USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > Ohio, the future great state, her manufacturers, and a history of her commercial cities, Cincinnati and Cleveland > Part 4
USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Ohio, the future great state, her manufacturers, and a history of her commercial cities, Cincinnati and Cleveland > Part 4
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We have so much coal stored away in the hills of Ohio, that figures would hardly give the number of years of human labor it truly represents. How can we best utilize this potential labor in our coal? By manufactures of various kinds. We have scarcely any coal in the State which will not answer well for the generation of steam. With this steam power we should manufacture, in Ohio, the wool grown here, and cotton from the South, which can easily be brought here. Our forests furnish vast quantities of timber, suitable for nearly all the purposes for which wood is used. Our coals should evaporate our abundant brines, burn common and hydraulic lime, make glass, burn fire-brick, etc.
Our purest and best of the dry-burning coals should be used in the manufacture of iron. For this we have vast supplies of superior iron ore, which may be smelted alone or with the ores of Lake Superior and Missouri. Our raw iron should be converted at home, and with our own coal, into its thousand modified forms of cast and wrought iron and steel. Every ton of coal consumed at home adds to the wealth of the State. The exact points in the State where our coals can best be consumed must be deter- mined by circumstances. In some cases the coal may be profitably consumed near the mines; in others, it may be carried to the raw materials which are to be manufactured, or it may meet these materials at some half-way point. This is a question of freights, of labor, of capital, of local markets, and of the best distribution of the manu- factured products. For example, iron is now made at Cleveland with coal brought from Mahoning County, with limestone from Kelley's Island, and from iron ore brought from Lake Superior and Northern New York. Cleveland affords a local market and a
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fine center of distribution. Under favorable circumstances our coals may be profitably used for manufacturing purposes in cities and towns quite remote from any coal fields.
I have not referred to the great and rapidly increasing demand for coal for house- Lold uses. In the agricultural districts coal is more and inore taking the place of wood for tuel. While the aggregate amount thus used is large, it is very small compared with the quantity which manufactures will demand. .
The natural market of Ohio coal is Ohio and such portions of other States, as can he reached in successful competition with the coal of other districts. We may not hope to ship our coals to the Newcastles of other States, unless we can furnish coals of such supy rior quality as to warrant the increased cost of transportation. For distant competi- pre trade we must depend upon quality. The Youghiogheny coal of Western Pennsyl- vania, because of its excellence and popularity, is carried hundreds of miles by water to the markets on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, passing on its route vast deposits of other coal in Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. It is believed that there are coals in these States named, hundreds of miles nearer the markets, which, when capital affords the needed means of development, will successfully compete with the coals of Pennsyl- vania. Coal is now shipped largely from Pomeroy and lower river mines, which is, to a considerable extent, supplying the market for household use and for the generation of steam. The saving of distance by river carriage is, however, relatively a less advantage than the saving of distance by railroad carriage. On the river, the chief gain of shorter distance is in time. This, however, is sometimes very great, since from the lower mines two "runs" may often be made to market on the same rise of water, while from the mines of Pennsylvania only one can be made. By railroad, each additional mile of distance adds a definite sum to the cost of the freight of a ton of coal. The use of the Ohio River is free, and the expense of freighting lies chiefly in the contingents of time, perils of navigation, expenses of tow-boats, barges, etc. Hence, railroad transportation is necessarily far more expensive than by a free river. This expense depends not a little upon the grades of the roads. It is reported that the Reading Railroad, of Pennsyl- vania, which does an immense coal business, has on its main trunk no grade greater than fifteen feet per mile, and with this grade a thirty-ton engine can move a coal-train of from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty cars. Our Ohio railroads, extending from our coal-fields into the coalless district westward, are subjected to much higher grades, because, as the chief drainage of the State is southward, they must cross the ridges or higher lands which divide the streams. Doubtless some of our roads,
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built with limited means, and perhaps with little expectation of such heavy work as a coal trade involves, were constructed with less consideration of grades than would be given to the subject if the roads were now to be built and adequate funds were at com- mand. In the location of some roads, coal, as an element of business, was strangely ignored. For example, the old Soioto and Hocking Valley Railroad, in its northern extension through Hocking and Perry Counties, was located (and largely graded) so as to pass within perhaps five miles to the west of the Straitsville coal-fields-one of the finest coal-fields of the world-skillfully avoiding the coal every-where. It will be within the limits of safety to say that, if there had been years ago a State geological survey of that region, and the quantity and quality of the coal had been authenticated, as they have now been, that railroad would have been located through the great coal-fields of Hocking and Perry Counties, and the road would have been built, and if built, other roads and branches would have been constructed to that field, so that by this time, this part of the State would have had the advantage of fifteen years of stimulated development, and New- ark and Columbus, and perhaps other towns and cities, have been doubled in population.
Learning these lessons from the past,. the future should be characterized by higher wisdom and an intelligent and penetrative forecast. Our stores of coal, iron ore, salt, etc., are enormous. Our coals must be used for smelting our ores, and such other ores as may be obtained from districts where no coals exist. Secretary Boutwell, in his recent report to Congress, presents the significant fact, and one well worth pondering, that the United States are losing their great maritime carrying trade for the want of cheaper iron for ship building, British iron steamers now having largely displaced the old wooden vessels. We have in the United States, and indeed in Ohio, vast supplies of the raw material needed in iron-making, and are rapidly accumulating the necessary capital for working up these materials. It is true that capital with us is worth a higher rate of interest than abroad, but for all such investments as are safe, and the returns sure, capital is satisfied with rates of interest not very greatly in excess of interest on similar investments elsewhere. It is the uncertainty of return, and the speculative character of so many of our investments that, to a large extent, create high rates of interest. It is the same abroad, but in a less degree, on account of the larger aggregate of capital. Great Britain has capital, science, skill, and cheap labor. The science and skill we certainly can have. The labor question is the only one which presents any very serious difficulty. How far it may be best to make up this disadvantage by duties on foreign iron, or how high such duties should be, I shall not undertake to decide.
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The question must press heavily upon our wiser statesmen, who, fully aware of our im- mense natural resources, are at the same time aware of the great loss to the nation for the want of their development. This development, however, must not be here, as in the Old World, at the expense of an enlightened civilization, through such an under- paid and debased labor system as now constitutes the dark shading of the picture of the wealth obtained from the mining and iron industries of Great Britain, France, and Belgium. If at no distant day the population of Ohio is to be increased one or more millions by the development of her mineral resources, it becomes us to pon- der well the history of similar developments abroad, and avoid the evils which are there so deplorable. In the United States our free and beneficent governments, Na- tional and State, are based upon the elevation and character of the people, and it were unwise and unsafe for us to attempt to turn our munificent endowment of minerals into wealth if we thereby place any class of our citizens below that standard of humanity which our institutions require as essential to their very continuance. The wives and young children of our people must not be obliged to toil in mines and in iron works, driven to their unsuitable tasks by the conviction that the united earnings of the whole family are absolutely required to keep the family in existence. Abram S. Hewitt, U. S. Commissioner to the Paris Exposition, in his very able report to our Government, thus writes: "In Wales, women are extensively employed in the works (iron) doing the labor for which a man would be required in America, and earning from ten pence to one shilling three pence per day, or rather less than half the wages that would be paid to a man for the same labor which they perform equally well. In Staffordshire, in the north of England, and in Scotland, women and children are still extensively employed above ground about the mines and around the coal heaps at the mouth of the pits, the substantial result of which is that the labor of the whole family is procured for the sumn which would be paid to its male head, if he alone labored for the support of the family; of course, at a far lower cost of the resulting production of iron than would otherwise be possible. Restraining laws have of late years been enacted in England in regard to women and children, limiting the number of hours during which they may be employed, and also providing that they shall not be employed during the night, except in certain specified cases. But if the women and children were altogether withdrawn from these occupations, as they are in the United States, it would not be possible to produce iron except at a considerable advance on the present cost."
When work fails or sickness comes, the toiling family must necessarily enter the
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crowded ranks of public paupers. How large the army of public paupers in England is may be seen from the figures, taken from an official report to the British Parliament, which show that 872,620 persons, in a district containing a population of 19, 886, 104, were supported by public charity in the last week of September, 1867. In the same returns I find a table showing that in England and Wales the number of pupils in schools inspected by the Government in 1866 was 871, 309, a number smaller than that of the paupers. Such a minimum of education and maximum of pauperism we do not desire to introduce into the New World.
In the iron manufacturing districts of France and Belgium the condition of the laborer is not essentially different from that of England, although in France the dark- ness of ignorance is even more dense than in the other countries. France, however, does not produce iron enough for her own consumption, while the production of Bel- gium is only one-tenth of that of Great Britain. The latter country therefore determines the standard of prices, and these prices are regulated by the cheapness of human labor.
It is believed that the day is not far distant when, by increased skill and science, we in Ohio may convert our raw materials into iron with as small an amount of human labor as is required in Great Britain; but can we safely attempt to reduce the standard value of labor below a price which shall meet the just needs of humanity ?
As a necessary result of the condition of labor in Great Britain, there has arisen an antagonism between labor and capital, which is causing much anxiety in the minds of the more thoughtful statesmen and philanthropists. This is something far broader and deeper than the mere irritation arising from any single conflict with employers who may have been very unjust. It appears to be an abiding and deeply rooted conviction. This antagonism has doubtless been increased by the virtual law of caste, which almost precludes the hope, as it well-nigh precludes the possibility, of the rising of the laborer above the condition in which he was born. For example, in mining the miner expects to live and die a miner, and that his children will be miners after him. In addition to the oppression of poverty, resulting from poor pay for hard work, he feels himself at such social disadvantage that he well-nigh abandons all hope of bettering his condition, and hence, too often, spends his spare hours, which, under the stimulus of an honor- able ambition, might be spent in self improvement and in the advancement of his family, in idle dissipation. Sometimes such men come to the United States, and some of them bring their Old World ways and antagonisms with them. This is unfortunate to themselves, and unjust to their adopted country. Here the circumstances and
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conditions of labor are widely different. The land is wide and free, and the miner can, if sober and industrious, always sell his labor at a remunerating price. With industry and frugality he may himself become a mining proprietor. His children may be educated at the public expense and fitted for usefulness in any walk in life. He is surrounded by incentives to ambition. The conditions of his life being changed, it is unnecessary and unwise for him to resort to former methods by which he sought to force from the British proprietor justice and fair treatment. It is unneccessary for him to reproduce here combinations against employers, such as afforded him in the Old World, if not relief and advantage, at least excitement. Some of these associations are such that he who enters them must surrender his individual judgment and will and all personal control of his own labor. When such associations attempt not only to control their own members, but to control the labor of others, and to enforce the prohibition by menace of personal injury, a menace sometimes brutally executed, it involves a condition of things so utterly repugnant to the fundamental principles of American liberty, and so disastrous to the development of our great mining industries, as to suggest to the State the necessity of legislative interference. It is very doubtful whether the best interest of the miner can be secured by such combinations. The surrender of personal independence tends to prevent that individual development and growth of character which fit a man for the manly duties and responsibilities of American citizenship. But, on the other hand, with more intelligent and broader views of life and duty, the foreigner soon comprehends the demands of a new and growing State, and identifies himself with its progress, and like the ecmhanic and farmer, takes pride in making his adopted country great and powerful.
We may not hope, in Ohio, to make our minerals the basis of a great and suc- cessful industry if the capitalist or mining proprietor feels that the labor he employs, in addition to its greater cost, is utterly uncertain, and finds that he can make no contracts for production extending to the future. Our resources, which the Geological Survey is making known and authenticating to the State and to the world, can not be developed, and iron and other manufacturing establishments spring up successfully all over the State to enrich it, if at any moment all mineral supplies may be cut off, and remain cut off for months, by the secession of all laborers from our mines, a secession voluntary .on the part of some, and involuntary and forced on the part of others. With the probability of such a condition of uncertainty, capital will forsake our State, seeking elsewhere wiser and safer investments. Freedom to make individual contracts, and upon such terms as may be deemed reasonable and just by both interested parties, with such legislation
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as would make the enforcement of such contracts simple and easy, would tend to quiet appre- hensions now becoming serious. The laborer need not fear any failure of legal redress; indeed, such, in this country, are the sympathies of juries in favor of the poor and laboring man, that capitalists and corporations would have far more ground for solici- tude. Hence, the principle most in accordance with our institutions, that each laborer must be absolutely free, both as against fellow-laborer and against employer, and being thus free, may dispose of his labor as he sees fit, $s probably the one which, if adopted, would be most conducive to the best development of the vast mineral resources of the State. His wages should be secured to him. The law should secure for him thorough ventilation of mines, and careful protection from danger. But these and similar safe- guards will avail nothing toward the great cnd. of promoting our industries, unless each man is made free to labor, frce to make his own contracts, and free in every right of an independent citizen; indeed, a thoroughly individualized man, ready to meet, at the same time, all the responsibilities growing out of his freedom. Any attack upon the freedom of the laborer is, in effect, an attack upon the capital needing that labor, and willing to pay for it, and both assaults are in hostility to the fundamental principles of social order and to the industry of the State.
I have thus briefly referred to the labor question as pertinent to the great probleni before the people of Ohio, "What shall we do with our vast mineral resources?" In the first place, we may not wisely expect to run a successful race of competition with the Old World in securing cheap labor by trampling upon the laws of humanity. Great Britain makes more iron than she honorably pays for. She complains of Belgium, because there labor, even worse paid and worse fed than her own, creates a competition which is thought to forbid the elevation of her own working classes. But in this deplorable state of things she goes on; every year increasing the aggregate of her pro- ductions, rendering the competition at home and abroad still more close and desperate, and forbidding all hope of better reward to labor. This condition of things is becoming even startling to her own wiser men, and the cause of threatening discontent and revolt. among her laboring classes. "The truth is," writes Mr. Hewitt, "that the whole system is false, and now when pressed by the energy and enterprise and competition of the age to its legitimate results, humanity is in rebellion, and there is a general cry from all classes -- laborers, employers, philanthropists, philosophers, and statesmen alike-for relief."
It is in the light of these serious facts that we must view the question of the develop- ment of our mineral resources. If, having learned the greatness of these resources, we
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wisely determine to utilize our minerals and break their long repose during geologic ages by mining and manufacturing industries, we must, under high and patriotic statesman- ship, decide how this may best be done so as to avoid disaster from foreign competition, and at the same time preserve our laboring population from the evils of the Old World.
I have also referred to safeguards now needed in our State for the protection of labor, and to give to that labor such independence and manliness as shall secure for it the fullest confidence and the best reward of honorable industry.
SALT. ' 1
Of our resources of brine it is enough to state that it may be obtained almost anywhere over a large part of the coal-measures in the Second District. For the most part, the salt wells now in operation are sunk into the upper Waverley sandstone form- ation. But it is known that several of the sand rocks of the coal measures are charged with good brine. The profitable making of salt in Southern Ohio depends chiefly upon the cheapness of fuel and the facilities for transportation. Salt is one of the great staple products which may be obtained in many portions of the country, and in different geological formations. It can, in many places, be made very cheaply, but its profitable manufacture depends so largely upon the means of cheap distribution, that the question is rather one of business-wisdom and sagacity than of science.
FIRE-CLAY.
This important material is found in great abundance and of excellent quality in portions of the Second District. It is already largely manufactured in Scioto County. The uses to which fire-clay may be applied are constantly increasing, and the time. is not distant when our clays will become an important element of the manufacturing industry of the Site. In Europe, fire-clay retorts are largely displacing the old iron retorts used for gas-making. They are found to be more durable, and capable of sus- taining a higher heat, than those made of iron. By the higher temperature there is a better generation of gas. The Paris Gas Company manufactures its own retorts, bricks, etc. The articles made by the company annually from fire-clay are: Retorts, 3,000; blocks and tiles, 20,000; bricks, 1,000, 000. A Belgian company, whose manu- factured retorts, fire-bricks, and tiles were on exhibition at the late Paris Exposition, consumes 20,000 tons of clay annually, employing 220 men, and using 32 large kilns. These are simply illustrations of what is done with fire-clay in the Old World.
AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS.
THESE statistics are obtained by the visitation of each farm, and are supposed to be nearly accurate, especially in respect to the staple products.
Ohio is ranked among the greatest of the agricultural States. Its relative rank among all the States in several important particulars, at the time of taking the last United States census, was as follows:
First-In quantity of Winter wheat produced. In number of sheep owned. Second-In estimated value of farms.
In value of all farm productions, including betterments and additions to stock. In value of all animals slaughtered, or sold for slaughter.
In value of all forest products. In value of all orchard products.
In value of all horses. In value of all milch cows. In value of all butter and cheese.
Third-In amount of improved land. In quantity of Indian corn. In value of cattle other than working oxen. In value of live stock.
Fourth-In amount of land in farms.
" Number of acres cultivated, 8,535,917; in pasture, 4, 855, 425; wood land, 4,085,969; other land, unproductive, 541, 022; total amount owned in 1873, as reported; 18,575, 239. The correct amount of land owned is probably 36 per cent more than reported. The census report of 1870 gives the amount at 25, 312, 937 acres.
The six counties having the largest amount of cultivated land are-Richland, 219,363 acres; Seneca, 177,718 acres; Wayne, 169,588 acres; Darke, 152,938 acres; Fairfield, 140,567 acres; and Montgomery, 139,751 acres.
Those having the largest amount in pasture are - Ashtabula, 170,963 acres ; Licking, 129,799 acres; Muskingum, 127,879 acres; Trumbull, 122, 732 acres; Madison, 113,058 acres; and Guernsey, 112,213 acres.
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The largest amount of woodland reported is-in Washington, 118, 916 acres; Shelby, 115,400 acres; Mercer, 98,907 acres; Darke, 95,910 acres; Hancock, 88,76; acres; and Seneca, 86,748 acres.
The greatest number of acres of waste land reported is-in Preble, 37,244; Van Wert, 29,920; Hardin, 23,739; Washington, 18,378; Pike, 17,927; and Jackson, 16, 862.
Ohio is most favorably situated between the great commercial cities of the East and West, with unsurpassed facilities for transportation. The cost of transportation is a very important one, especially with the farmer. In the West it is found to be most profitable to feed out corn where produced. If fed to milch cows it yields a twofold better result than when shipped to market.
The production of butter and cheese has been greatly increased, and the demand for these nutritious articles of food is constantly increasing in all civilized countries. Cheese factories are built in almost every township in some sections of Ohio, and the official returns show that 36.668,530 pounds of cheese were made in the State in 1873, or 2,264.673 pounds more than in 1872.
The following estimates of crops for 1874, as made by the Department of Agricul- ture at Washington, though approximately correct, are probably too high :
CORN .- Returns indicate an average condition, throughout the country, of 86. This is an improvement of 3 per cent since the Ist of September, and 2 per cent above the average for October 1, 1873. This general average is made up from returns of aver- age condition for each county in the several States, which indicate the promised rate of yield and quality, but not the quantity of the crop, the acreige not being taken into account. The returns for acreage in July showed a breadth planted fully 2,000, 000 acres greater than in 1873. The highest per cent of increase was in the South, but the greatest absolute increase was in the West, while New England indicated a slight-decrease. The enlarged acreage, and the slightly improved condition, give promise of an increase in pro- . duct over last year of something over 60,000,000 bushels; but the returns for November, which report not condition, but product, compared with last year, may considerably modify this estimate.
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