USA > New York > Franklin County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 46
USA > New York > Jefferson County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 46
USA > New York > Lewis County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 46
USA > New York > Oswego County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 46
USA > New York > St Lawrence County > The north country; a history, embracing Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Oswego, Lewis and Franklin counties, New York, Volume 1 > Part 46
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HISTORY OF THE NORTH COUNTRY
In 1888, Bagley & Sewall's entered a new line of manufacture, the building of paper-making machines. It was a happy venture. Wa- tertown was the center of the paper manufacturing business. This business was constantly expanding and orders were plentiful from the first. The first machine was finished in 1889 and proved to be the fastest ever built. The business doubled and trebled. New plants were built. The number of employes were increased. Machines were built for many foreign countries. Today the Bagley & Sewall Com- pany is probably one of the best known concerns of its kind in the world and is an important asset to Watertown and to Northern New York.
Besides the Bagley & Sewall Company, leading Watertown manu- facturing establishments of the present are the Berg Sales Company, manufacturing coin cards ; the Coty Machine Company, manufactur- ing bag machines; Farwell & Rhines, flour and cereals; Faichney In- strument Company, manufacturing thermometers; A. H. Herrick & Sons, flour and cereals; International Burr Company, paper mill burrs; Lawrence & Hill, airplane equipment; Massey Machine Com- pany, engine governors; New York Air Brake Company, railroad air brakes; Olga Knitting Company, rayon garments; Ontario Special- ties, Inc., paper specialties; Shaughnessy Knitting Company, rayon garments; Sweetser Shirt Corporation, men's shirts; Toohey Silk Mills, shirt fabrics; Watertown Bedding Company, mattresses; Wa- tertown Silk Manufacturing Company, silk fabrics; the J. B. Wise Company, plumbing supplies, and the Wiltshire Garment Company, ladies coats.
Probably the largest, present day industry in Watertown is the New York Air Brake Company, which under normal circumstances employs upwards of 1,500 men. Back in 1876 the Eames Vacuum Brake Company was incorporated for the manufacture of a railroad brake. The plant was on Beebee Island. The trouble with the brake was that it was practical only for light trains and the company had indifferent success. In 1883 John C. Thompson and George B. Massey secured a controlling interest in the company, however, and the type of brake was changed. In 1890 the name, New York Air Brake Company, was taken. Since then the success of the company has been marked. In recent years the old plants on Mill street and Factory street have been abandoned and the company took over a
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large tract of some 260 acres in the northeast portion of the city. Some forty acres of this area are covered with modern buildings. During the World War the New York Air Brake Company embarked in the manufacture of munitions and employed a great force of men. Mr. L. K. Sillcox is at present the vice president of the company and resident manager. Main offices are located in New York City.
Locks for sewing machines, organs and for various other uses began to be made in Watertown about 1871 by Joseph Wise, who operated a little shop in Huntington street. He took his son, James B. Wise, into partnership in 1877 under the name of J. Wise & Son and this firm continued in existence until the death of the senior Mr. Wise in 1886. The son took over the father's interest and established a plant at the corner of Mill and Moulton streets, Water- town, and developed a large trade in plumbing supplies manufactured there under the name of J. B. Wise, Inc. Lucien C. Mitchell is the president of the company at the present time. It is now one of the largest concerns manufacturing plumbing supplies in the United States and is one of Watertown's two or three major industries.
Oswego's industrial field of late years is unusually well diversified. True many of the old industries are gone but Oswego has in compara- tively recent times taken on industrial impetus and is an important manufacturing point for power and heater boilers, for the manu- facture of engines, pumps, road rollers, automatic machinery, hand tools, pressing machines, shade cloth, matches, rayon and textiles. Oswego's plant of the Diamond Match Company, now one of the largest in the United States, was established in 1893 and has ever since employed a large force of operatives. The Fitzgibbons Boiler Company, which has become an important Oswego industry, was established the same year that the Diamond Match Company plant came to Oswego. Robert S. Sloan was the first president.
Ogdensburg, strategically located on the Canadian border, has long been an important coal-forwarding point. The George Hall Cor- poration is an important and long-established coal firm. George Hall came to Ogdensburg in 1872 and became a member of the firm of Hall & Gardner, coal forwarders and dealers. The old firm was dis- solved in 1880 but Mr. Hall with several associates organized the George Hall & Company. Later the firm became the George Hall Coal Company. The company was capitalized at $650,000 and a large
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fleet of steam barges acquired. Mr. Hall continued as president and later chairman of the board of the company until his death. In 1922 the George Hall Coal Company of Canada, The Black River Pulpwood Company of Montreal, the George Hall Coal and Transportation Com- pany of Ogdensburg, the Frontier Trading Company of Ogdensburg and the St. Lawrence Marine Railway Company of Ogdensburg amal- gamated into the George Hall Corporation of Ogdensburg, with a capital of $800,000 and the George Hall Coal & Shipping Corporation Company of Montreal with a capital of $2,400,000. Frank A. Augs- bury became president of the Hall companies in 1916.
Ogdensburg has also developed some importance as a center for the manufacture of textiles and shade rollers. It has the Algonquin Paper Corporation incorporated in 1922 with a capital of $600,000 and which took over the old Continental Paper Mill, remodeled the building, installed new machinery and is now one of the best known paper manufacturing concerns in the North Country. The Algonquin Paper Corporation has its own sulphite mill and owns an extensive tract of timber land in Canada. Mr. Frank A. Augsbury, who has been such an important factor in the Algonquin Paper Company, was largely responsible, too, for organizing the Ogdensburg Pulpwood Company Terminal.
Among other Ogdensburg industries is the Coplan Steel Corpora- tion, organized in 1925, and important garment mills, lumber mills and a successful boat concern.
MASSENA, THE ALUMINUM VILLAGE
What is largely the largest manufacturing plant in Northern New York is now located in Massena. Forty years ago Massena was a rather sleepy, rural village. 'Today it bids fair to become in the course of time the industrial metropolis of the North Country. Thirty years ago aluminum was a scientific curiosity. Today only iron, copper, lead and zinc rank above it in volume. Charles Martin Hall, while a student in Oberlin College, became interested in the possibilities of cheap aluminum. In 1886, Hall made his first aluminum by passing an electric current through molten cryolite in which was dissolved aluminum ore. He interested some Pittsburgh capitalists who built a small factory. The next step was the building of a larger factory at Niagara Falls and then one at Massena, which has grown to be
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the largest plant for the manufacture of aluminum in the United States.
All sizes and shapes of aluminum bars are made at Massena. These include aluminum ingot, electrical conductor cable, electrical conductor bus bar and various kinds of aluminum bars, rods and wire. The plant where the cable and wire are made occupies 150,000 square feet of ground while the entire plant stretches over fifty acres. There is also a big store house on the property which houses $1,000,- 000 worth of supplies. Besides there is a large machine shop, a foundry, a blacksmith shop and a carpenter shop.
The Massena plant of the Aluminum Company of America is the largest consumer of electric power of any industrial plant in America. Under normal circumstances about 3,000 men are employed at this great plant, which is constantly being increased in size.
THE HYDRO-ELECTRIC AGE
The rivers of the Adirondacks had been regarded primarily as logging streams when a young Watertown lawyer, Floyd L. Carlisle, came into prominence by merging two banks in Watertown and or- ganizing from them the Northern New York Trust Company. Later, this same young lawyer-banker took over, with a group of associates, the St. Regis Paper Company with its important hydro-electric power. Gradually Mr. Carlisle secured control of important power develop- ments in Northern New York. One of the first companies acquired was the Northern New York Utilities of Watertown. He proposed to make a bid for the distant power markets. In 1921 he built a new transmission line from the Adirondacks south to Utica. Many were frankly skeptical. Bankers told him he would sell no power but under Carlisle management the power companies in the Adirondacks increased their output from 50,000,000 kilowatt hours to 600,000,000.
Mr. Carlisle's rise to a position of national prominence was phenomenal. He was largely responsible for the organization of the Northeastern Power Corporation. He took over one utility company after another in Northern and Central New York until he controlled practically every concern dealing in hydro-electric power in the North Country. He saw water power was Northern New York's greatest asset in the new industrial era and he capitalized that asset.
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In 1929 the great Niagara-Hudson Power Corporation was organized as a result of the merger of Mr. Carlisle's Northeastern Power Corporation, the Buffalo, Niagara and Eastern Power Corpo- ration and the Mohawk-Hudson Power Corporation. Total assets of the three corporations were at that time close to half a billion dollars. Mr. Floyd L. Carlisle became chairman of the board of directors of the new corporation. Within a few months Niagara-Hudson had purchased the Frontier Corporation, thereby acquiring sites on the St. Lawrence river capable of developing 2,400,000 horsepower.
Streams in Northern New York, viewed from a power standpoint, were "flashy." The expense of installing dams and turbines had to be sufficient to take care of flood-waters of spring and fall while, during the low water period, they delivered but a small part of their total rated power capacity. Papermills, fortunately, were able to adjust themselves to these fluctuating power conditions. A great part of the power in manufacturing paper is used for grinding pulp but the great investment in the industry is the huge machinery with great, heated, drying rolls for making the paper.
The flood waters which brought wood to the mills could be used for grinding pulp to be stored for use by the paper-making machinery at other periods of the year. There is probably no other industry, however, which could so well adapt itself to these flashy streams. According to the census of 1920 the rated power of the turbines in the paper mills of Northern New York was approximately two and a half times as great as would have been necessary had the flow of power been uniform throughout the year.
Thus Northern New York in the early years of the twentieth century faced a serious industrial problem. Its raw material upon which its paper mills depended was exhausted. Unfavorable freight rates were a serious handicap, now that such material had to be shipped from a distance. Fluctuating power was also a serious handicap from an industrial standpoint, particularly in the face of great improvements in efficiency of competitive steam power plants.
But during the year 1930, and the months adjacent to it, several very important events occurred to alter materially the industrial out- look in Northern New York. An adjustment was effected with the New York Central Railroad Company whereby the North Country was given the same basic per ton mile rates that other parts of the
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state may have. A reforestation movement, which had been slowly gathering momentum, got under way. The Northern New York Utilities, Inc., and the St. Regis Paper Company reached a volume of planting of 5,000,000 new trees per year, while the State of New York worked out a program to plant 1,000,000 acres of idle land. This does not afford any immediate benefit to any of the wood-using industries of the state but it holds out great hopes for the future.
Other events occurred during 1930, or thereabouts, which promise immense benefits to Northern New York. The project of power de- velopment and navigation improvement on the St. Lawrence river took a great step forward. A state commission was established which reported favorably a plan for the development of this immense power by a power authority of New York State jointly with Canada. Great blocks of this power, under this plan, would be sold by the state authority directly to industries in the region along the river and would be marketed to domestic consumers through the existing lines of privately-owned utility corporations.
Also the great Sacandaga Reservoir was completed and placed in operation in 1930. That can have no direct effect upon these five counties but it may have a very important result indirectly. The flashy condition of the streams in the North Country can be con- trolled to a large extent by the construction of river regulating reser- voirs. This is entirely practicable and during the period from 1920 to 1930 the legal procedure had been worked out and one reservoir, Stillwater on the Beaver river, had been constructed. The building of further reservoirs, however, was blocked by a political controversy, but there are indications now that a formula will be worked out per- mitting of water storage wherever needed in the North.
The industrial picture of the North Country changed rapidly in 1930 and 1931. With equitable freight rates assured, with a certain supply of wood to tide industries over until such a time as the new forests come into productivity, with the development of the immense power of the St. Lawrence and the controlling of the streams indi- cated in the immediate future, the outlook is promising indeed.
CHAPTER XX.
A HALF CENTURY OF GROWTH
THE NORTH COUNTRY OF THE LAST FIFTY YEARS MARIETTA HOLLEY AND DR. MARY WALKER-STATESMEN OF THE POST-CIVIL WAR PERIOD -THE ORIGIN OF THE WOOLWORTH STORES-BICYCLES AND HORSELESS CARRIAGES-CLARKSON COLLEGE-THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR- IRVING BACHELLOR AND FREDERICK REMINGTON-THE ERA OF PRO- FESSIONAL FOOTBALL-THE WORLD WAR.
Turn the pages of Northern New York newspapers covering the past fifty years and a kaleidoscopic picture appears before one's eyes : Political parades of the eighties with long lines of marchers in oil cloth cloaks and with swinging lanterns; bicycle races at the county fairs; the five and ten cent store idea originating in a sale of novel- ties in a little Watertown store; the era of the great fires when Carthage, Pulaski and Malone suffered severely; the first, sputtering electric lights, main attractions at Fourth of July celebrations; the golden age of professional football; the beginning of Clarkson College at Potsdam; the Spanish-American War and the famous "Fighting Ninth"; the first "horseless carriages," when it took a whole day to go from Syracuse to Watertown; Bobby Leach and his barrel, and a score of other incidents reflecting the varied life of the North Country up into the twentieth century.
And stalking up through the pages of those old newspapers comes a distinguished company : William A. Wheeler, vice president of the United States; Governor Roswell P. Flower; Dr. Mary Walker, who tried to get women to wear trousers; Marietta Holley, the "Josiah Allen's Wife" who set the world to laughing; Frederick Remington, who made the west a thing of color and romance; and Irving Bach- ellor, whose "Eben Holden" made him famous overnight.
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THE ORIGIN OF THE WOOLWORTH STORES
The idea of the five and ten cent store, which revolutionized the retail business of the world, had its birth in the brain of a ten dollar a week clerk in the Watertown store of Moore & Smith. That clerk was Frank W. Woolworth. Today a magnificent office building, the Woolworth Building, stands on the site occupied by that store, and here every year the stockholders' meeting of the gigantic Woolworth Corporation is held.
Frank W. Woolworth was a Jefferson county product. He was born in the town of Rodman on a farm, April 13th, 1852. When Frank Woolworth was seven years of age his father bought a farm at Great Bend and to there the family moved. There was nothing about young Frank Woolworth to indicate that he was destined to make one of the greatest successes in business of his day. He de- tested farming. He never was a conspicuous success as a clerk. In- deed he once had his salary reduced from $10 a week to $8 on the ground that this was all he was worth. Young Woolworth was twenty-one when he got his first job as a clerk. He left the farm at Great Bend just as soon as he reached his majority. Augsbury & Moore at Watertown agreed to employ him if he would work for nothing for three months. This he agreed to do, being put on the payroll at the end of that time at a salary of $3.50 a week. At the end of six months he received a raise of fifty cents a week. In two years he was reeciving $8 a week and his experience was sufficient so that he could transfer to the A. Bushnell & Company employ at a salary of $10 a week. But his advancement was not rapid enough to suit him. He felt he had little aptitude for clerking. In February, 1876, he gave up his job and returned to the farm.
Fortunately, however, a year on the farm was enough for Wool- worth, who, realizing that he was a poor clerk, knew he was a worse farmer. So he returned to Watertown and entered the employ of Moore & Smith-the firm name having been changed during his sojourn on the farm-at the old salary of $10 a week. It was in the spring of 1878 that Woolworth got the idea for the five and ten cent store. A Mr. Goulding, who had operated a five cent counter in a store in Port Huron, Michigan, told him of the success of the enter- prise. Woolworth was enthusiastic. He talked the thing over with
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Mr. W. H. Moore, his employer, but Mr. Moore was non-commital. However, when Moore went to New York that summer to buy goods, he bought $75 worth of novelties which could be sold for five cents each. The county fair was scheduled for the next week and Mr. Moore decided that was as good a time as any to put the idea to a test.
Some old tables were brought up from the basement and the five cent articles displayed upon them. They had an instant appeal for the farmers who had flocked to Watertown to attend the fair. By night every article had been sold and Mr. Moore telegraphed to New York for more. Woolworth was jubilant. Mr. Moore now advised him to start a store of his own. Woolworth had no money but his father endorsed his note for $300 and Moore sold him goods for that amount. After looking over the field young Woolworth decided to try out his experiment in Utica and there the first five and ten cent store in America was opened-and failed. Back to Watertown came the discouraged Woolworth to talk the matter over with his good friend, Mr. Moore. The merchant advised the young man to start again and in June, 1879, he went to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and opened a store. The success of that store was instantaneous.
Frank Woolworth was now convinced that he had hit on an idea which had marvelous possibilities. He called in his brother, C. S. Woolworth of Great Bend, and the two brothers tried out a store in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, without success. They next tried Scran- ton and the store took. In the meantime Frank Woolworth had been visited in Lancaster by a young St. Lawrence county man, S. H. Knox of Russell. Knox had a few hundred dollars and he and Wool- worth started a store in Reading under the firm name of Woolworth & Knox. But soon after they sold out the Reading store and opened one in Newark. This, too, was closed and a store opened in Erie which proved successful from the first. The relationship between Woolworth and Knox continued until 1889, when they opened a store in Buffalo. Then Woolworth sold his interest in the Erie and Buffalo stores to Knox who, in the course of time, acquired a large number of stores.
By this time another Northern New York man, Carson C. Peck, had become associated with Woolworth and the two opened a store in Utica. Now Woolworth felt that he could maintain a headquarters
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in New York for buying purposes and a tiny office was leased. In 1886 Peck was taken to New York to act as manager and buyer. Still another Northern New York man to receive his early training in the Woolworth organization was Fred M. Kirby of Brownville, who had been a clerk in the employ of Moore & Smith at Watertown and left to enter partnership with C. S. Woolworth at Wilkesbarre. Mr. Kirby was left in charge of this store and later bought out the interest of his partner.
In 1912 the great F. W. Woolworth Company was formed, taking over 318 F. W. Woolworth stores, 112 S. H. Knox & Company stores, the ninety-six stores owned by F. M. Kirby & Company, the fifty- three stores owned by E. P. Charlton & Company, the fifteen stores owned by C. S. Woolworth and the two stores owned by Mr. W. H. Moore. All of those concerned were made very wealthy by this con- solidation. Nor did these North Country men who had started life as poor clerks forget the land of their birth. The Woolworth Me- morial Church at Great Bend, the Woolworth Building at Watertown and the S. H. Knox High School at Russell are examples of their generosity.
THE ERA OF THE GREAT FIRES
During this period when the Woolworth, the Knox and the Kirby five and ten cent stores were being established, Northern New York was passing through an era of disastrous fires. Oswego, which has had more great fires than any other place in the North Country, experienced a particularly spectacular and costly fire September 15th, 1881. Some 9,000,000 feet of lumber and a portion of the city piers were destroyed, as well as a number of small houses. The reflection of the flames in the sky was visible in Syracuse and fireman from that place were sent to help the Oswego firemen fight the blaze. The loss was placed at about $200,000.
Less than a month later, October 5th, 1881, Pulaski experienced what was probably the most disastrous fire in its history. The entire business section of the village west of the river was destroyed at a loss of about $200,000. An example of newspaper enterprise was furnished by the Pulaski Democrat, whose plant being burnt out, published an extra with news of the fire from the Sunday school room of the Baptist Church.
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The great fire at Carthage, one of the most destructive in the history of Northern New York, occurred October 20th, 1884. The total loss was estimated all the way from half a million dollars to $750,000. Both the villages of Carthage and West Carthage were practically wiped off the map. Fire broke out in the P. L. and C. E. Eaton factory about eleven in the morning. The building burned rapidly and the tub factory, next north, owned by Harvey Farrar, was soon in flames. Then the furniture factory of Meyer, Ross and Company caught and by this time the flames had bridged the river and soon all the mills and manufactories on the other side of the river were in flames.
Help was summoned from Watertown and thirty men with a steamer and 1,000 feet of hose made the run by special train in twenty-five minutes. Soon after the arrival of the Watertown fire- men, the Lowville firemen and their steamer arrived by special train. Then came the Boonville firemen. Fire Chief Cole of Watertown assumed charge and by five in the afternoon the fire was under con- trol. The burned area covered about seventy acres, bounded on the north by Fulton street, on the south by State street, on the east by the cemetery and Clinton street, and on the west by the east side of Mechanic street and River street. A total of 157 structures were destroyed by the flames of which a hundred were houses. All the school buildings were burned and also the Episcopal, the Baptist and the Presbyterian churches. Mrs. John Thomas Walsh, who was ill, expired as she was being carried from her home.
On January 28th, 1888, Malone experienced its biggest fire. It originated in the Empire Block and the loss was estimated at the time at about $150,000. Isaac Chesley, a merchant, was killed when an explosion blew down a wall.
VELOCIPEDES AND THE FIRST TELEPHONE
About 1875 the velocipede craze hit Northern New York. Many of the first velocipedes were made in the little village carriage shops scattered through the North Country. George Crowley of Somer- ville, St. Lawrence county, was a well known velocipede rider of his day. It is said that he made three velocipedes himself, one of which he sold for $50. The velocipede was much harder to operate than the modern bicycle and yet Crowley rode one from Somerville to
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