Growth of a Century : as illustrated in the history of Jefferson County, New York, from 1793 to 1894, Part 8

Author: Haddock, John A. 1823-
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : Sherman
Number of Pages: 1094

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The seed of the cotton boll was at first cleaned by hand, or by a rude sort of rake. The process was slow, and left the fibre in a twisted and tangled con- dition, so that it was impossible to make a smooth, strong thread of it. The yarn was spun one thread at a time, like wool on the old-fashioned spinning wheel. The cotton yarn thus spun could be used only as " filling " for wool warp.

Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, a veritable " Yan- kee schoolmaster," saw the clumsy operation of clean- ing off the seed, and, in 1793, invented a practical machine, called a " cotton-gin," for doing this work. This invention revolutionized cotton culture. Whereas the industry had been so little profitable that there was a strong tendency towards the emancipation of slaves as unprofitable laborers, and public steps had been taken towards this end in some communities, notably in Virginia, the introduction of Whitney's machine made slave labor desirable, and therefore put a stop to anti-slavery agitation in the South. What has been the effect on the nation, and even on Great Britain, which prepared to use the greatly increased product, would be an interesting study. When it is remembered that the cotton-gin of Whitney and the steam-engine of Watt, nearly coincident inventions, were supplements to the " spinning-mule " and power loom inventions, barely completed in England, the wonderful advance in the manufacture of textile fab- rics is fully explained.

James Hargreaves, of England, invented a card- ing machine in 1760, and in 1767 produced a spin- ning machine which made eight threads at a time. This seemed to be necessary to use up the product of his " carder," and it was thought to be a marvellous achievement. In 1769, Richard Arkwright patented his "throstle" frame, a machine drawing out the fibre by means of rollers. This made a firm, even thread, and almost any number of them at a time. In 1779, Samuel Crompton produced a machine, combining Hargreaves's "jenny " with Arkwright's "throttle," and called it the " mule " jenny. This is, practically, the modern cotton spinning machine. The most improved machinery from England soon found its way into the United States, and as soon as peace was declared, in 1783, attempts were made to start cotton mills at Beverley and Bridgewater, Mass., and at Philadelphia, Pa., but with little success. In 1790, Samuel Slater, an Englishman, established at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a mill which was the first successful cotton mill in the United States. There were in operation, in 1890, 904 mills, which pro- duced fabrics of the value of $267,981,724. The number of mills decreased in the last ten years, be-

cause of consolidations and the building of large es- tablishments. Though the number in 1880 was 1005, the production was only $210,950,383. It is esti- mated that the annual production equals the capital invested, and that the wages paid annually is about one-fifth of the capital invested in the plants.

Great Britain, before our Revolution, did every- thing possible to repress the growth of manufactures in the colonies, passing acts of Parliament to prevent them, and making the importation of some machinery a penal offense. Notwithstanding this prohibition, the manufacture of coarse woollens grew to con- siderable proportions at an early day, by being es- tablished as a household industry. A society to pro- mote this manufacture was organized in New York in 1774. It discouraged the importation of woollen goods and the slaughtering of sheep for food. This had great influence. The first mill is said to have been built in Hartford, Conn., about 1791, to which Alexander Hamilton referred in one of his able State papers. In 1810 the manufactures of woollen is given as $25,608,788 in the census, but no mention is made of mills. In 1802 the first merino sheep were imported ; and in 1809 another importation of 4000 sheep was made. Spinning-wheels became staple household equipments in the farm houses, and looms almost as plenty, while carding mills were found on hundreds of streams, and thousands of weavers and woollen workers came from Europe in 1774 and subsequent years. Now woollen fabrics are the most important item in textile manufacture, the amount in 1890 being $337,768,524, including the finest cloths and worsteds known in the market.

The cultivation of silk received considerable atten- tion in this country at a very early day. The culti- vation of the mulberry as food for the silk-worms became almost a mania, even in Jefferson county, like that of the tulip craze in Holland. In 1840, 61,552 pounds of silk was raised, but the culture soon declined to a merely nominal amount. The manu- facture, however, continued to flourish until at pres- ent it is a very important industry. The very best grade of all kinds of silks and ribbons are now made, and find a market in all parts of the world, compet- ing successfully with the best foreign grades. The number of mills, by the census of 1890, was 472, and the annual production of silk valued at $87,298,- 454. The total annual production of our textile fabrics amounts to $693,048,702.

The perfection of the power-loom, which is one of the most wonderful triumphs of man's ingenuity, has contributed largely to the great increase in the manu- facture of textile fabrics. While the loom was limited at first to plain goods, except when made by hand, and it needed very close attention from the operator, its production was restricted. The greatest improve- ment in the loom was that of Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1800, by which unlimited fancy patterns can be woven. When, however, a thread of the warp or filling broke, it made imperfections. In 1838 Erastus B. Bigelow made the automatic stop motion. It would stop when a thread broke. He perfected his device in 1848, so as to apply it to the Jacquard loom, increasing its production from 4 yards a day at 30 cents a yard for a man's work, to 30 yards a day at 4 cents a yard, and needing only a girl for operator.

Iron is so important to civilized man that it is not

THE GROWTH OF A CENTURY.

strange that the colonists very early sought to pro- duce it for themselves. The first settlers in Virginia made iron in 1622; also at Lynn, Mass., in 1631. The first works were erected in New York, at Ster- ling, in 1751. This establishment made the great 186-ton chain to bar the Hudson at West Point in 1778. George Washington and others erected char- coal blast furnaces in Virginia in 1724. Iron manu- facture increased so rapidly that the English Parlia- ment, in 1750, prohibited its manufacture in the colonies. It has now become so important that the industry is said to be the barometer of the country's prosperity. When iron languishes all industries are dull. When the iron industry is flourishing, all busi- ness is said to prosper. The improvements in its manufacture have been almost marvellous. The de- tails would fill volumes. What may be termed the epochs of the development only can be mentioned. The invention of puddling in 1784, by Henry Cort, of Great Britain, was of fundamental importance. He also invented the process of using iron rollers to shape the blooms into bars, rods and rails. The methods of making iron from the ore by the direct and indirect process are numerous. The more re. cent are those of Siemens, of England ; Thos. Blair, of Pittsburg, Pa .; Chas. M. DuPuy, of Philadel- phia, and Edward Peckham, of Plattsburg, N. Y., known as the direct process, because wrought-iron is produced from the ore direct, and without being first cast into " pigs." A large number of special furnaces have also been devised. Perhaps the most important are the Siemens "regenerative " furnace, and the " continuous regenerator" of William and Geo. H. Sellers, of Philadelphia. The United States and Great Britain fairly divide the honors for inventions to facilitate the manufacture of iron and of iron- working machines, which have been brought to great perfection.

The invention of the hot-blast furnace, attributed to James B. Neilson, of Glasgow, in 1828, was a great stride forward. Daniel Thomas, of Pennsyl- vania, is said to have been the first person who re- alized the value of powerful engines for use in blast furnaces. He also was the first to make the manufacture of anthracite pig-îron commercially suc- cessful, although Frederick Gersheimer obtained a patent for the process in 1833. The United States is now the leading iron-producing country of the world, the product being nearly 7,157,000 tons in 1892. Iron-making establishments are also very numerous, of high character, and very extensive. When it is remembered that the first foundry was not established until that of Joseph Jenks, at Lynn, Mass., in 1663, the progress and growth of the iron-working industry can be appreciated.

The manufacture of steel in the United States began in 1802, when the production is put down at 900 tons. In 1860 it was only 12,000 tons. The new process of making steel, popularly ascribed to Henry Bessemer, revolutionizes the manufacture. Mr. Bessemer, who published his process in 1856, has a rival for the honor of the invention. There is good reason for believing that William Kelly, of Pittsburg, one of the firm of William Kelly & Bro., iron masters, who had iron works in Eddyville, Ken- tucky, was the prior inventor. Mr. Kelly was well known among iron masters in Great Britain as well

as in the United States. He was a well-informed, thoughtful experimenter, and hit upon the discovery, claiming it as his own. His right was purchased, or rather his claim was surrendered, on the payment of a large sum of money, and Mr. Bessemer will go down in history credited with the discovery. Already he has been knighted, and has received millions of dollars in royalties. The process is simply that of forcing air through the melted iron until all the carbon in it has been consumed, together with other impuri- ties, and then adding to the iron thus purified a suffi- cient quantity of carbon, in the form of speigeleisen, or its equivalent, to make steel. The percentage of carbon necessary is very small-from 2 to 312 per cent. The expense is comparatively slight. Twenty tons of iron can be made into steel in about as many minutes. When it is considered that a steel ship will carry 25 per cent. more tonnage than an iron vessel of the same size, and that while an iron rail will last only 16 years, and a steel rail will wear 40, the im- mense utility of the so-called Bessemer process can be somewhat appreciated. Works formerly con- structed of iron-bridges, buildings, machinery and domestic utensils-are now made of steel. Numer- ous improvements have been made in steel by various alloys. These compositions take their names from the patentees or from the metals composing the alloys. These are used for armor plates, guns and numerous other purposes requiring extra strength or other spe- cial qualities.

Many new metals have been discovered within the century, and new applications of old ones have been made. Perhaps the most important progress has been in the production and application of aluminum. The existence of this metal has been well known for a long time. It is as wide spread as clay, but owing to the difficulty of extracting the metal, but little progress was made in its production, until the appli- cation of electricity for the purpose. The price of aluminum has been reduced until it can be used for a wide range of articles, and the prospect is that it may become as cheap as steel. It is nearly as light as wood, and of great strength and practically non- corrosive.

At the beginning of the period under review, but few metals were known. These were gold, silver, iron, copper, mercury, and tin. Now, there are fifty, counting tellurium, which is sometimes regarded as a metalloid. Sir Humphrey Davy discovered potas- sium in 1807. This led to the discovery of sodium and lithium. In 1828, Wöhler produced aluminum. The spectroscope has revealed a large number of metals-rubidium, cæsium, thalium, and others, the · last being iridium. Magnesium was discovered in 1849, and gallinum in 1875. While many of these are yet only the curious products of the laboratory, the possibilities of their usefulness are beyond esti- mate. Already it is proposed to use selenium to transmit pictures by telegraph, because of its varia- tion of conductivity in light.

It will not do to pass over the discovery of gold and silver in California and the Western States, and the discovery of gold in Australia. The story of gold discovery on the Suter estate on the Sacramento by contractor Marshal, in 1847, has often been told, but its immense importance on the development of the Pacific coast is rarely appreciated. To say that

THE GROWTH OF A CENTURY.

it raised the population of San Francisco from a vil- lage of 200 inhabitants to a city of 40,000 in three or four years, gives but a faint idea of the human swarms which settled on that coast. The production of gold reached as high as $65,000,000 in one year in California alone. It is estimated that $1,500,000,000 of gold have been produced in that region since then, and perhaps even more value in silver in that State and those adjacent. The influence of such vast wealth has been immeasurable, not only on the Pa- cific coast, but over the whole country, and even the world. The gold-fields of Australia were discovered in 1851, and the fields were developed until they pro- duced $50,000,000 a year, and great empires have grown up, as the direct result of the immigration to those far-off islands. It may be worthy of remark, that one nugget of gold, found at Ballarat, Australia, weighed 2166 ounces, valued at $41,880. Models of this and other similar nuggets have been exhibited in Europe and America.

The modern wonder, however, is electricity. Fric- tional electricity, or static, as sometimes called, was discovered 500 years before the Christian era, by the Grecian philosopher, Thales, who noticed the attrac- tion of amber when rubbed. This has given us the name, from "electron," the Greek for amber. From this small beginning has arisen this modern giant. In 1752, Franklin proved the identity of elec- tricity and lightning. In 1786, Luiga Galvani, a lec- turer on anatomy at Bologna, accidentally touched the leg of a frog and provoked a muscular contrac- tion with his scalpel. This led to investigation ; and in 1793, Alesandro Volta, a professor of natural phil- osophy at Pavia, announced to the Royal Society at London the theory of this electricity, which was the contact of dissimilar substances. The first Voltaic battery was set up in 1800. This gave the necessary foundation for the telegraph, the ocean cables, and the telephone, now considered indispensable to civ- ilized life. It also brought into use electric signals of great variety in connection with many pursuits ; but the limit of usefulness is far from being reached, as new appliances of the electric battery are an- nounced almost daily. Professor Elisha Gray has re- cently brought out a device for transmitting pictures by telegraph. It is called the " Telautograph," and the time seems not far distant when, with this inven- tion, and tlie long-distance telephone, friends may talk face to face, however far apart.

The triumphs of the telegraph and telephone, as marvellous as they are, and as grcat as their influence has been on social and commercial affairs, promise to be eclipsed by the dynamo. This modern ma- chine, which produces what might be called mechan- ical electricity, is the newest engine of force; and, although already titanic in power, is yet in its infancy. Electric railways are multiplying with great rapidity, giving promise that villages and farms will soon be connected with the trolley or its equivalent, and the mails delivered hourly in places now deemed out of the way. Niagara Falls has been harnessed to this modern giant, for the transmission of power, and the limits of this application are not yet (January, 1894) fully known. It may bring power to every house, as it will certainly make it available for 50 or 100 miles around. The Canadian side of the Falls is also to be used for the same purpose. Steps have already been

taken to this end by a company, of which Col. A. D. Shaw, a distinguished citizen of Jefferson county, is president.

The experiments of Nickola Tesla, before the Royal Institution of London, and subsequently be- fore the Franklin Institute, of Philadelphia, have as- tounded the most profound scientists, and revealed possibilities almost miraculous. Mr. Tesla put a sheet of tin-foil on the ceiling of a room and a sheet on the floor, and connected them with the poles of a generator. The space between the sheets of foil be- came so electrified that a glass tube from which the air had been expelled, placed in the space, without attachment to the wires of the generator, "glowed like a flaming sword." He showed that a room could be made so electric that a vacuum-bulb placed anywhere in it, without any connection with wires, would perfectly illuminate the room without heat or any inconvenience to the occupants. The film of an incandescent light-bulb, placed in the space, glowed as if connected with electric wires. A stone wall is transparent to electrical waves a foot or two in length. He showed, for the first time, great light without heat, and indicated how telegraphing might be done without posts or wires. He demonstrated the harm- lessness of his high potentials by taking hold of the terminal wire and permitting a current of 50,000 volts to pass through his body without effect.

Illuminating gas is one of the conveniences, due to the progress of the century, which has added much to the comfort of life, and greatly assisted the work- man in his labors. As early as 1739, John Clayton, of England, discovered that he could make illumin- ating gas from coal, but the fact was put to no prac- tical use until William Murdock applied the gas to light his house and office at Redruth, Cornwall, in 1792. His success led to a contract to light with gas, in 1798, the celebrated foundry of Watt & Boulton, the great manufacturers of the Watt steam engine, at Birmingham. The Lyceum theatre, of London, was lighted with gas in 1803; and the great cotton mill of Phillips & Lee at Manchester, using 1000 gas jets, in 1805. Dublin introduced gas in 1818. The new system of lighting made its way slowly in London, but became general in 1820. Gas light was first tried in the United States at Baltimore, in 1821. Boston in 1822: and New York in 1827. Some of the most eminent scientists of the day ridiculed the idea, and among them was Sir Humphrey Davy, who sarcasti- cally said that they would use the dome of St. Paul's cathedral as a gas holder. But the new light won its way, as did ocean steamers, in spite of the frowns of scientists.

Household illumination for the common people made but little progress until the discovery of petro- leum in commercial quantities on Oil creek, Venango county, Penna., in 1858. Previous to this, petroleum had been collected in small quantities in many places from very early times. There is evidence that the aborigines in this country collected it 500 years ago. It was also manufactured from coal. Selligue, in France, was the first to manufacture petroleum on a large scale. Between 1838 and 1843 he made and sold 15,000 barrels. Abraham Gesner, in Prince Ed- wards Island, made oil from coal in 1846, and ob- tained patents in the United States, which were sold to the Kerosene Company of New York. The first

THE GROWTH OF A CENTURY.

oil factory in the United States was established by the Kerosene Oil Company at Newtown, in 1854. In 1860 there were 40 coal-oil factories on the At- lantic coast, making 200,000 barrels a year, and 25 oil factories in Ohio of corresponding production. But Pennsylvania petroleum soon put a stop to this increasing industry. In 1858 Colonel G. L. Drake, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Com- pany, which had been collecting oil at Oil Creek, Penna., by saturating blankets in the oil floating in ditches, and then squeezing it out into tubs with but little profit, began to bore for oil, greatly to the amusement of his friends, who ridiculed the idea, and regarded the project as absurd. He, however, persevered, and struck oil at the depth of 71 feet, Aug. 29, 1859. He obtained 400 gallons a day, which he sold at 55 cents a gallon. To say that a very great excitement was created, gives little idea of the craze which set in. There was a great rush for the oil-fields, and a forest of drilling derricks soon grew up. Fortunes were made with amazing rapid- ity. Farms almost worthless before were sold for thousands of dollars per acre. Royalties from wells on farms reached very high figures-$3000 a day. Some wells yielded 2000 barrels a day without pump- ing. The business soon settled down to a steady basis, and new wells were put down in West Virginia, Ohio, and other places, until to-day the petroleum industry is of very large proportions. It gives to the home, with the Hitchcock lamp, almost an ideal light. The production is 100,000,000 gallons a year in the United States, or since 1859 about 20,000,000,- 000 gallons have been mined.

People were without matches at the beginning of the century, and there are men and women now with us who can tell interesting stories of the care and trouble incurred to save the household spark of fire. The flint and steel must be in order, and the tinder just right. In 1805, Chancel, of Paris, put asbestos, saturated with sulphuric acid, in a bottle. Splints coated with sulphur, and a mixture of chlorate of potash and sugar, thrust into this would ignite. John Walker, a druggist of England, made the first fric- tion matches in 1827. The present phosphorus fric- tion matches seemed to appear almost simultaneously in different countries about the year 1833. They are now made by ingenious machinery in amazing quan- tities.

Photography seems at first thought to be of but little practical utility. But it is becoming constantly more indispensable, and it may be justly regarded as one of the wonders of the century. Like many other discoveries and inventions, photography has numerous claimants, but it is generally conceded that M. Niepce, of France, afterwards partner of M. Daguerre, who was discovered to be working on the same line, made the first permanent sunlight picture in 1814. Before the process was perfected Niepce died, and his son took the father's place in the firm. It was 1839 be- fore the process was published with Daguerre's name attached to it. It has been so improved in details that the originators of the art would hardly recognize their offspring. The taking of portraits is now one of its minor uses. The astronomer finds it his most valuable assistant. Stars, invisible by the largest telescope, are now faithfully reported by the camera. An astronomer had worked thirteen years to make a

map of one of the constellations, but when photog- raphy was brought to bear on the same space, it made a far better map in a few hours. The art is now the adjunct of every observatory, and is applied to all celestial phenomena, giving results far more satis- factory than ever before obtained.

Photography is also the basis of the best modern system of engraving. At first the photo-engraving processes were etchings or electrotypes. But in 1865, Walter B. Woodbury, of England, invented a process by mechanical pressure. This has been so improved that the finest pictures printed are made with the aid of photography. Even the wood en- graver resorts to this art for the basis of his work. By the aid of photography, what is now known as the " Ives " process. is so manipulated by Crosscup & West, of Philadelphia, as to produce, for the com- mon printing press, the beautiful half-tone pictures shown in this History.

The spectroscope is another marvellous instrument of great utility. It was invented in 1859 by Kirch- hoff, of Germany, and has been improved by Ruther- ford, of New York; Cooper, of Cambridge; Lock- yer, of London; Grubb, of Dublin; and Stokes, of England. It is used in the manufacture of steel, to show the moment of the disappearance of carbon, which is indicated by the change in the spectrum. It tells us of the composition of stars, comets and nebulæ. With it the motion and direction of travel of stars are discovered, so remote as to seem immov- able by the most delicate tests which could be ap- plied before the spectroscope was invented. The rays of the prism have revealed to us substances hitherto unsuspected. It is used to detect traces of blood on garments, and poisons and adulterations of dyes, drugs and liquors. In medicine, astronomy, mechanic arts, and in chemistry the spectroscope is invaluable.

The progress in medicine and surgical science dur- ing the century, has kept abreast of the advancement in other lines of activity. Dr. Edward Jenner, of London, after a series of experiments covering many years, announced his discovery of vaccination in 1798. He was led to his research by the remark of a milkmaid, who, when cautioned in regard to the small-pox then prevalent, said that she could not take the disease as she had had the cow-pox. Jenner then began to examine the subject, and finally made his culminating experiment on one James Phillips, in 1796. . He then waited two years before making the public announcement. It met with great opposition, but 70 of the most eminent physicians and surgeons of London soon gave it their endorsement, and it became a recognized preventive of the small-pox scourge.

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Growth of a Century : as illustrated in the history of Jefferson County, New York, from 1793 to 1894, Part 8

Author: Haddock, John A. 1823- Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : Sherman Number of Pages: 1094

Author: Haddock, John A. 1823-
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : Sherman
Number of Pages: 1094