USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 53
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75
products
Fabricated metals
Boots and shoes
Printed and pub-
Bread and other
Electrical machin-
Machinery
lished materials
bakery prod-
ery
Oil
Boots and shoes
ucts
Textiles
Tobacco products
Electrical machin- ery
Instruments
Primary metals
Transportation
(iron and steel)
Meat products
equipment
Lumber products
Motor vehicles
Fur goods
Boots and shoes
During the decade of the 1940's the trend toward the manufacture of durables was very pronounced. Between 1940 and 1951 the proportion of the production workers in the state employed in the durable industries rose from 28 to 40 per cent. The demand for durables following World War II and requirements for military equipment during the early 1950's account in large measure for this increase. Moreover, it should be noted that the industries with the greatest increase in the state's production workers are producers of heavy goods-the metals, machinery, trans- portation equipment, and precision instruments. The largest relative de- cline in recent years in any of the state's manufacturing industries occurred in the leather, textile, and apparel groups. Pulp and paper production in the state are declining but at a lesser rate.
Heading the list of the state's manufactures as measured by value of product in 1860 was flour milling. With a product valued at over $34,- 000,000, the state led all other states in the Union. It retained this leadership until 1890, when it yielded first place to Minnesota. By 1920 Kansas had also outstripped New York, but subsequently yielded second place to the Empire State. Even so, the flour-milling industry in comparison with the state's other industries failed to retain its im- portance. By 1880 it had slipped to third place within the state, and by 1900 to twelfth place.
Though New York City was itself an important milling center during the Civil War period, the state's leader in the flour-milling business was Rochester, long known as the "Flour City." After 1870 Albany and Buffalo
497
A CENTURY OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE
were not only milling but marketing centers. By 1900 the flour-milling business was rapidly shifting to the Northwest, with Minneapolis virtually succeeding Rochester as the flour-milling capital of the United States. With this shift also came greater economic concentration of the industry. Three concerns-C. A. Pillsbury and Company, Washburn-Crosby Com- pany, and the Northwest Consolidated Milling Company-were among the leaders in this movement. By 1921 five firms operating forty-nine mills produced approximately one-fourth of the national output.
Because of its strategic position for receiving Canadian wheat and cheap water transportation on the Great Lakes, Buffalo has in the last half century become one of the leading flour-milling cities of the western world. For this phenomenal growth, Buffalo is indebted to the Min- neapolis millers, who, realizing Buffalo's advantages, shifted part of their business to New York's second most populous city. For many years the greater part of the Buffalo flour output has been from mills owned and operated by Minneapolis millers.
Of all of New York State's industries, none, perhaps, has been of more continuing importance from Civil War days to the present than the manufacture of apparel-men's and women's clothing, furs, millinery, footgear, and fashion accessories. Since 1860 the men's clothing industry has been one of the leading industries of the state. Even before the Civil War, New York City merchants had begun to produce ready-made clothing.
The invention of the sewing machine in 1846 was revolutionary in its effect, coming as it did at a time when there was great demand for cheap, ready-made clothing, or "hand-me-downs," as they were then called, for sailors, especially in the ports of New England, for Negro slaves on Southern plantations, and adventurers prospecting for gold in California and other parts of the West. The sewing machine demanded a speed-up in other processes, especially cutting. Hence it is not sur- prising that the old-fashioned shears were soon replaced by the short knife. During the 1880's the sword knife and the circular disc made it possible to cut greater thicknesses of cloth. Production was further speeded and labor lightened with the introduction of power-driven equipment such as the band saw and reciprocating electric knife. Ultimately cutting machines were developed which could slice through forty or fifty piles of woolen cloth at one time. Technological improvements were also made in pressing apparatus. The Civil War brought large orders for uniforms, helping to transform the industry from homework to mass production in factories. With the extension of the western frontier and the rapid growth of cities came vast new markets for ready-made clothes. In 1860 about 80 per cent of men's clothing was still made to measure by custom tailors. By 1880 the proportion had shrunk to 50 per cent. The
498
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
development of half sizes and odd sizes in 1900 practically eliminated the necessity for made-to-measure suits for the hard-to-fit.
With the ever-increasing flow of immigrants into New York the apparel industry has been blessed with an abundance of labor. In the early period the English, Irish, and Germans predominated. By the 1880's the Ger- mans had crowded out the English and Irish and were in complete control of the technical processes of the industry with the exception of the cutting, which was still monopolized by the Irish. Then came the Jews and Italians, who have since been the backbone of the industry. In the mid-twentieth century Puerto Ricans have added to the labor reservoir.
By 1900 the state was producing no less than 45.7 per cent of the men's clothing in the United States. New York City produced 37 per cent, and Rochester, ranking sixth among the clothing manufacturing centers of the nation, produced about 4 per cent. By the mid-twentieth century the proportions were not markedly different from what they were fifty years earlier-42 per cent of the nation's total for the state and 37 and 6 per cent for New York City and Rochester, respectively.
Though it developed later, the history of the women's apparel industry is, in many respects, very similar to that of men's clothing. By 1900 the state produced two-thirds of the women's clothing manufactured in the United States. New York City made 96 per cent of the product of the state and 64 per cent of the entire country. In terms of the number of workers engaged and value of product, this segment of the apparel in- dustry has surpassed all others.
New York State has long been important as a producer of millinery and since 1930 has been responsible for more than half of the total value of the product in the United States. The manufacture of fur goods in the state goes back to an early date. Since the mid-1920's, however, the industry has declined.
A rapidly growing segment of the apparel industry is what is familiarly known as fashion accessories, manufactured from leather and other ma- terials. Here again New York leads all other states. Today approximately thirty-five thousand workers in the state are engaged in manufacturing handbags, dress gloves, luggage, apparel belts, wallets, watch straps, and related personal leather and fabric goods. These workers constitute more than one-half of the total employed in such manufacture in the nation.
There are a number of reasons why the women's accessories industry should be concentrated in New York State, and largely in New York City:
1. The metropolitan area affords an unparalleled retail market.
2. New York City has long been the established fashion center of America, No other place in America-not even Hollywood-has an at-
499
A CENTURY OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE
mosphere as favorable to fashion creation as the great metropolis. Besides providing designers with a social group interested in new styles, New York City offers these designers the world's largest and most easily ac- cessible array of art relating specifically to costume design: the dis- tinguished fashion library of Cooper Union; the magnificent textile and costume collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Costume Art, with over seven thousand items of dress representing three centuries of fashion, which recently became a part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and, of course, the incomparable collections of the famous Metro- politan Museum itself.
3. Workers skilled in leather working and related techniques, such as cutting, sewing, and binding, are nowhere more plentiful than in New York City, to which has come a long stream of artisans.
4. Large quantities of imported hides and skins, necessary to this segment of the apparel industry, enter the port of New York. The tanning industry which converts raw hides to finished leather for accessories is located in the Northeast, in and around New York. Tanners settled in this region because of the raw material imports and a ready supply of hemlock, chestnut, and oak bark, and, later, of foreign tanning chemicals, the calf-skin supplies from the expanding dairy regions, the existence of skilled labor necessary to tanning, and the excellent water resources.
5. New York City is the wholesale center for the apparel and leather accessories industries. Buyers from all parts of the nation make certain not to miss New York City showings famed for completeness in all ready-to-wear lines. Large stores throughout the country maintain New York City buying offices, while more distant stores are represented by resident buying agents.
These factors have resulted in the location of 90 per cent of the state's handbag and personal leather goods establishments within New York City. These concerns manufacture more than four-fifths of the state's production of such items. No less than 95 per cent of the state's luggage manufacturers, producing six-sevenths of the state's output, are located in New York City. Virtually all of the apparel belts and miscellaneous leather articles are made in New York City.
The dress glove industry, one of the oldest in the nation, was founded in Fulton County two hundred years ago by the British agent Sir William Johnson, who brought from Scotland a community of expert tanners and glovemakers. These veteran crafts-people-men and women-passed on their skills from generation to generation. To this day the production of fine leather gloves continues, mainly in the cities of Gloversville and Johnstown in Fulton County. This county is also an important source of knit gloves and, to a lesser extent, fabric gloves. New York City firms
500
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
manufacture almost one-tenth of the leather dress gloves of the state and a substantially larger portion of the knit and fabric dress-glove output.
The firms engaged in the manufacture of fashion accessories are generally small in size and highly specialized and competitive. Of the 1,767 establishments in the state in 1947, 72 per cent had fewer than twenty employees. Another 24 per cent had from twenty to ninety-nine employees and only 4 per cent had as many as one hundred employees. Another source of competition in the leather accessories business are products made of plastics and fabrics.
Another New York State industry closely related to the apparel in- dustry, and in a sense a part of it, is the manufacture of boots and shoes. This was a handicraft industry until after the Civil War, when it moved to factories and became mechanized. Although the state ranked second to Massachusetts in the nation it was, during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, a poor second. In 1890, for example, the state's pro- duction was only one-fifth that of Massachusetts. By 1914, however, New York's output was mounting rapidly, though the leadership of Massa- chusetts was not seriously threatened. In 1914 New York City and Rochester were the chief centers of the industry within the state. They ranked fourth and seventh, respectively, in the United States.
Leather raw materials for the industry come from both home and abroad. Cattle, sheep, hogs, and goats are the source for most hides. Imported hides supplement the domestic supply. Footwear ordinarily takes four-fifths of the total leather supply and furnishes the principal demand for leathers made from the hides of cattle, calves, and goats. Little finished leather is imported into the United States. Almost 10 per cent of goat hides domestically tanned are imported. These come prin- cipally from India. Sheep and lamb hide imports comprise about one- half our domestic needs. They come chiefly from Australia and New Zealand. Foreign hides make up about 15 to 20 per cent of cattle hides used for the manufacture of leather. These come principally from South America-Argentina and Brazil especially furnishing large quantities. Because the hide of domestic hogs does not make good leather, pigskin used for leather is nearly all imported, mostly from Mexico and South America. Quality horsehides are imported from France, Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Reptile skins are imported from Mexico, India, and South America, and alligator skins from Cuba, Mexico, and Central America.
In the manufacture of textiles-knit goods, carpets, and silks-the state also had an early start and soon gained prominence. Particularly was this true of carpets. In 1841 E. S. Higgins and Company opened a
-
501
A CENTURY OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE
carpet-manufacturing establishment in New York City, but by 1900 their largest plants were located outside the state. Approximately thirty years later (1872) Alexander Smith and Sons opened their famous carpet plant in Yonkers. Until its removal in the 1950's this was the largest such establishment in the metropolitan area. Montgomery County boasts two large carpet firms.
Silk manufacture in the state gained foothold shortly after the Civil War, and for many years New York virtually monopolized the industry. By 1900, however, many operators motivated by the desire to find cheaper land, power, and labor were already locating elsewhere, many in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. As a consequence New York slipped from first to third place among the states as a producer of manufactured silk.
Twentieth-century surveys of New York's manufacturing enterprise indicate not only its magnitude but its diversity. Out of a possible 453 different types of manufacturing listed by the federal Bureau of the Census no less than 430 are carried on today in New York State. Out of this large number, 273 industries each employ at least one thousand persons. Some industries are represented in many parts of the state, while others are concentrated in limited areas, as the following discus- sion of the eleven industrial areas of the state will show. Variations in natural resources, geographical features, nonmanufacturing activities of the population, and other factors assist in explaining the industrial make-up of each region.
While manufacturing in the New York metropolitan area is prepon- derately devoted to nondurables, in the upstate area, with its somewhat greater emphasis on the production of durable goods, the industrial pattern is more similar to the over-all national output. New York City and upstate manufactures contrast in another way. Upstate firms more often have mass-production factories with many hundreds of workers, while those in New York City generally have smaller plants with fewer employees and turn out less standardized products.
Let us now look briefly at the character of manufactures in the eco- nomic areas of the state:
I. Niagara Frontier: Counties-Erie and Niagara
This is one of the great industrial areas of the state. In 1950 its manu- facturing workers exceeded in number those of any other upstate region. No other area of the state, except New York City, has a more advantageous location. Situated at the eastern terminus of the Great Lakes shipping lanes and at the western end of the low-level water route from the East this area has long been a stopping-off place for immigrants, travelers, and cargoes of raw and finished goods. The completion of the Erie Canal
-
502
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
in 1825 enhanced its commercial and industrial growth. In 1826 a foundry was built in Buffalo to make plow irons and castings; by 1832 there were forty factories of various kinds in the city.
Northern Area-
Mohawk Valley~ 'Area-
Capital District
Niagara Frontier
Rochester Area
Syracuse Area
Southwest Gateway
Elmira Area
Binghamton Area
Mid.Hudson Area
Westchester Rockland District New York Metropolitan Area
NEW YORK CITY
Nassau Suffolk District
Map 12. Economic areas of New York State.
In the 1950's more than 35 per cent of the labor force of the region is engaged in manufacturing. Two out of every three are employed in durable-goods plants: primary metals, transportation equipment, and rubber products. It ranks first among the upstate areas in these industries: chemicals, food, electrical machinery, fabricated metals, printing, stone, clay and glass products, and petroleum, and coal products.
No less than one-half of all workers in the state engaged in the pro- duction of primary metals are to be found in this area. Buffalo has long been one of the nation's notable iron and steel centers. It has the neces- sary iron ore coming via the Great Lakes, coal from nearby Pennsylvania, the mighty power resources of the Niagara River, and excellent railway facilities.
Second-ranking in the area is transportation equipment. Approximately 15 per cent of the area's manufacturing workers are employed in this industry, which was established at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
503
A CENTURY OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE
tury as a primary eastern assembly and distribution center for auto- mobiles. Today this industry also produces automobile parts, buses, airplanes, and railroad equipment.
The chemical industry employs almost one-tenth of all manufacturing workers in the area. Employment in this industry is about evenly dis- tributed between the two counties comprising the area. Low-cost power and ample water resources are important considerations in attracting and retaining this particular industry, whose range of products is wide.
The manufacture of foods and of electrical machinery each engages about 8 per cent of the factory workers of the area, and both are situated mainly in Buffalo. Printing specialities include business forms as well as sales and account books. The paper firms in this area manufacture boxes, cartons, and other paper products.
Military goods production in this area during World War II amounted to over $5,000,000,000. The building of new plant capacity worth up- wards of $200,000,000 were initiated between the close of World War II and 1953. Over half of this was for the expansion of iron and steel capacity, chiefly at Lackawanna but also at Buffalo, Lockport, and Niagara Falls.
II. Rochester Area: Counties-Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Seneca, Wayne, Wyoming, Yates
At first Rochester was principally a marketplace and shipping point for wheat and other farm products of the fertile Genesee River Valley and the shores of Lake Ontario. Its real start as an industrial center came when, in the 1850's, the foundations were laid for what was to be- come the world-famous Bausch and Lomb Company, manufacturer of optical goods, organized in 1880. Before the end of the nineteenth century the city of Rochester was one of the most thriving industrial centers in the state. The leading industries in the 1950's of the Rochester area are precision instruments, apparel, machinery, food, and electrical equip- ment. Approximately 125,000 workers, or 36 per cent of the labor force, were employed in the area's manufacturing activities in 1950. Three out of every five manufacturing workers are employed in durable-goods plants.
With the exception of one important optical-instrument plant, virtu- ally all the state's firms which produce photographic, optical, and scien- tific instruments are located in Rochester. More than half of all the workers in these fields in the state are employed in this area. Firms in this group employ 30 per cent of the area's manufacturing workers. In addition, some 7,600 persons are employed in auxiliary establishments, offices, and laboratories.
Eastman Kodak, which produces photographic equipment and sup-
504
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
plies, leads the world in the manufacture of cameras and camera equip- ment. Its origin dates back to 1878, when George Eastman, a young bank clerk in Rochester, became interested in photography as an amateur. At this time photographers used the "wet plate" process, which involved a bulky view camera, heavy tripod, glass plates, dark tent, nitrate bath, and water carrier. "Dry" plates, however, had just been introduced, and Eastman became interested in their manufacture and sale. By 1880 he had succeeded in making dry plates of high quality which sold readily. His first factory was a small room over a downtown store. In 1881 he induced Henry A. Strong to become a partner in the business. An entire floor of another building was fitted up as a factory, and there, under the name of Eastman Dry Plate Company, the business flourished. In 1882 a new and larger factory was built on the site of the present office build- ing of the company on State Street. Meanwhile, Eastman had perfected a machine for coating glass plates, but he soon discovered that the coat- ing deteriorated. Moreover, the glass was heavy and cumbersome. His next step was to find a material which was light, flexible, and unbreakable and which would hold an emulsion of bromide of silver and gelatin. Eastman's first attempt was a coated roll film to which the sensitized emulsion was applied. A device called a roll holder was developed. This solved the mechanical end of the problem, but the paper film had its drawbacks. In 1889 the discovery of a nitro-cellulose film base came about almost entirely by accident, after four hundred experiments had been made. Meanwhile the company was reorganized as the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. By 1888 Eastman had evolved his great in- vention, the Kodak camera. It was a simple box camera combining the role-film idea and the plate camera in a compact, portable, and easily manipulated form. It included an instantaneous shutter which could be wound up for a number of exposures by simply pulling a string. It took round pictures two and one-half inches in diameter and was loaded for one hundred exposures. When the roll was exposed, the Kodak-the name was coined by Eastman as a trade-mark-and the roll holder were returned to the factory for unloading, reloading, and developing. The first Kodak was priced at twenty-five dollars. In 1889 the name of the company was changed to Eastman Company, and in 1892 it became the Eastman Kodak Company. The company continued to make improve- ments: daylight loading was patented in 1891; production of the pocket Kodak began in 1895; and by the following year a new and cheap camera priced as low as five dollars was developed. This was a long stride to- ward Eastman's goal of reaching the man on the street. In 1923 the first amateur motion-picture camera, the Ciné-Kodak, was put on the market. With the development of the moving picture and the coming of Koda- color, the business increased enormously. In the late 1920's the Eastman
505
A CENTURY OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE
Teaching Films, Inc., was established to produce an extensive program of classroom motion pictures; the material was directed to many educa- tional groups-from primary to medical schools.
The Kodak Research Laboratories established in 1912 are among the most famous in the world. Here every conceivable kind of investigation relating to photography is carried on. In addition to its special depart- ment devoted to photography itself, it covers the whole field of chemistry and physics as applied to photography. In both World War I and II the Eastman laboratories were of inestimable value to the federal govern- ment. Research results unless confidential were almost always published in leading scientific journals of the day. A library containing the most complete collection of photographic literature in the world is maintained by the laboratories with a trained librarian in charge. The Kodak Re- search Laboratories have become the great center and clearinghouse for scientific problems connected with all phases of the photographic industry.
From the company's inception, Eastman was interested in improving the working conditions of his employees. In 1911 an employee benefit fund of $500,000 was created. In 1912 the first wage-dividend-a bonus of 2 per cent on wages received during the previous five years-was declared. Safety appliances, a medical department, shorter hours, and social as well as lunch-room facilities were introduced as Eastman sought to decrease turnover, discourage strikes, and head off minimum-wage legislation. The sale of Eastman stock at par to older employees climaxed his efforts to cement the relationships of company and employees, who by· 1920 exceeded fifteen hundred.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.