to the Pennsylvania Coal Company's fields, in 1864, and the ac- quirement, in the same year, of the Buffalo, Bradford & Pittsburg road, picreing the western bituminous deposits-by the lease of the Towanda Coal Company's property in 1868-and by the building, in 1869, of the Jefferson Railroad, securing transportation from the Delaware & Hudson's great coal traets.
The New Erie .- In 1874 the road passed once more under a receivership, becoming reor- ganized two years later, with its present title, the New York, Lake Erie & Western Railroad Company. Under this receivership, and the following ten years of management, the Erie system signally proved its enormous recuperative power. The chief improvement in its con- dition which marked this period was the reduction of its abnormal six-foot gange to the stand- ard of four and a half, in the year 1876, effected with no break in traffic by laying an interme- diate rail. The onee famous broad-gauge controversy is now only a memory, the English railroads, from which we borrowed their theory, having generally narrowed their six-foot width. Adopted when the Erie was built, on considerations of supposed economy, it might have been changed, as was proposed at an early date in its history, for an outlay of $75,000. The opportunity was lost, and the improvement only gained at the cost of nearly a hundred times that sum. A fair adjustment of the Erie's relations with the Atlantic & Great Western, now the New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio Com- pany, having been reached through a lease of the latter's road in 1883, the next forward step ARAARRR GPAIN ELEVATORS AND MILLS_P was that of the important connection with Chicago, by the construction of the Chicago & Atlantic line, which, after numerous financial difficulties, was reorganized in 1890 as the Chi- cago & Erie. This gives the Erie control of as important a line to Chicago, and through it to the great West, as any other company possesses. Within the last few years, also, the equipment of every description upon the road and its branches has been greatly improved, until it is now recognized to be the most advanced as well Grain Elevator and Mills of Carscallen & Cassidy. as the most historie railroad in America.
Niagara Falls, on the Erie lines between New York and Chicago, by way of Buffalo and the Grand Trunk Railway, is one of the wonders of the world. The Horse-Shoe Fall, so called from its crescent shape, is by far the largest, and is in the direct course of the river. It is 2,000 feet wide, and 154 feet high. The American Fall is 660 feet wide, and the Central Fall 243 feet, each having a descent of 163 feet. The aggregate of descending water is thus 2,900 feet, and the flow unceasing and nearly uniform in amount throughout the year. The quantity of water discharged is computed to be 100,000,000 tons per hour. More water passes in these fearful torrents in seven seconds than is conveyed through Croton aqueduct in twenty-four hours. At the Horse-Shoe Fall the concussion of the falling waters with those in the depths below oc- casions a spray that veils the cataract two-thirds up its height. Above this impenetrable foam, to the height of fifty fect, a lighter spray rises, which, when the sun shines upon it in the proper direction, displays magnificent solar rainbows. Goat Island is midway between the American and Canada shores, in the midst of these boiling waters. It is said that the first white person who ventured to cross the Rapids at Goat Island was Israel Putnam, in 1755. On the shore of the island, and between the smaller of the American Falls, is the Cave of the Winds, a cavern formed by the decay of the softer substratum rock, while the hard superincumbent limestone still forms the roof. In front of the cave the centre fall descends 240 feet in width. The Niag- ara River, below these stupendous falls, rushes through a deep chasm 200 feet in height, spanned by three bridges, one just below the Falls, for passengers and carriages, and two miles below
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HISTORY OF JERSEY CITY.
the suspension and cantilever bridges. Three miles below the Falls is the Whirlpool. It is caused by the abrupt turn of the river at this point, the waters of which rush with such violence against the cliff on the Canadian side as to occasion a severe reaction and rotary motion, draw- ing everything that flows down the river within the vortex. Below the Whirlpool is another series of rapids.
In Chicago all Erie trains, whether by the Chautauqua Lake or the Niagara Falls route, use the handsome Dearborn Station, which is located in the business and hotel district of the city.
New York City .- The New York stations of the Erie lines are located at the foot of Chambers and West Twenty-third streets, North River, convenient to the leading business houses, hotels, theatres, ocean and coastwise steamship piers, and the stations of connecting lines. On arrival at New York, passengers from abroad will be met at the steamer by an au- thorized agent of the Erie lines, who is able to converse in several European languages, and who will be prepared to communicate any desired information respecting the time of departure of trains for Chicago and the West, rates of fare and sleeping-car accommodations. Parties hav- ing friends coming from Europe can secure the services of such agents free. They will see that proper facilities are furnished for the transfer of passengers and baggage, either to hotels or direct to the Erie Station. By addressing James Buckley, General Eastern Passenger Agent, Erie Lines, 401 Broadway, New York, any desired information as to the arrival of ocean steamers may be obtained.
The passenger service of the Erie, under the administration of Mr. D. I. Roberts, General Passenger Agent, has been thoroughly reorganized. The system of block safety signals re- cently introduced over the entire line, insures the highest degree of safety ; while elegant coaches, latest types of locomotives, and double tracks laid with heavy steel rails, permit speed undreamed of in the early days of railroading.
SPAULDING, JENNINGS & COMPANY, Manufacturers of Specialties in Cast Steel. This concern is located in that section of Jersey City formerly known as West Bergen, in close proximity to the Morris Canal and Hackensack River, and on the line of the Central Railroad of New Jer- sey. The firm was organized in the winter of 1879-80, and the works were put in operation in May of the latter year. The plant covers about seven aeres. Early in its history its proprietors realized that a concern situated as close to New York as this, and within easy reach of the great manufacturing districts of New England and Eastern Pennsylvania ought, if it devoted its energies to the manufacture of the finest grades of steel, to build up a prosperous business.
At that time the foreign steel manufacturers, particularly the English, held control of all the finer grades of steel used in this country, and the fact that many of the workmen employed in factories where steel was used were either of foreign birth or foreign extraction, established a prejudiee against American steel which was found to be exceedingly hard to overcome. Then the discovery of natural gas in Pittsburg so cheapened the cost of producing steel in that city, that the Eastern steel makers, who had up to that time devoted themselves almost entirely to the making of the lower grades, began to feel the pressure of this competition very keenly. One after another of their best customers dropped off, until two of the oldest con- cerns-and both located in Jersey City-went out of a business which at one time had been enormously profitable, and sold their plants for what they would bring. So much of the ma- chinery as was modern and of any value was purchased by Spaulding, Jennings & Co., and adapted to their constantly increasing establishment. Their policy of catering for the trade of the consumers of fine steel, and of searching out for wants that were difficult to meet, bore fruit, and their reputation now extends not only throughout the United States, but also into Canada and Europe. A better exemplification of the adage, "Carrying coals to Newcastle," can hardly be found than that presented by this firm, as they are now sending large and regular shipments to England. The growth of the concern, in the time of its existence, considering the nature of the business and the almost constant decline in prices, is without a parallel in the history of the steel business in this country. Starting in 1880 with two trains of rolls, a single hammer, and a handful of men, it has grown in fourteen years to keeping constantly employed five trains of rolls for finishing steel hot, two trains for cold rolling, and a wire-drawing plant for making specialties in sewing machine and bicycle work. There are also six steam hammers
STEEL WORKS OF SPALLE .. .
. 'ENNINGS & CO., JERSEY CITY.
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HISTORY OF JERSEY CITY.
kept constantly employed in the making of tool steel and forgings. The annual output is something over 6,000 tons. While this does not equal the production of many of the Pittsburg steel concerns, when it is considered that the value of each ton of this material is four to five times as great as the value of a ton of Bessemer rails, the real extent and importance of this industry, so quietly built up, will be appreciated. It is probably the largest concern of its par- ticular kind in the world. The men employed number about 250 for a "single turn." When business is such as to require the working of a night shift this is largely increased.
It has always been the policy of the proprietors to maintain the most cordial relations with their employees. The scale of wages is liberal, because none but the most skilful men can perform the labor required of them.
The proprietors are Mr. Thomas H. Spaulding and Mr. Robert E. Jennings. Mr. Spauld- ing is also the owner of the Spaulding Machine Screw Co., of Buffalo, N. Y. He owns and oc- cupies the beautiful suburban home known as "Castlewood," in Llewellyn Park, Orange, N. J. His leisure is devoted to the cultivation of flowers, his chrysanthemums having gained for him more than a national reputation. His greenhouses are extensive, and contain nothing but the choicest varieties of flowers and plants.
Mr. Jennings has resided for the past thirteen years in Ege Avenue, near West Side Ave- nue, and but a short distance from the works. Besides attending to the exacting details of this business, Mr. Jennings is the vice-president and a large stockholder in the Taylor Iron & Steel
Co., of High Bridge, N. J. This is the concern which a few years since adopted the Hadfield system of making steel castings, including shells, projectiles, manganese steel car and inotor wheels and other specialties in steel casting. The company has furnished large quan- tities of shells for the navy department.
THE EUREKA FIRE HOSE COMPANY'S factory is located upon the southerly side of Wilkinson Avenue, its premises having an area of more than one and one-half acres, and extending upon that avenue from Arlington to Garfield avenues.
Their factory building is built accord- ing to the most approved plans of the EUREKA FIRE HOSE FACTORY. Mutual Fire Insurance Company and besides being equipped with every facility for the pro- duction of the class of goods manufactured, is well supplied with appliances for preventing and extinguishing fires, and for the prevention of accidents to its employees. The factory building contains about 55,000 feet of floor space, and is used for the manufacture of cotton and linen fire hose and other tubular fabrics.
This company is the oldest and largest manufacturer of seamless rubber-lined cotton fire hose in existence, occupying the first rank among fire hose manufacturers in the world.
Prior to the organization of this company in 1875, many attempts had been made to pro- duce a seamless, rubber-lined fabric hose, but none of them had been successful, the only rub- ber-lined fabric hose that had succeeded in winning even a moderate introduction into fire departments being a hose known as the Boyd rivetted hose, which consisted of an originally flat cotton fabric bent into tubular form, and its edges rivetted together, it being afterward rubber-lined.
In 1868 Mr. J. Van Dussen Reed, of New York, was indirectly interested in a company or- ganized for the manufacture of woven hats on cirenlar looms, and Mr. B. L. Stowe, now vice- president of the Eureka Fire Hose Company, was an employee of that company.
That company was not successful, but Mr. Reed, still believing that circular looms had merit, purchased one of the looms and the right to use it in foreign countries, and he and Mr. Stowe went to London in 1871 with that machine, and commenced a series of experiments
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HISTORY OF JERSEY CITY.
which resulted ultimately in the first production of a seamless woven multiple, rubber-lined, cotton fire hose, for which a United States patent was granted Mr. Reed in 1875.
In that year the Eureka Fire Hose Company was organized in New York, and the manu- facture of such hose commenced.
The production of this hose was brought to the attention of Mr. Junius Schenek, a gentle- man well known to the fire hose trade at that time, and, immediately recognizing its superiority, he was desirous of becoming identified with its sale, and did become the general selling agent of the company, a position which he retained until his death in 1892. He also held successively the positions of secretary, treasurer and vice-president of the company.
All of the weaving and knitting machinery employed by this company is of its own manu- facture, and is the invention of its own staff of mechanical experts, chief among which is its vice-president, Mr. B. L. Stowe, and Mr. Nathan Stowe.
The company's goods received a gold medal at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, at Paris in 1878 and 1879, and at Barcelona, Spain, in 1880. So fine an exhibition of the company's goods and machinery was made in Paris, that Mr. Reed, who made the exhibition for the company, also received the cross of the Legion of Honor from the French government. The company was very desirous of making an exhibition of its products at the recent World's Fair, at Chicago, but for lack of space the management ruled out fire department supply manufacturers as a class, and therefore it was impossible to secure the opportunity of making such a display of its goods as was contemplated.
The company began its operations in a small room in New York, but gradually increased its plant until it occupied a large floor.
In 1882 it purchased a factory in Brooklyn, con- sidered at the time ample for all of its future operations, but in 1887 it was obliged to secure more space, and consequently purchased the ground that it now occupies, and erected an annex factory. In 1892 it erected its present fac- tory, and removed its entire plant from Brooklyn. Before locating in Jersey City a careful investiga- tion of the merits of various places in the vicinity of New York was made, with the purpose of JOHN VAN DUSSEN REED. locating permanently in a place that would best serve its purpose ; and after a dne consideration of the advantages of easy communication and cartage with New York, excellence of railroad facilities, comparatively cheap land, and a pleasant and healthful location, the company pur- chased its present factory site.
Mr. John Van Dussen Reed, whose name has been mentioned as a founder of this company, at all times during his life owned a controlling interest in the company, and he has also suc- cessfully managed other important business enterprises, both in the United States and Europe. He was a native of New York City, and died suddenly in 1892. He was president of the Eureka Fire Hose Company at the time of his death. His widow, Mrs. Reed, who, by her own right and as the guardian of her minor children, succeeded to Mr. Reed's interest in the com- pany, with the advice and at the request of all concerned, succeeded Mr. Reed in the presi- dency of the company, her associates in the business believing that a very considerable busi- ness ability inherited from her father, Mr. Samuel L. Mitchell, for many years a very prominent shipping merchant and steamship owner of New York, and increased by an intimate knowledge of Mr. Reed's business affairs during his life, coupled with her large financial interests both within and without the company, fully justified her election to the presidency. She is a resident of Newport, R. 1.
Mr. B. L. Stowe, the present vice-president of the company, was associated with Mr. Reed as an expert mechanic, and condueted all of the experimental mechanical operations that pre-
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