USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > The story of Dayton > Part 13
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The strictest sanitary regulations will be enforced and citi- zens are requested to do their utmost to assist in this regard. Violators of these orders will be promptly arrested and con- fined until such time as they can be tried by the proper Military Tribunal. Thieves, Looters, and Robbers will be dealt with summarily.
Official John W. Pattison Chief of Staff
By Order of Chas. X. Zimmerman Colonel Fifth Infantry Commanding Officer
patrolled her streets. Little by little the thoroughfares were cleared of grand pianos, drowned horses, chicken- coops, and oil paintings-the varied donations of the Miami to our precincts-and we began once more to know our- selves. Military orders emptied cellars of refuse that had
KL.MEMBER THE PROMISES YOU MADE IN THE ATTIC
FLOOD FUND
FLOOD PREVENTION FUND YOU CAN
SUBSCRIBE HERE
1 AM A
THIS THE LOVE
E
D
Onward Christian
"A Bigger and a Better Dayton."
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The Story of Dayton
lain untouched for years. Never was there a more drastic city clean-up, the result being a pointed lesson in sanita- tion, for, instead of the Dayton death rate going up as a result of the flood, it went down; and instead of the spirits of our citizens going down as a result of the flood, they went up. The fatigue and depression of the first week over, hopefulness and helpfulness animated all alike. While the world abroad was pitying us, we were never for one minute sorry for ourselves. The work was too pressing-we were too interested-and, in fact, too tired.
Under the stimulus of the feeling aroused by the dis- aster, and some three months later, the Flood Prevention Fund took shape. The conviction uppermost, universal, was that such a calamity must never strike Dayton again. At a meeting held May seventeenth, three hundred men were appointed to secure pledges. Two million dollars was the sum set by the committee as necessary for the future safety of the city. Two millions from a people just robbed of over a hundred million-was it not an amazing propo- sition? However, every day's progress proved that the new spirit of solidarity was not a myth, but a practical fact. One of the dailies printed a cut of a man and his family, grouped shudderingly in the darkness under a roof, watch- ing the rise of the waters around their home. It rehearsed the thoughts in his mind as to his personal duty to save the city from a repetition of such disaster. The title of the picture became the slogan of the campaign,
"Remember the promises made in the attic!"
A card offered for signatures to contributors read :
"FOR THE LOVE OF DAYTON and as a Testimonial of my Devotion and Patriotism, I hereby subscribe the sum of," etc., etc.
Hour by hour the donations poured in. Some small amounts were larger, as reckoned by the recording angel, than the large ones, so significant were they of self-sacrifice.
The Tent City of flood refugees at the N. C. R. factory grounds, 1913.
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May 25 was the day set on which to close the subscrip- tion lists. The pillared facade of the courthouse, that has looked down on so much Dayton history in its day, bore high above the street, a giant cash register on which to record the subscriptions. And down on the street, just such a crowd as in 1840 had cheered Harrison's election, as in 1896 had rejoiced over our centennial, and in 1909 greeted the Wright Brothers, gathered to watch the figures grow. By six o'clock the total had reached one million, two hun- dred dollars, and not a watcher felt he could afford to go home to supper. Breathless they counted the dollars click- ing into view and the mounting total.
It is not annals of the past which we are writing, but comparatively present history ; therefore, no need to record the names of those whose generosity finally saved Dayton. We all know and will never forget. At eight o'clock the cash register displayed the final aggregate-two million, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars!
The enthusiasm then broke loose and spread to the far- thest ends of town. Coming on top of such scenes of terror, despair, and loss which we had just been through, its moral value to the spirits of our citizens cannot be measured.
That night a telegram was sent by the Citizens' Relief Committee to Governor Cox at Columbus. It read :
"We have forgotten that we' lost one hundred millions in property, and are remembering only what we have saved. We are building a bigger and a safer Dayton."
Stillwater River. Photographed by John Kabel.
CHAPTER XIX. 1810-1915.
Commercial Dayton.
Dayton products and world markets. Shifting of business centers. Change in the nature of industries. Present variety of products. Meeting new demands. Our annual output. "The Center of Precision." "If it's up to Dayton, it's up-to-date."
Dayton set out nearly a century and a quarter ago to be a manufacturing center, and so she still continues to be, although under such changed conditions as the early mer- chants would hardly have comprehended. The story of the development of a city's business interests might be consid- ered a dull chapter except to those profiting from them. It should not be so. Finding out what the world is most in need of and supplying it, is a big game. Out of it comes more than money, if undertaken in the right spirit and for legitimate profit only.
The key to distribution is transportation, and transpor- tation is, of course, the key to city development. As each improvement came about, bringing more direct and rapid communication with the outer world, Dayton's growth re- sponded. As early as 1817 there was formed in our city an importing and exporting company. Trade was carried on up and down the river. Boats going north transferred their cargoes overland to boats on the Maumee.
When the river was the means of communication and large shipments were being transferred by raft or flat-boat, then the head of Wilkinson Street was the theatre of all the activity in Dayton, and the corner of First and Main the retail business center.
When, in 1829, the canal was opened and twenty big boats a day anchored in the "Basin," it was East Second Street, at the landing, that became the scene of freight traf-
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أحمد وكـ
The old Stone Bridge over the canal at Fifth Street. From an etching by E. H. Hurley of Cincinnati,
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The Story of Dayton
fic, and general trade moved in that direction. From 1830 to 1845, the center of retail business in Dayton was situ- ated at the corner of Second and Jefferson. The firm of Perrine, Lytle, and Shaw occupied one corner, Henry Per- rine another, and James Perrine a third. Now both the river bank and the canal basin are deserted, and only in the railroad freight houses can shifting merchandise be found.
It was the railroad that drew business to the south. Un- til the old "depot" was built on Ludlow Street, Fifth and Fourth were lined with small frame houses; Main Street was, for a long time, the principal residence section, the block below Fourth being occupied as late as the Eighties with large private homes. As business invaded Fifth Street and moved north, it also advanced from Second southward, making Third and Main the permanent commercial center of Dayton.
As interesting as the shifting of localities is to note the change in commodities, manufactured or handled. One of the earliest undertakings in Dayton was the manufacture of silk. Mulberry trees were planted in large quantities and silk worms imported to feed upon them, but in spite of enthusiasm, the enterprise never prospered. A nail fac- tory, long since abandoned, was in active operation in 1818. Carpet making early proved a profitable industry. When the Swaynie House, on East Second Street, was opened in 1837, the proprietor pointed with pride to the fact that every yard of carpet on its floors had been made in Dayton.
Cooper's cotton factory is said to have produced three thousand yards of cotton goods per day from its thirty looms. Other articles of former manufacture were bar- rels, tubs, buckets, linen, satinet, hats, rifles, gun-barrels, clocks, pianos, trunks, stoves, agricultural implements, canal boats, threshing machines, and burr mill-stones.
Most of these industries have been abandoned. In 1850, there were five stove foundries where now there is but one; five oil mills, producing a total output of three hundred and forty thousand barrels of oil a year, now none; fifteen agri-
The elms that Van Cleve planted. The Boulevard (formerly the Levee), 1917.
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cultural implement manufacturies, and at present but two ; twenty-five cooper shops, now two; three mills for the mak- ing of burr mill-stones, now none. Two flour mills in 1916 are all that are left of the fifteen existing fifty years ago in Dayton, not including those in various places in the country. In 1850, every little village within ten miles was a hive of industry, with its grist mill, its distillery, its blacksmith shop and cooper shop. Little York, Harries Station, Union, Harshman, Salem, Harrisburg, each had its own commercial life. The twenty or more distilleries in Montgomery County have all disappeared. The villages themselves have little present business life except that of the local stores.
Dayton used to be called the "Hartford of the West" from the numerous insurance companies organized and in operation here. The former twelve fire insurance com- panies are now represented by two. Insuring is done almost exclusively through agencies.
Moreover, the county itself has ceased to produce the commodities it once did. Where are the sugar camps and the sorghum mills of the Sixties? Why must Dayton get its maple syrup from Vermont, its bacon from Chicago, and its apples from Oregon ?
The questions remain unanswered but the situation gives no cause for depression. Dayton has been called the "City of a Thousand Factories," and those chimneys pointing sky- ward give proof of a commercial vitality undreamed of in the past. We have changed, and through change we have advanced.
The centralization of certain industries, the change in public demand, and the passing of new laws are some of the causes of the altered conditions. Under modern man- agement it has been found more economical and efficient to grind corn, press oil, extract syrups in large factories, in the cities. Barrels, tubs, and buckets are turned out by ma- chinery in double the quantity and half the time required by the hand worker. Fifty years ago whisky was the ordi-
The Model Factory of the World. A vista between the buildings of the National Cash Register Works with the historic elm in the foreground.
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nary beverage of most men, now the lessened demand has driven out many distilleries.
We have, at present, in Dayton, manufacturing plants whose output consists of articles undreamed of half a cen- tury ago. Cash registers, computing scales, aeroplanes, automobiles, automatic starters, suction sweepers, recording machines make a list that would fill the early manufacturer with amazement. At that time a factory built on fifty feet of frontage and which boasted three stories was looked upon
Assembly Room, National Cash Register Works.
as an extraordinary large plant. Now we have The Barney and Smith Car Company extending nearly a mile and one- half from east to west, the National Cash Register Com- pany's buildings containing thirty acres of floor space, and others that nearly approach them.
Among our greatest assets is the manufacture of tools and tool machinery. Dayton is the recognized home of automatic machinery. The automatically operated electric signs which emblazon the evening hours in the streets of
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Commercial Dayton
many cities, winking their messages to the world, are prod- ucts of Dayton firms. The electric advertising bulletins, from which election returns are flashed from the tops of buildings, were originally produced and shown in Dayton. It is the first instance of a sign operated from a keyboard, like that of a typewriter, permitting the wording to be changed as often and as rapidly as possible.
In commercial circles Dayton is spoken of as the "Cen- ter of Precision," a term which refers to the fine mechan-
The Domestic Engineering Company building at night.
ism, close measurement, and minute calculation involved in the manufacture of much of its intricate enginery. In the mechanism of the cash register, the fare register, the com- puting scale, and the various contrivances put out by the Dayton Engineering Laboratory Company and the Domestic Engineering Company a variation of one-half of one-thou- sandth of an inch makes the difference between perfection and imperfection in the article produced.
A brief description of but a few among the present in- dustries in Dayton will establish our manufacturing su- premacy. The National Cash Register Company has a cap-
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ital of nine million dollars of common stock, and one mil- lion of preferred stock ; a making and selling force number- ing 7,534, and with American sales alone amounting in 1914 to $12,438,000. The Barney and Smith Car Company em- ploys four thousand workers with an annual output of seven hundred and twenty high grade pullmans and diners, and twelve thousand freight cars, the equivalent of a train
Dogwood blossoms at Hills and Dales. Photographed by Wm. B. Werthner.
one hundred miles long. The Davis Sewing Machine Com- pany has a daily capacity of six hundred and fifty bicycles, six hundred sewing machines, twenty motorcycles-more than enough to supply every man, woman, and child in Day- ton with a sewing machine and a bicycle each year.
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Commercial Dayton
The Ohio Rake Company produces every day an average of fifty hay rakes, fifty loaders, and seventy-five to one hun- dred disc harrows. The Dayton Malleable Iron Works em- ploys fifteen hundred men, who handle thirty thousand tons of ore a year, a mass which, if placed in one pile, would weigh three times as much as all the inhabitants in Dayton. The Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, familiarly known as the "Delco," manufactures one hundred and twenty-five thousand electric lighting and starting systems during the year, which go to the equipment of as many automobiles in other cities.
These products are to be found in all parts of the world. Cash registers have been sold as far north as Hammerfest, Norway, and as far south as the uttermost end of Chili. No wonder people say that the sun never sets on Dayton- made products.
We may imagine taking an extended trip through the country. In our travels we ride in a beautifully-fitted-up coach or sleeper made in Dayton. In the first city reached we discover in a Dayton-made street car, a Dayton-made heater and a Dayton-made fare register. At the hotel we are served by waiters in white duck garments made in Day- ton, and they bring us crackers baked in Dayton ovens. In every store of any city will be found cash registers and price- ticket machines for the accurate handling of money, and on their shelves familiar packages such as paints, varnish, cof- fee, spices, soaps, toys, books, music, chewing gum, cigars, extracts, and hardware -- all originating in Dayton. In their display rooms we find Dayton-made sewing machines, sweepers, electrical fixtures, automobile accessories, chairs, office furniture, furnaces, and water heaters.
In another city, we ride from the station in a Dayton automobile, passing on the way, trucks equipped with tires from home, ornamental street lamps, bicycles and signs from Dayton. Children eat ice cream from cones that are made at the rate of a million a day in our factories.
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Main Street, looking north from Third, 1900.
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Commercial Dayton
In the next city, busy printing shops use our book- binding machinery and paper cutters; boilers and steam and gas engines bear familiar name plates, while workmen are busy lifting a building with Dayton jacks.
On Sunday we are likely to listen to music composed and published here, and on Monday we play golf with sticks made by a Dayton firm. Shoe factories in New England towns would close down if it were not for lasts made in Dayton. Eight millions of stamped envelopes of Dayton- made paper are used every day in our States and the island possessions.
There are not a few reasons why Dayton finds it easy to supply so many commodities used by the world at large. In the first place, we are near the coal and iron supply. Moreover, we have cheap gas and electric current, unex- celled railroad facilities, abundance of skilled labor, good climate, inventive geniuses, ready capital, and a well-earned reputation behind us.
We should also know something of the extent of our industrial interests. Last year we shipped over ninety-two million dollars' worth of our products, and our factory pay- rolls amounted to thirty-two million dollars.
In 1916, our postoffice receipts totaled $762,464, while our customs receipts reached sixty-three thousand dollars. Taxes are paid on property valued at $166,831,200, which yields over two and one-quarter millions of dollars annually.
Few cities have so varied an assortment from their fac- tories. Our skilled mechanics are capable of turning out a wonderful variety of articles requiring accuracy, finish, and quality of construction ; thus we are not dependent upon a restricted line which may temporarily become a drug on the market, throwing workmen out of employment.
While Dayton is called a manufacturing city, its com- mercial prosperity is not due to that alone. It is the publi- cation center of several religious denominations; here are located the State and National headquarters of various church and fraternal organizations, while its railroad and
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The Story of Dayton
hotel facilities make it a popular point for conventions, bringing thousands of people here annually.
Our products, our industrial leaders, our attractive homes and streets, our valleys and hills and curving river, our ability to overcome quickly the effects of a great calamity, and last, our successful municipal government, have adver- tised us to the world as few cities of any size have been.
A Drive in Hills and Dales.
All this is not "luck." Success seldom comes by chances. Dayton's present standing did not come by either. "Booms" have not contributed to it. There has been a steady, whole- some growth, fostered always by the far-seeing instincts of
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Commercial Dayton
our plain business men who have, through these long years, led our city out of perplexities of pioneer hardship into a permanent place in the nation.
Such has been the service to Dayton of the men who, not by any means always sure of returns, have risked their money in railroads and other transportation facilities, have inspired civic improvements, and who have combined in a legitimate way the promotion of public utilities and the making of an honest living.
It must be remembered that every man who stands for city or State improvements has a little war of his own on his hands. Dayton is not the only city in which progress has been combatted at one time or another by lack of imagina- tion and foresight on the part of some of its citizens. The people, who, in 1815, were sure we would never need a stage route between Dayton and Cincinnati, were followed by the people in 1825 who considered the canal to be a ruin- ous extravagance, and they, in turn, by those in 1830 who inquired why in the world Dayton needed a railroad. In 1870 there were others of the same ilk who exclaimed, "No use saddling the tax-payers with fancy things like sewers and street paving." And there are perhaps, alas, boys in the school-rooms of this very day who, when they are men, will get off the time-honored saw, "What was good enough for my father is good enough for me."
So, all honor to the makers of Dayton, both past and present, who have accomplished their task in spite of, not only natural difficulties, but the opposition of ignorance and apathy.
Those who are in a position to know, predict for our city a future industrial development which will surpass all that has gone before. They point to recent inventions in me- chanics, to new applications of electricity, to the building of larger factories and the importation of expert workers. Be that as it may, the most promising element of our civic future lies, in the opinion of the writer, not in banks, rail- roads, or factories, not in scientific efficiency, but in the
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The Story of Dayton
plain fact that we possess in Dayton so many business men with a vision.
There have been times when some of us were afraid of our own prosperity, have felt that a manufacturing
Dayton View Bridge.
city was only too apt to fall into a crass commercialism, and found ourselves, in consequence, envying the high ideal- ism which flourishes in college centers. But we need give ourselves small uneasiness. There is an idealism which
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Commercial Dayton
never reaches farther than professors' desks, and an idealism which finds its best expression chiefly in the hands of men of affairs. This kind we believe we have in Dayton. There are manufacturers in our midst to whom the welfare of their workers is of equal concern with the products from their machines; merchants whose dream of Dayton's future might belong to a poet ; capitalists who, while they acquire wealth with one hand, generously distribute with the other.
The saying that "an employer owes more to his em- ployes than mere wages," originated with the president* of the National Cash Register Company,-a pioneer in indus- trial welfare work. The widespread movement toward fac- tory rest and recreation rooms, noon lunches, baths, outing parks, and educational classes began right here in Dayton in the big factory south of town. And wherever vacant lot gardens are instituted, reference is always made to those fruitful and blooming acres surrounding the factory build- ings-the first neighborhood gardens in the United States- which are cultivated by the boys of South Park and en- couraged and promoted by the man who himself began life on a farm.
And when, in the vigorous attempts of this valley to recover itself after the disaster of 1913, and the conservancy plans against future floods were formulated, it was another business man, the presidentt of the "Delco," who voluntarily assumed a leadership no one else wanted. As chairman of both the Flood Prevention Committee and of the State Con- servancy Board he miet the attacks of the obstructionists who carried their concerted opposition from one court to another, appealing always to the self-interest of their con- stituents and maintained as his goal the ultimate safety of the whole district. He spent days and weeks of unremuner- ated time, thousands of dollars, tramped miles in the mud of the Miami Valley to assure himself at first hand of the efficacy of the proposed engineering methods. And when final success is assured and the Miami River and its tribu- taries forever kept within proper bounds, the credit will be-
*John H. Patterson.
+Edward A. Deeds.
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long, not only to the engineering force who did the actual work, but also to the man whose faith and energy kept the plan alive.
A hopeful indication of our future is that we are conscious of so many things yet to be done. Like St. Paul.
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The Conservancy Building, presented to the Conservancy District by E. A. Deeds.
we have not "attained," but are still "pressing on." And in- dustrial development may go on and bring no alarm to the idealist if, with the improvement of electrical devices we simplify life; if the acreage of boys' gardens keeps up with the acreage of factory sites; if schools and churches mul- tiply in the proper ratio to our alien population, and if branch libraries, milk stations, and playgrounds follow the rapid extension of our streets.
CHAPTER XX. 1915.
Our New City Government.
Lessons learned from the flood. The old way and the new. City government the larger housekeeping. The new charter. The budget. Buying health and happiness. Will we work it out?
If the story of Dayton in the past is an interesting one, that of Dayton in the present should prove doubly so; for, while the narrative of events, which happened many years ago concerns us indirectly, that which belongs to the present is a matter of vital importance to all.
What we succeed in making of our individual selves depends, not only upon the homes in which we are brought up, but no less upon the city conditions which surround us, and city conditions depend primarily upon city government.
During the last ten or twenty years, public opinion every- where in the United States has been waking up to the fact that because the greater part of our people now live in cities instead of, as formerly, in the country, new problems have arisen such as proper housing, sanitation, transporta- tion, and recreation. And moreover, many of the problems are just those which present themselves in the care of a fam- ily of children. A home, it is universally agreed, should be carried on for the good, not of one or two of the family merely, but of all. A good home is one in which every member has the best chance to grow up well and happy, and able to bear a useful part in the world's work. What is true of the family home is true of the city home.
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