USA > Ohio > History and geography of Ohio > Part 12
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Problem II. How division of labor was introduced
If the soil proved fertile the first settler was soon joined by others. Gradually a little community would be formed, located near a good spring, or on some river, or at the crossing of two
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FIG. 114. A pioneer mill
trails or roads. In each of these little communities there would be men skilled in certain trades. Nearly always there was a blacksmith, who would devote his time to making the crude pioneer tools, especially axes, plows, spades, and hoes. Another man would follow the trade of miller. The first mills used horse power. Next, small water-power mills were built along the streams (Fig. 114); and in the larger rivers, boats were anchored with mill wheels turned by the rapid current. Tan- ners changed the raw hides into leather, and wool-combers prepared the wool for weaving into cloth. As the settlement grew, the shoemaker, the hatter, and the candlemaker began to ply their trades. In this way, by easy stages, division of labor came about. The farmer could devote more time to tilling his
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fields if he could take his corn and wheat to the mill to be ground instead of performing this task himself. The same would be true when he could exchange his grain with the black- smith for the tools needed on the farm, or when he could get shoes from the shoemaker instead of making them at his home.
FIG. 115. Manufacturing steam shovels
This view, taken in the forge shop, shows the process of forging a shaft from a rolled steel billet under one of the largest and heaviest steam hammers in the works. (Cour- tesy of the Marion Steam Shovel Works, Marion, Ohio)
This division of labor forms the basis of our modern indus- trial society, and makes possible the conditions under which we live today. On all sides we see men engaged in hundreds of different callings, in banks and offices and stores, in field and mine and workshop. All are producers, for all are performing services which have an exchangeable value. All are engaged in the creation of wealth; that is, the production of goods which have an economic value, which are desired by society. The farmer says: "I will till the soil, raise the wheat needed to supply the markets of the world, and exchange it for the
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clothing, furniture, implements, and other articles that I need." The manufacturer produces clothing, shoes, or furniture, which in turn he exchanges for the food products and other com- modities necessary to his existence and comfort. The merchant creates values by exchanging goods; if it were not for him, the
FIG. 116. Manufacturing steam shovels
This illustration shows the immense traveling crane used in the machine shop. Note the two runways. The crane on the upper runway is used for assembling 300-ton shovels. (Courtesy of the Marion Steam Shovel Works, Marion, Ohio)
farmer would have to leave his work and go to the manufac- turer and the clothier for the necessaries which they produce. The day laborer receives, in return for his labor, food from the farmer, shoes and clothing from the factory, and fuel from the mine. Not only do we have division of labor according to trades and industries, but there is also specialization within the trade. By doing one thing, each worker becomes more efficient than when he performs many different tasks or operations. This specialization would be impossible without cooperation ; hence all the members of modern industrial society are dependent upon one another for their daily needs.
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Problem III. How factories took the place of home industries
The farm tools made by the early blacksmith were crude affairs. He supplied the iron point for the clumsy wooden plow, also the metal parts of the hoes, rakes, spades, and axes, to
FIG. 117. The foundry in a factory where stoves and ranges for coal, wood, and gas are made
This splendid modern foundry is 1000 feet long and 135 feet wide, with a 15-foot gangway straight through the center. Directly over the gangway is a pattern rack for the storing of the patterns used. Note the small trolleys underneath this rack, from which hang bars with loops at the bottom. The molders place their ladles in these loops, and push them along instead of carrying them. This saves the strength of the molder, and there is very little iron spilled in the process. (Courtesy of the Cleveland Cooperative Stove Company, Cleveland, Ohio)
which the farmer himself fitted the handles. As more land was brought under cultivation, better agricultural implements be- came necessary. Until the invention of the McCormick reaper, hay and grain were cut with a scythe or sickle and raked with a hand rake. By working hard with these tools the farmer could cut and rake one acre of oats in a day. The new reaper did the same work in less than one hour. Soon afterwards the threshing machine was invented, which could thresh out more
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grain in half an hour than a man with a flail could beat out in a week. There were also new machines for cultivating and tilling the soil, cultivators, horse hoers, and seed drills, which made it possible for the farmer to substitute animal power for hand labor. The repairing of these various machines and tools brought in many small shops, which developed until some, at least, became large manufacturing establishments.
After the War of 1812, American manufactures grew steadily. The household method of production with its spinning wheel, its hand loom, and its household forge, became a thing of the past. Factory production, which began with Lowell's factory at Waltham, Massachusetts, made rapid headway. The fac- tory system, first developed in the cotton and woolen industries, spread rapidly to other employments. Leather tanneries, silk and paper mills, flour, grist, and sawmills, iron factories, sugar refineries, establishments for the manufacture of boots and shoes, of clothing, hardware, and agricultural implements,- all were operated under the new plan.
The early Ohio factories were woolen mills, tanneries, candle factories, gristmills, and foundries. At first the labor in these plants was performed by hand, but machinery was gradually introduced from New England. One of the earliest factories in Ohio was built at Cincinnati in 1814. This mill used steam power in driving eight large mill stones, and employed twenty hands on the wool-carding and wood-working machines. In 1825 the machine shops of Cincinnati were making steam en- gines ; later they made cotton gins, sugar mills, and locomotives.
These early factories gradually spread over the state, and soon it became evident that the factory system was the most important industrial event of the nineteenth century. The chief results were (I) an immense increase in production at a greatly reduced cost; (2) the employment of women and children whose labor had been almost entirely in the home, but who now abandoned the household crafts and followed the in- dustries into the factories; (3) the creation of a laboring class, as distinct from the class of employers; (4) the growth of factory towns and industrial cities.
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Problem IV. How natural resources and water transportation determined the location of Ohio's industrial centers
The exchange of farm products with the factories developed industrial centers. This exchange depended upon transporta- tion. Ohio was remote from eastern markets, and it was
FIG 118. Blast furnaces at Ironton on the Ohio River
difficult to dispose of surplus farm products like corn. At an early date the hogs of the Miami Valley were driven to the Cin- cinnati packing-houses. This was the beginning which made Cincinnati the earliest pork-packing center in the West.
Iron smelting was begun to supply the iron for tools and vehicles. The first iron was smelted in 1806 on Yellow Creek, near Youngstown. About ten tons of iron were produced at this plant each week. Other iron furnaces were built in Law- rence and Adams counties. At first these furnaces used char- coal as fuel, but in 1846 coal came into use. As a result, Ironton, on the Ohio River, became the smelting center of the state. This district had an abundant supply of coal and iron ore, with the advantage of river transportation. Cincinnati was not in the iron-smelting area, but since it was located on the
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Ohio River, the pig iron from points like Ironton could be cheaply transported to its machine shops and foundries.
Thus it was that the Ohio River Valley became the great industrial region of early Ohio. This section remained the chief metal-working region of the West until the opening of
A.B.
FIG. 119. Making spring motors for phonographs, Elyria, Ohio
This plant is one of the largest of its kind in the world, having a capacity of 60,000 motors per month. This illustration shows a portion of the assembly department. (Courtesy of the General Phonograph Manufacturing Company)
the Lake Superior mines, which made these rich deposits of iron ore available for the region bordering on Lake Erie. Much of the Lake Superior ore is dug in open pits, where steam shovels are used to load the trains of ore cars. These are run out on long piers, and the ore is dumped into the holds of vessels to be carried down the lakes. The ore shipped to Lake Erie ports, Cleveland, Ashtabula, Conneaut, Toledo, and Lorain, is smelted in these cities which are near enough the coal beds to obtain the necessary fuel. Thus the iron industry of Ohio is today carried on chiefly along the southern shore of Lake Erie.
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Problem V. How the use of machinery brought about Ohio's great industrial development
We owe much to the industrial development that has come to enrich our lives. The modern home reflects much of modern in- dustry. You can realize this fact best by making a list of some of the articles commonly used in your own home. When we consider that Ohio has more people working in its factories than on its farms, we can understand something of the large output that must come from the manufacturing plants of the state. If you will compare the early shoemaker, who was able to make a pair of shoes in a week, to the modern shoe factory which makes thousands of pairs each day, or if you compare the early carriage- maker, who turned out one vehicle a month, with the modern auto- mobile plant making 500 to 800 cars per day, you will have some notion of the wonderful growth of our manufacturing industries.
Forty-five Ohio cities manufacture more than 75 per cent of Ohio's products. Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Youngstown, Dayton, Columbus, Canton, Akron, and Lima are the leading manufacturing centers of the state. Hundreds of other cities and towns are engaged in manufacturing, but on a somewhat smaller scale. In the growth of these large manufacturing centers of the state is to be found one of the explanations of the decreased population of Ohio's farms. This decrease has continued for the last fifty years, and the industrial centers have profited by it in the proportion that the farms have lost.
Problem VI. How coal and iron ore determined the location of Ohio's iron and steel industry
The southern shore of Lake Erie and the Mahoning Valley are the sections of the state where the greatest activity in iron and steel is to be found (Fig. 120). As you ride on the train at night between Cleveland and Youngstown, the entire valley seems to be on fire, so many furnaces are belching forth their light and heat. The manufacture of iron and steel is Ohio's foremost industry. It employs more workers than any other in- dustrial enterprise, and the value of its products is far greater.
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The iron and steel industry really includes several closely re- lated industries : (1) the smelting of iron ore in blast furnaces ; (2) the manufacture of pig iron into steel in the rolling mills ; (3) the manufacture of various articles of iron and steel in the foundries and machine shops. All of these industries
FIG. 120. Newburg steel district
Looking south from Union Avenue, Cleveland. Note the freight yards of the Pennsyl- vania Railroad, with the rolling mills in the distance. Explain the relation of trans- portation to the steel industry
depend for their existence upon the mining and transportation of iron ore, the raw material of iron and steel, and upon coal, the indispensable fuel.
IRON-ORE MINING AND TRANSPORTATION
The mining of the Lake Superior iron ore, and the transpor- tation of ore on the Great Lakes, is an industry in which Ohio has a large share. The Lake Superior mines are operated by Ohio companies, and more than 75 per cent of the iron ore is transported to Lake Erie ports in Ohio (Fig. 121). The most important of these are Cleveland, Ashtabula, Conneaut, Toledo, and Lorain. The first cargo of iron ore brought to a Lake
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Erie port consisted of six barrels of ore, which was sold for its freight and considered worthless. At the present time, 30,000,000 tons of iron ore from the Lake Superior region are carried to Lake Erie ports each year by the lake freighters. These ore carriers are more than 500 feet in length, and carry
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nearly 10,000 tons in each cargo. An ore freighter is quickly loaded at the great docks on Lake Superior, and the heavy cargo is delivered at the Lake Erie ports of Ohio within four or five days. The ore docks on the southern shore of Lake Erie supply all of the iron ore which is used in Ohio, as well as that for the Pittsburgh region.
The great cargoes of iron ore were difficult to unload until special unloading machinery was developed. These unloading machines, called cranes, lower immense buckets into the hold of the freighter and scoop up a load of ten tons. These buckets discharge into chutes on the deck of the crane, whence the ore is lowered into cars on the tracks below, or delivered to a storage
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pile. These remarkable machines are built in Ohio shops; they hold the world's record for rapid unloading, 2 500 tons per hour (see Fig. 140).
SMELTING IRON ORE
Iron ore contains impurities besides the iron itself. These impurities are removed by the process of smelting, which is
FIG. 122. Open-hearth furnaces of a steel-manufacturing plant
In these immense furnaces (along right of picture) the charge is heated for fourteen hours. The large steel ladles (right-front of picture) are then lowered into the pits, the furnaces are tapped, and the molten metal is poured out into the ladles. Powerful electric cranes carry the ladles to the ingot molds (left of picture) where the liquid metal is poured into these molds. (Courtesy of the United Alloy Steel Corporation, Canton, Ohio)
done in the iron furnace constructed of steel and infusible brick. The iron ore, together with coke and limestone, is placed in the furnace, and as the coke burns by means of a forced draft, the iron ore melts. The iron is heavy, but the impurities are light and float as slag on top of the liquid iron. The iron is then drawn off into bars called pig iron.
In Ohio the largest number of iron furnaces are on the shores of Lake Erie, where the ore and the coke are brought together
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at the least expense. In pioneer days the iron was smelted in the southern and southeastern part of Ohio. A modern iron furnace makes more cast iron in one day than a pioneer furnace could smelt in an entire year. Ohio has seventy-nine blast furnaces in operation. Cleveland, Lorain, Youngstown, Colum- bus, and Ironton are the principal iron-smelting centers.
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FIG. 123. Rolling mills of a steel-manufacturing plant
The bars of steel are first heated in furnaces to 1600º Fahrenheit. Then they are sent through the roughing mill to raise any surface scale. After this they are taken to the hot mills, where they are rolled out to a certain length, then matched up in packs of three sheets, heated, and given another pass through the hot mill. Then three more sheets are added to each pack and the entire lot rolled to the desired length. (Courtesy of the United Alloy Steel Corporation, Canton, Ohio)
CHANGING PIG IRON INTO STEEL
The brittle pig iron is of little use in modern machinery, and it must be changed into tough, flexible steel. The bars of "pig" are melted into liquid iron, which is poured into a large pitcher- shaped converter holding ten tons. Air is then forced through the liquid iron, which is changed into steel in fifteen minutes. Pig iron is converted into steel in the rolling mills, of which there are seventy-seven in Ohio. Cleveland is the largest steel
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1
center in the state. Youngstown, Canton, Lorain, Columbus, Toledo, and Ironton also have large steel mills. The Mahoning Valley, with Youngstown as its great industrial center, pro- duces one half of the steel made in Ohio. Our state ranks as the largest producer of Bessemer steel in the United States.
2405 m
FIG. 124. An engineering plant during war time
The gun in the foreground is an 8-inch Barbette, and the other guns are 12-inch mor- tars mounted on railway cars. This represents only a small part of the contribution of this plant to our war program. In peace times these shops are devoted to the manu- facture of electric overhead traveling cranes, a number of which are shown in this illustration, and to the manufacture of steel-rolling machinery and equipment. (Courtesy of the Morgan Engineering Company, Alliance, Ohio)
METAL INDUSTRIES OF THE FOUNDRY AND MACHINE SHOPS
Our foundry and machine shops manufacture a great variety of iron and steel products. In the foundry, iron and steel are molded into engines, cylinders, stoves, car wheels, and other forms. The foundry product is sent to the machine shop, where it is shaped, fitted, and assembled. The machine shops have metal-working tools which cut and bend steel into any form.
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Cincinnati manufactures metal-working machines, tools, and hardware. Cleveland has many foundries and large shops for the manufacture of automobile parts, engines, locomotives, vehicles, and a great variety of small tools. Hamilton has large shops in which the Corliss Billions of dollars engine and other machines are made, besides a large 5 factory where farm trac- tors are produced. Dayton manufactures cash registers and calculating machines. 4 Springfield is noted for farm implements, trucks, road roll- ers, and also machine-shop tools. Camden makes steel 3 safes and vaults. Lorain con- structs steel ships, stoves, iron pipe, and refrigerating 2 machinery. Lima has one of the largest plants in the coun- try for the manufacture of locomotives. Marion is noted 1 for the production of steam shovels. Elyria produces gas engines, plows, iron fences, steel tubing, and furnaces. 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1909 1920 FIG. 125. Value of manufactured products of Ohio from 1850 to 1920 Toledo is a large automobile center; it also manufactures structural iron work, steel castings, boilers, and steam engines.
Ohio's foundries and machine shops are the largest manu- facturing establishments in the state, employing more workers than any other industry. These shops are widely distributed over the state, since many of them have grown from pioneer blacksmith shops. It is estimated that a larger number of young people will enter the metal-working industry than any other occupation. Many of our schools and colleges now assist in training people for the metal-working industry.
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Problem VII. How diversity of manufactures has given Ohio its rank as the fifth manufacturing state
Akron, with its twenty-four rubber factories, is the largest rubber manufacturing center in the world. Dr. Goodyear began the manufacture of rubber at Akron in 1871. The
FIG. 126. Making automobile tires
This illustration shows the process of tire-building. First the rubber is worked into strips of cotton fabric by means of pressure and heat in the mills. Then these plies are built, one at a time, on a steel wheel-shaped form, each ply being carefully stitched down by machinery. (Courtesy of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Akron, Ohio)
industry developed slowly until the automobile came into use. After this, rubber manufacturing became one of Ohio's leading industries. Raw rubber is imported from Brazil and the East Indies, and manufactured in Akron plants into many articles of utility. Automobile tires form more than two thirds of Akron's rubber products. One company has factories with ninety acres of floor space, which make 27,000 tires daily. Akron produces 50,000 tires daily in its establishments, and is the rubber-tire center of the United States (Figs. 126, 127).
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AUTOMOBILES AND TRUCKS
The automobile is less than twenty years old, yet its manu- facture is one of Ohio's greatest industries. The annual wheat crop of Ohio is only one third the value of the 100,000 automo- biles made in this state each year, three fourths of which are passenger cars, and the remainder trucks and tractors.
FIG. 127. Making automobile tires
This illustration shows the finishing of tires, the process in which the side walls and a tread are put on, after which the tire is ready for the cure or vulcanization. (Courtesy of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Akron, Ohio)
The automobile industry depends upon cheap and abundant steel. Ohio inventors, aided by skilled machinists, have helped to perfect the automobile. At least ten standard cars have been designed, perfected, and are now being built in the auto- mobile factories of our state. Immense factories turn out large numbers of cars with amazing rapidity. The modern automo- bile plant is one of the best-organized industrial establishments. Each mechanic is skilled in the operation of high-speed machin- ery. The automobile parts are made in large numbers by the different departments and assembled into the complete machine.
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Cleveland is the automobile center of Ohio, manufacturing one half of the output of the state. It has eleven different plants for passenger cars, two for trucks, one tractor factory, and a motor-cycle shop. Toledo also produces a large number of automobiles, while Dayton, Columbus, Springfield, Lima, Fostoria, and Elyria make automobiles or automobile parts.
FIG. 128. Making bicycles at Dayton, Ohio
This immense plant is the largest bicycle factory in the world, with a capacity of 600 machines each working day. The picture at the left shows a part of the brazing depart- ment. Before the bicycle frames come to this department the tubing is cut to length and pinned together with the head and rear forks. The joints are then immersed in the furnaces which contain white-hot brazing material. This makes the frame prac- tically an unbreakable unit. The picture at the right gives a view of the assembly department. Here all the component parts-about 1050 in number-are assembled into fully completed bicycles. In this factory 1200 sewing machines can also be made daily, besides electric clothes-washers and other products. (Courtesy of the Davis Sewing Machine Company)
MEAT-PACKING
As early as 1803 Cincinnati had established the meat-packing industry on a considerable scale, sending its first shipment down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. For a
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number of years, Cincinnati was the largest meat-packing center of this country. Since 1850 its production has relatively de- creased, because other cities in the corn belt have had a greater abundance of raw material and better transportation facilities. Cleveland, Toledo, and Columbus are also meat-packing centers.
Other industries closely allied to the meat-packing industry, such as soap and candle making, tanneries, and shoe factories, were early established in Cincinnati. Explain. Today Cin- cinnati leads all cities in the state in the manufacture of boots and shoes.
CEREALS
The first flour mills were located upon the banks of the streams, and were operated by water-power. In 1815 Ohio's first steam flour mill was built at Cincinnati, with a capacity of 700 barrels of flour each week. As the western wheat fields developed and as better transportation by rail and lake was made available, the flour-milling industry shifted from southern to northern Ohio. Toledo is now the largest milling center of the state. Akron does the special milling of buckwheat, oat- meal, and breakfast foods. Many of these are exceptionally well known, and are shipped to all parts of the world. Although Ohio does not grow enough corn or wheat to supply its own needs, yet the mills of Ohio produce enough flour for its people. Explain.
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