USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > Rochester and Monroe County: A history and guide > Part 6
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
98
ROCHESTER ANECDOTES
Then, for a few years, quiet prevailed, broken only by the passage of Indian hunters, or, at rare intervals, of a white man. Each newcomer attracted others, and by 1797 a small settlement had found foothold at the Landing. Eight years later, taking its name from an early settler, Tryon stood against its background of wilderness, a bustling "city." It possessed a store serving the area of the three counties of Livingston, Ontario, Erie, a warehouse, a blacksmith shop, a shoe factory, a tavern, and even a school. A distillery and a tannery exported their products to Canada; and in Tryon's large flour mill the stones, taken from "Indian" Allen's abandoned mill at The Falls, ground large quantities of flour to be sent to Montreal. A flourishing shipyard launched its ships on Irondequoit Creek. All this before Rochesterville had emerged from the Genesee swamplands.
Then Tryon's sudden glory began to fade. New mills at The Falls drew industry that way, and Tryon's sun went down. The pounding hammers of its shipbuilders were stilled, its mills were idle. Deserted, abandoned, its build- ings crumbled to ruin, the last trace of the ghost town passed away, save for a lingering hint of its dreams of splendor in the melancholy name of "the lost city of Tryon."
WASHINGTON SQUARE
Rochester's first village green remains, a serene oasis, surrounded by the city's busiest streets. In 1817, when Rochester was Rochesterville, Washington Square was set aside from an 80-acre river tract purchased by Elisha Johnson and conveyed by him to the village which, largely by his help, was built into a city. The Square lies between South and Court Streets and Monroe and Clinton Avenues. In its center stands the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument,
99
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
surmounted by a large bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln. An attractive cottage in the southeast corner of the Square accommodates the executive office of the Rochester Con- vention and Publicity Bureau and serves as an information center for tourists; a bleak, dilapidated old house built many years ago, it was renovated and moved to its present site to be used by the city as a demonstration to home owners of the possibilities of home improvements. Con- vention Hall faces the Square on the south. Built in 1870 as the State Arsenal, it was converted to its present use in 1907.
Under the elms of Washington Square has been enacted much of the drama that makes the city's history. Along its paths on an early June day in 1825 crowds hurried toward the canal to see the flag-trimmed flotilla escorting Lafayette on his visit to the celebration of the opening of the canal.
Strollers paused in the cool shade of the Square to read their first morning paper, the Rochester Daily Advertiser bearing the date of October 25, 1826, the only daily then published between Albany and the Pacific Coast.
Anxious passersby, crossing the park in 1833, stopped to exchange sad news of neighbors dying of cholera in the terrible epidemic of that summer. A year later, through the moonlit Square echoed the calls of the two night watchmen as they made their rounds of the quiet streets: "One o'clock and all's well." And all was, indeed, well with the village, for in that year the city of Rochester was born.
The Square offered a restful haven in 1837, as it did a century later, to many a down-and-outer, for then depres- sion cast its black shadow over the country.
At a slow and solemn pace along South Avenue and past the Square streamed the traffic on a day in 1841-phaetons,
100
ROCHESTER ANECDOTES
"carryalls," landaus, barouches, toward Mount Hope Cemetery, to witness the reinterment of the remains of Boyd and Parker, brought with impressive ceremony from Cuylerville, where in 1779 these two heroes of Sullivan's campaign had been massacred.
On the night of October 24, 1843, the Square witnessed what appeared to be a convention of ghosts as groups of white-robed figures gathered there-the Millerites, mo- mentarily expecting the crack of doom to sound over the world.
Another funeral procession, this time forming in the Square itself, filed along the city's streets in 1850 in honor of the dead President Zachary Taylor. Ten years later ex- citement centered in the Square as the fiery Negro orator, Frederick A. Douglass, aroused indignant thousands with his recitals of the evils of slavery.
Beat of drums, call of bugles, and the rhythm of marching feet echoed through the Square in the chaotic period of 1861-65. For many years following 1871 the Square was bright with colorful uniforms, for in that year was built, overlooking the park, the State Arsenal (now Convention Hall).
In 1882 with thundering hoofbeats the first horse-drawn fire apparatus stormed past.
In 1890 the branches of the elms in the little park writhed and tossed in a wild cyclone which did much damage in the city; but two years later they still arched over the newly erected Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, and the crowds gathered below to listen to the dedication speech of Presi- dent Benjamin Harrison.
IOI
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
All through the nineties bicycles glittered and wheeled over the paths of the Square; and then, with a great puffing and huffing and tooting, the first automobiles began to rush by at the terrific speed of eight miles an hour.
To-day, in the Square, pigeons flutter over the grass, and old men sit on shady benches dreaming of the past.
IO2
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRY
I N the autumn of 1812 Abner Wakelee, shoemaker, came to Rochesterville and began making shoes. He perform- ed the entire process by hand: measured the foot, cut the leather, which had been tanned in a local tannery, sewed the uppers-all in one piece, and pegged on the soles. The product was stiff and clumsy. All men's dress shoes were of one square-toed style. Brogans were made for men and women. For rough wear men had their choice of boots- also in one style. Boots and shoes were regularly rubbed with bear grease to preserve them and keep them soft and pliable.
By 1827 Rochester had more than 50 craftsmen making shoes to order. In that year Oren Sage opened the first shoe factory, or, literally, manufactory, for the work was all done by hand. He employed 18 shoemakers and produced shoes to the value of $18,000 in the first year of operation. The workers sat around a circular bench and, while cutting, sewing, and pegging, took turns at reading aloud the news of the day. The firm continued under various names for over 75 years; in 1868 it had 650 employes and produced shoes in more than 200 styles, with a market value of $1,000,000.
In the spring of 1831 a young man carrying all his posses- sions in a trunk stepped off the canal packet Nina and intro- duced himself as Jesse W. Hatch, expert shoemaker. Within
IO3
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
a few years he established his own factory in competition with the Sage firm. Up to 1843 all shoes were cut to fit the individual foot; in that year an expert cutter from England employed by Hatch introduced a system of cutting uppers in uniform sizes, and the shoe industry took the first step toward mass production. In the Rochester Business Directory of 1849 Hatch announced his "Congress Boots" to sell at $4 a pair. These, the first low-priced shoes, were-and are, for they have changed little in almost 90 years-made with plain toes and elastic fabrics at the ankles. In 1852 Hatch startled the shoe industry by inventing a method of sewing the uppers to the sole by machine instead of by hand. Then, after numerous experiments, he adapted the Singer sewing- machine to the stitching of shoes. In 1853 Rochester was the only place in the world where shoes were made with ma- chine stitching. Finally, in 1859, a man named Churchill perfected a machine which did away with hand-pegging.
Fearful of losing their jobs as the result of this rapid succession of technological changes, shoe-workers for a time advertised to warn the public against the inferior qual- ity of machine-made shoes. The introduction of the sewing- machine attracted women to the industry. Many socially prominent Rochester women applied for positions in the shoe factories. Susan B. Anthony went about lecturing that "a man's clumsy fingers would never be nimble enough to master the machine that was invented for women," and to prove her contention she entered Hatch's factory as an employee. The first female clerk in Rochester was employed by Hatch in his shoe store.
These changes in the manufacture of shoes lowered the cost of production, and therefore enlarged the market, by standardizing the product and increasing the output. Im- proved transportation made its contribution. In 1860 the city had seven shoe factories. The demand for military
IO4
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
boots and shoes during the Civil War stimulated the in- dustry, so that by 1865 there were 25 manufacturers; in 1878 there were 36. In 1898, 64 factories produced shoes for a world-wide market. Shortly after the turn of the century, labor difficulties, with union recognition as the chief issue, caused so much strife that a number of the shoe factories closed their doors or moved elsewhere. The trouble came to a climax in the bitter shoe strike of 1922, which forced most of the factories to remain idle for months. Other economic factors doubtless contributed to the de- cline, attracting the industry to New England and the Midwest. In 1928 there were 32 shoe factories in Rochester. In 1931 the industry employed 3,610 workers with a payroll of $3,194,110, and produced shoes valued at $11,587,932. In 1936 there were 17 factories employing over 3,600 workers. In recent years the shoe industry in Rochester has devoted itself to the manufacture of high-grade footwear for women and children for a large domestic and export market. Auxiliary industries include the manufacture of heels, counters, top lifts, upper leather, lasts, dies, patterns, shanks, and machinery.
The shoe industry followed the nurseries in winning national prominence, and was in turn superseded in the limelight by the manufacture of clothing. Rochester's first tailor was Jehiel Barnard who came to the city in 1812; the second was Patrick Kearney; in 1826, 48 tailors served a population of 7,500. The output was all custom work until about 1840. In that year Meyer Greentree opened a tailor shop on Front Street. Becoming interested in a neighbor, a woman who made boys' trousers at 25 cents a pair, he entered into a combined life and business partner- ship with her, which became the nucleus of the first Roch- ester clothing firm.
After the Civil War the clothing industry grew by leaps and bounds. The arrival of large numbers of immigrants,
IO5
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
especially German Jews, who were skilled in the needle trades, the invention of the sewing machine, and im- provements in transportation-all encouraged large-scale mass production. Here, as in other industries, the first move- ment was toward a large number of small establishments: in 1867 the city listed 80 shops manufacturing men's clothes and selling at wholesale and retail. This was followed by a tendency to consolidate, so that while the number of establishments decreased, production figures showed a continuous and rapid expansion. By 1881 between 5,000 and 6,000 persons were employed in the clothing industry.
With the coming of the new century several decisive changes determined the structure of the industry as it exists to-day. In the first place, the diversification of styles and materials and improvements in quality enabled ready-made clothing to absorb the market of the custom tailor almost entirely. In the second place, the trend toward consolida- tion continued, so that to-day the industry is dominated by a handful of large companies. In 1933 the total product of the men's clothing industry in Rochester was valued at $32,000,000, with 7,500 workers earning a total of $11,845,- 500.
For more than 40 years, the Clothiers' Exchange, an organization of manufacturers, has looked after the inter- ests of the industry in Rochester, especially in maintaining standards of quality and integrity. The field of labor in the industry has been led by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.
The large-scale manufacture of clothing has naturally attracted accessory industries. Rochester firms manufacture nationally known brands of neckwear, belts, buckles, and suspenders, hats, caps, knitwear, and sweaters. The button industry deserves special mention because of its size; Roch- ester manufactures more vegetable ivory buttons than any other city in the world.
106
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Rochester's food industry goes back to Ebenezer Allen's gristmill. To-day, as then, it depends for its raw materials largely upon the products of the farms and fruit orchards of the surrounding territory. In 1933 its products were valued at $35,000,000 and it paid its workers over $4,000,- 000 in wages. Several of the individual companies, now million-dollar concerns, began in private kitchens. A large canning company goes back to the day in 1868 when two grocer brothers, with their mother's help, concocted a ketchup to utilize perishable vegetables. The product of a baby food company was first prepared by a father and mother for their six-months-old child and then peddled from house to house. Now the trade-names of these and other food products prepared in Rochester are household words. Finally, the preparation of foods attracted large- scale manufacturers of food containers.
Besides these and other general fields of manufacture, Rochester is home to a number of outstanding specialized industries, some of which dominate in the national, others in a world-wide market. In most cases the inventions which created the industries were made in Rochester, the industries had their small-scale beginnings in Rochester, and grew with the growth of Rochester, so that their history is an integral part of the city's history. The stories of their growth well illustrate the epic of American industrial de- velopment since the Civil War.
The romance of the Eastman Kodak Company, which has given Rochester the name "Kodak City," and of the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, are summarized else- where.
In 1865 William Gleason began producing a general line of machine tools in a small shop employing less than a dozen hands. In 1876 he invented the first commercially successful machine for cutting bevel gear teeth. Up to that time gear teeth had been molded from patterns fashioned
107
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
laboriously by hand; Gleason's machine cut them with much greater accuracy and economy. Since that time the firm has specialized in gear-cutting machinery.
The inventive genius of William Gleason was inherited by his son James, whose new creations in machines and processes have kept the company far in advance of com- petition in its line. Its products are fundamental to many modern inventions, especially the automobile. It covers the entire field of bevel gears: small machines for half-inch sewing-machine gears, larger ones for automobile gears, and still larger ones for gears on Diesel engines, printing presses, canning machines, up to the largest gears-some of them 20 feet in diameter-for wire-drawing mills. During the World War the Gleason plant was practically a war station, devoting 95 percent of its capacity to the produc- tion of gears and gear-cutting machinery for the United States and its allies. To-day its products command a wide market in America and Europe.
In 1851 George Taylor and David Kendall, the son of John Kendall, first manufacturer of thermometers in the United States, began to produce thermometers on the third floor of a building which stood at the edge of the old Erie Canal. The two partners composed the entire force. After a few weeks of manufacturing, they filled a trunk with thermometers and started off in a buggy to sell them from house to house. As the business developed, they extended their territory to New York, Philadelphia, and other large cities. By 1855 they were making eight types of thermom- eters. In 1890 the firm became the Taylor Brothers Company and began to manufacture thermometers for industrial as well as for household use. After absorbing a number of other firms, it became in 1907 the Taylor Instrument Com- panies. The concern manufactures more than 2,000 kinds of instruments for measuring heat, humidity, altitude, moisture, specific gravity, blood pressure, and heart-beats,
IO8
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
instruments for determining direction, for predicting weather, etc. Its products are of basic importance in the household, in industry, in medicine, in weather-forecasting, and in aviation.
Casper Pfaudler, listed in the Rochester Directory for 1884 as a machinist, invented a vacuum process for fermenting beer but was unable to obtain containers that would main- tain a suitable vacuum. Financed by James Sargent and Charles C. Puffer, he conducted a series of experiments and perfected a glass-lined metal container. The Pfaudler Vacu- um Fermentation Process Company was organized on December 13, 1884, but the commercial manufacture of glass-lined steel tanks did not begin until 1887. With the brewing industry of the Midwest providing the principal market, a factory was erected in Detroit in 1889. In 1903, since the railroads had developed facilities for transporting the huge tanks to the West, the plant was moved to Roch- ester because of the cheaper transportation this city offered to foreign markets. The foreign demand led to the opening of a branch factory in Germany in 1907. In 1910 the first glass-lined milk cars, Pfaudler-made, were operated by the Whiting Milk Company over the Boston & Maine Railroad. In 1912 Pfaudler perfected the first glass-lined milk truck tank. The Pfaudler Company is the largest manufacturer of glass-lined steel containers in the world, with five branch factories in foreign countries supplementing the main plant in Rochester.
In 1889 Frank Ritter, operating a small furniture factory, designed and built the first dental chair made in Rochester. Other similar chairs found a ready sale. From time to time new inventions by company employes were added to the original design, including a raising and lowering device, a hydraulic pump, and an overhead, suspension type of dental engine which is considered a notable contribution to dentistry. Besides its large plant in Rochester, it owns one
109
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
in Philadelphia and two in Germany, employing in all more than 2,000 people. In 1915 the daughters of Frank Ritter made a $20,000 gift of furnishings and accessories to the Rochester Dental Dispensary.
In 1899, the Todd brothers, Libanus M. and George W., invented a mechanical device to protect checks against alteration. Their process consisted of forcing inked words into the paper under pressure by cutting or "shredding" the paper so that the ink became part of the fibre. The first model was made by hand by Charles G. Tiefel in the woodshed of his home on Gregory Street. The first machines were manufactured by a tool and die factory. In the first year about 100 Protectographs were sold; in 1905 the company started its own manufacturing. In 1913 it began the manufacture of a paper impregnated with chemicals which destroy the paper when ink eradi- cators are applied. Another product is a check-paper so treated that if ink-eradicators are applied the word VOID appears all over the check. In Spain all passports are printed on this paper; in Belgium it is used for printing pawn tickets, in Mexico for bull fight tickets, birth certificates, narcotic permits, and doctors' prescriptions. The company also manufactures electrically powered check-writers and mechanical check-signers. Its products are used in more than 64 countries.
The General Railway Signal Company, with its series of inventions, each designed to overcome some risk in rail- roading, has helped to establish a recent year's record of only one death to 60,000,000 passengers and to enable a passenger to travel the equivalent of 92,000 times around the earth at the equator before incurring the risk of a fatality. This company was formed in Rochester in 1904, employing 300 men. The workers today number more than 2,000 employees engaged in the manufacture and installa- tion of signaling apparatus. The company supplied more
IIO
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
than 90 per cent of the signaling apparatus in use in Australia prior to 1898. Extensive use of its equipment is to be found in Japan, Spain, New Zealand, and Great Britain.
The Delco Appliance Division of the General Motors Corporation manufactures Delco-Light electric light and power plants; Delco water pumps, electric fans, vacuum cleaners, car radio vibrators, speedometers, and small motors; Delco-Heat oil burners, boilers, conditionairs, water heaters, and attic ventilators. A major extension of the Delco Appliance Division is scheduled for completion late in 1937. This consists of a modern single-story, fire- proof building in which about 3,000 additional people will be employed in the manufacture of automotive elec- trical equipment.
These highly specialized industries owe their continued preeminence in their fields to active research laboratories which they support and which are continually inventing new processes and devices and improving old ones. During the depression following 1929, while production was in most cases drastically curtailed, these laboratories con- tinued their researches and kept these companies in the vanguard of industrial progress.
To complete the account of the distinctive industries of Rochester it is necessary to add that the products of its factories command national and world-wide markets in the fields of office equipment, unbreakable watch crystals, mail chutes, and carbon paper. All in all, in 1931 more than 1,000 industrial plants turned out products valued at $242,000,000; 800 of these employed 45,455 persons and paid $52,345,004 in wages.
LABOR
The history of labor organization in Rochester goes back to as early as 1840, when independent workers in the various crafts united for mutual protection and bargaining power
III
Industrial Rochester
******
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
in an effort to improve working conditions. No complete records of these early activities were kept; but in 1927 the Central Trades and Labor Council published a history of the labor movement in Rochester compiled from all avail- able data.
The early period of industrial expansion witnessed the organization of the first unions: the Typographical Union in 1853, the Iron Moulders Union in 1859, the Carpenters and the Glass Blowers Association in 1884. The gradual unionization of crafts continued until the membership of the American Federation of Labor in the city reached about 26,000. In addition to these were the United Shoe Workers with a membership of 4,000 and the railroad brotherhoods with 1,000.
A new element in labor organization was brought to Rochester by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, which organized workers on an industrial rather than on a craft basis. It grew until it left but one craft union, the United Garment Workers, operating in one large clothing factory in Rochester. The real power of the Amalgamated came in 1918 when, after the great garment strike in New York City which brought the 44-hour week, the same working hours were accepted in Rochester without interruption of work.
The history of the Amalgamated in Rochester shows the application of collective bargaining and arbitration to in- dustrial relations resulting in the elimination of strikes and lockouts and the establishment of industrial peace and self- government. A number of leading economists have success- fully filled the office of arbitrator in the Rochester clothing industry and have contributed much to a better understand- ing of labor conditions in the city. By 1933 the capital- labor relations in the clothing industry were so well ad-
II3
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
justed that for an 18-month period not a single grievance was brought before the arbitrator.
In the field of labor problems, besides pointing the way in collective bargaining, the Amalgamated has served as a laboratory of industrial codification and has expanded the fields of labor union activity into cooperative buying, banking, housing, and unemployment insurance.
The history of labor unrest in Rochester is much like that of other cities. It is marked by sporadic strikes, with hours and wages, the closed shop, and collective bargaining as the issues. Most disastrous in its effect on the industrial life of the city was the shoe workers' strike in 1922. Up to that time Rochester was the third largest shoe manufacturing city in the country. The strike failed and left behind bitter feeling and conflict. Both factories and workers moved to other cities; the union lost in membership; and, while other economic factors contributed to the result, the fact is that the shoe industry never regained its importance in Rochester.
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.