USA > Pennsylvania > Encyclopedia of contemporary biography of Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 28
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"FREDERIOK BILLINGS, President.
" SAMUEL WILKESON, Secretary."
Mr. Wright still continues an active directorin the Northern Pacific enterprise. He is perhaps the lar- gest individual owner, and devotes much of his val- uable time to its interests. He is also President of the Tacoma Land Company, which owns the Pacific Coast terminus of the Northern Pacific Railway Company. He takes a warm interest in the growth of Tacoma, and has recently erected in that city a beautiful memorial to his deceased wife and daugh- ter, and has also endowed a school for girls, bearing the name of the Annie Wright Seminary. For the past twenty years Mr. Wright has resided during about seven months of each year on one of the Chel- ton Hills, in Cheltanham Township, his railroad station being that of the old York Road, on the North Pennsylvania line. He has at that place fif- teen acres of land, worked and cultivated as a min- iature model farm. Then he has a fine country house and commodious stables, all built of stone and surrounded by spacious grounds, beautifully embel- lished. His Philadelphia residence is the mansion formerly occupied by Wm. G. Morehead, on the southeast corner of Chestnut and Thirty-ninth streets.
.
avaler
3
All ante FA. .. &E wavE rNY.
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CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
WILLIAM ERWIN SCHMERTZ.
WILLIAM ERWIN SCHMERTZ, President of the Third National Bank of Pittsburgh, was born in Westphalia, Prussia, May 24, 1826, his father being John Christian Schmertz, and his mother Caroline von Westphalien. William Erwin, who was a mere boy when his father came to America, received an ordinary public school education, and at the age of twelve years entered the shoe store of Henry P. Cain, of Pittsburgh. For the next three years he had the usual experience of boys beginning their business life, having different situations in banks and stores ; and then, for seven or eight years, was a salesman in the shoe business, until, at the age of twenty-two, he started a retail store of his own, with a capital of two hundred dollars-his savings up to that time. Mr. Schmertz, who was energetic and thrifty, in 1856 had got into the wholesale business, and was carrying on a large and rapidly growing local and western trade. In 1860 he was elected a trustee in the Dollar Savings Bank, in which he is now one of the Vice-Presidents, and which has grown to be the largest savings bank in Pittsburgh, having deposits amounting to eleven million dollars. In 1863 Mr. Schmertz was one of the organizers of the Third National Bank of Pittsburgh, and the fol- lowing year was elected its President. In the meantime his shoe business had grown to be one of the largest in the State, amounting, in 1886, to a million dollars. His success in business and his now recognized financial ability had brought him so prominently before the public, that he was elected to many offices of trust and responsibility ; such as, Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Chartiers Valley Gas Company, having a capital of four mil- lion dollars ; President of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, and a Director in Braddock's National
Bank, in which he is one of the largest stock-
holders. It is rare that a busy citizen finds time to conduct so many and such vast enterprises, and still rarer that he possesses the ability to conduct them successfully. Yet, so peculiarly was Mr.
Schmertz qualified for the boldest and most com-
prehensive financial undertakings, and so thor- oughly recognized was his capacity, that, when in 1882 the city fell into the hands of a ring of specu- lators upon its necessities, the public looked at once to him for aid in extricating it from its difficulty and danger. At the head of a committee formed through his influence, Mr. Schmertz successfully
carried through a fight lasting two years, resulting
in the defeat of the great bond syndicate, and effect- ing a saving to the city treasury of more than two million dollars. He assumed almost the entire con-
duct and responsibility of this great struggle, carry- ing it by successive steps to the Supreme Court, successful everywhere, and winning the highest encomiums, from the press and his fellow citizens. The history of this financial operation is remarkable, even among the annals of financial schemes in large American citics. A contract had been entered into by the city of Pittsburgh, through its Finance Com- mittee of Councils, with certain parties, capitalists, acting together as a syndicate for the refunding of street bonds, maturing at different dates during four years, and aggregating six million dollars. These bonds were to run thirty years without being sub- ject to call, were to bear 5 per cent. interest, and the syndicate was to be paid 1 per cent. commission for floating them. The outstanding bonds which the new issue was to replace bore 7 per cent. inter- est, and it was urged in favor of the new arrange- ment that the contract with the syndicate was bene- ficial to the city, through the fact that the interest charge was thus abated 2 per cent. This contract, or agreement, was made some time in advance of the maturity of the old bonds; and before it became necessary to raise the money wherewith to meet them the syndicate observed that the bonds which they had engaged to place at par, could be placed at a profit. On discovering this they slirewdly pro- cured a modification of the terms of the contract, whereby they became themselves the purchasers at par-retaining, however, the 1 per cent. commission for selling them to themselves. At the time of this transaction, and, indeed, for a good while previous
thereto, other bonds of the city, bearing the same interest and having about the same time to run as these, were quoted in the market at a good premium and were steadily advancing, so that the amount the city would realize was very much less than the bonds were obviously worth; the syndicate, who were actually the city's agents, profiting by the dif- ference. The true nature and operation of this scheme were not generally understood at the time of its first going into effect, and it is doubtful if any knowledge of its provisions existed among the finan- cial class of the community until they became oper- ative by the issuing of fifteen hundred thousand dollars of new bonds, under the terms of the agree-
ment, to provide means to take up the old ones.
This act, however, awakened public attention and aroused criticism; so much so, that a number of public spirited gentlemen, among whom Mr. Schmertz was prominent, suspecting that the agree- ment would operate in a manner unfair to the city, determined to arrest the further issuing of bonds under its provisions, and have the contract annulled if possible, they believing in the ability of the city
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CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
government to float a loan at a lower rate. Besides, the city had a number of sinking funds which were constantly in receipt of money that could be made applicable to the payment of the old bonds, and other sinking funds with large accumulations of money in them, which it was thought ought to have been made use of by the Finance Committee in the refunding proeess, but which had not even been considered in connection with it-while the syndi- cate had the power to call at any time for the entire amount of six million dollars of bonds. A meeting of a few business men was called at the Chamber of Commerce and the entire question was discussed freely. It was finally decided to test the legality and equity of the objectionable contract. Mr. Schmertz was made Chairman of the Committee and empowered to bring the necessary action in the courts, but he personally guaranteed the fees of the prominent counsel engaged, to the amount of seven thousand dollars, which he in fact paid, relying upon the success of his case and the public spirit of his fellow-citizens to reimburse him for this ad- vance, which they did. The County Court, imme- diately on application, issued a preliminary injunc- tion upon the city and all its officials, restraining them from taking any further action whatever, under the aforesaid agreement, and upon a hearing of the case this injunction was continued. Pending appeal from the decision of the lower Court to the Supreme Court, to which the syndicate carried the case, a very large amount of the old bonds fell due, and it became necessary to provide money for such of the holders as should demand payment. The Comptroller was authorized temporarily to extend the bonds at five per cent., which was readily acceded to by the holders ; but, in order to obviate any pos- sibility of damage to the credit of the city by failure of the negotiations for such extension, Mr. Schmertz exerted himself to place within the reach of the city Comptroller the money required to carry the entire amount of the bonds about to mature. Fortunately it was found unnecessary to draw upon this re- source, but the movement illustrates the pluck with which the original action was sustained, and the care and responsibility which Mr. Schmertz so largely and loyally assumed in the patriotic determi- nation to uphold the public interest. After much delay the Supreme Court rendered (October 5, 1885) its decision, affirming that of the lower Court, and the agreement with the syndicate-which had even been adjudged in some points fraudulent-was annulled. The Councils immediately passed new ordinances in eonformity with this decision, on the points of law established, and the remainder of the street loan was refunded into 4 per cent. thirty-year
bonds, which were publicly sold, after advertise- ment, at a premium of 5f7, per cent. The benefit to the city by the new arrangement was, in brief, . that whereas under the old contract it would have paid 5 per cent. interest on six million dollars of bonds, sold at par, less 1 per cent. commission, it was enabled by the cancelling of the agreement to refund the remainder of the six million dollars ($3,734,700), at 4 per cent., and obtain a good pre- mium; pay off seven hundred thousand dollars, absolutely, from money in hand; and invest in these same 4 per cent. bonds, for the benefit of sundry sinking funds, eleven hundred thousand dollars of idle money which had been lying and would accum- ulate in the depositories, without earning a penny. For the many advantageous suggestions embraced in the revised legislation, and the beneficial provis- ions marking the policy which governed the final disposition of the refunding operations, the city of Pittsburgh is indebted more to the experience, sagacity and unselfishness of William Erwin Schmertz, than to any other man; and the resolute determination with which he prosecuted the matters entrusted to his hands marks a phase of aggressive citizenship against public extravagance which is rarely exhibited, especially where the motive, as in this instance, is unquestionably impersonal. For twelve years Mr. Schmertz has been the representa- tive in Pittsburgh of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, and during that time has placed more than five million dollars of money on mortgages in Pittsburgh, of which more than a mil- lion were placed within four months. His gener- osity is proverbial, and it is a well known fact that he has often aided Pittsburgh business men in trouble. Mr. Schmertz is a Republican in politics, and was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Commit- tee of 76 to reform city politics, an organization which accomplished good work. Except in such cases and for such purposes, Mr. Schmertz has not been an active politician. He was married Decem- ber 4, 1849, to Amelia A. Kammerer, of West Brookfield, Ohio. His father-in-law is Rev. David Kammerer, who has preached in Pittsburgh for fourteen years, and who built up the congregation of the German Evangelical Church on Smithfield street; he is now eighty-five years old, but preaches every Sunday. The old gentleman's wife is still living, after a wedded life of sixty years. Mr. Schmertz formed a business partnership, in 1860, with Mr. T. A. Kammerer, and in 1869 he took Messrs. M. V. Denning and C. P. Murray into the firm. These gentlemen retired in 1884, when he formed a new copartnership with Messrs. Frank L. Whitmore and Albert I. Scott, who are still in the
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fagaze : western. Here
ABradley
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CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
concern. The firm's wholesale warehouse in Pitts- burgh carries, at all times, a stock worth a quarter of a million dollars. The house is represented by a staff of commercial travelers who make extended tours through Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, through the rich regions of Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado, and into the North and through the Southern States-the firm's goods having a National popularity and find- ing a ready sale wherever offered. And this condi- tion is mainly owing to the thoroughly able, accom- plished and conscientious methods of Mr. Schmertz, who from the beginning of his business career has been accustomed to give his closest personal atten- tion to every department of his establishment. His relations with his operatives have always been lib- eral and just, and his business has grown up from small beginnings to be one of the very largest in the trade in the State. As the representative house in Pittsburgh, in its line, the firm of William E. Schmertz & Co. has become noted for the honorable nature of all its transactions, for its enterprising policy, and for maintaining the highest standard of excellence in its manufacture. As will have been seen in this sketch of Mr. Schmertz, the excellence conspicuous in his management of public affairs is a part of the nature of the man, since it is every- where noticeable in the conduct of his private busi- ness. His special characteristics are a mind equally capable of grasping the most comprehensive finan- cial transactions and of criticising the minutest details of a complicated business system ; integrity standing like a natural wall in the way of dishonest cupidity and disloyal speculations; and fairness directed by intelligence, which has enabled its pos- sessor to sway vast monetary enterprises and to superintend and direct with wisdom and care the largest public and private undertakings. Such is the character which is portrayed by the life and acts of this eminent merchant, manufacturer, banker and public-spirited citizen, to whom the city of his adoption is indebted for services-unre- warded save by the honor and confidence of the community-which paid officials in any great city might well admire and emulate.
ALEXANDER BRADLEY.
ALEXANDER BRADLEY, a leading stove man- ufacturer, President of the Tradesman's National Bank of Pittsburgh, and for over forty years con- spicuously identified with the industrial develop- ment of that city, was born in the city of Baltimore
on October 31, 1812. He removed to Pittsburgh in the year 1827 and has continuously resided there ever since. He began active business operations in the year 1838 in the foundry department of McClurg, Wade & Co., and shortly afterwards became a part- ner. Mr. Bradley's career in the specialty of stove manufacture dates from 1845, when he started out in that business with his brother Charles, under the firm name of A. & C Bradley, so continuing until 1849, when Charles Bradley died, and since then Alexander Bradley has continued as one of the lead- ing manufacturers of stoves down to the present day. Mr. Bradley served with eminent satisfaction as the first Treasurer of the National Association of Stove Manufacturers and has attended nearly every meeting of that body since its organization in the year 1812 in New York city. In the year 1865 he organized the Tradesman's National Bank of Pitts- burgh, and was chosen as its President, which posi- tion he has held ever since, and has seen it grow and prosper until to-day it is one of the largest banks in Western Pennsylvania. Mr. Bradley is also a director and a prominent and active member of the Pittsburgh Bank for Savings, the Pittsburgh and Cash Insurance Companies and the Mononga- hela Navigation Company. He is President of the Board of Trustees of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and also President of the Board of Trustees of Meadville College, at Meadville, Pa., to the endow- ment fund of which he gave liberally. In many other lines of business and charitable work he has been alike active and useful, responding generously to the calls of all philanthropic and humane institu- tions. Mr. Bradley is sympathetic and generous in his nature, keenly alive to the sufferings and distress of others, and his earnest endeavor has been to so live that the world shall be better for the part he has taken in the business and religious affairs of human life. In his many benevolences he has been simple and unobtrusive, objecting even to the pub- lication of his name in connection therewith. To use the language of another, "The good he has done in the world cannot be estimated until the full records of many lines of work are written."
JOSEPH DILWORTH.
JOSEPH DILWORTH, an eminent manufacturer, and one of the most honored citizens of Pittsburgh, Pa., was born in that city December 25, 1826, and died there February 26, 1885. He was one of twelve children of William and Elizabeth Scott Dilworth, the former a native of Lancaster County, Pa. His
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CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
father was a contractor and builder of large experi- ence and irreproachahle business integrity, and was connected with the erection of a number of notable structures, among which may be mentioned the old Allegheny County Court-house, which he built about 1840. Both parents were spared to a good old age and permitted to see their large family of chil- dren grow up ahout them and attain positions of busi- ness and social usefulness and domestic happiness, the father terminating a career of marked worth in 1869. Like his brothers and sisters, Joseph received luis education in his native city. His father had crected a substantial and attractive school-house on his Mount Washington estate, close hy the family homestead, and for many years boarded the teachers at his own expense, and it was there that all his children pursued their studies. On leaving this school Joseph learned the carpenter's trade with his father, hut never followed it. In 1846, when he was twenty years old, he began his career of husi- ness, and thenceforward was the emhodiment of energy and activity. He hecame prominently iden- tified with all the interests of the city, entering with hearty earnestness into every movement having in view the public welfare. His business ability and judgment and skill were of rare firmness, and, being developed early in his career, were fittingly recog- nized throughout the extensive field over which he confidently pushed his operations. His first employ- ment was as general salesman in the wholesale gro- cery house of Williams & Dilworth, of which an elder hrother, William Dilworth, was the junior partner. Two years later Mr. Williams retired, and Joseph became associated with his brother as part- ner in the new firm, afterwards known as John S. Dilworth & Co., a connection he retained through- out his life. To this interest he devoted all of his growing energies for several years, and then as his means, knowledge of men and familiarity with the various channels and methods of business life in- creased, he hegan to seek other opportunities for investment. In 1856 he engaged in the powder business with D. W. C. Bidwell, and, having secured the agency of the Dupont and the Hazard Powder Companies, prosecuted that interest with his accus- tomed vigor until the close of the Civil War. A year or so after forming this connection he pur- chased the plant and materials of Messrs. Porter, Rolfe & Swett, manufacturers of railroad fastenings, who had then failed, and organized a new firm
under the name of Dilworth, Porter & Co. This firm soon became widely known as manufacturers of railroad spikes ; and for upward of twenty-five years their establishment on the South Side has heen recognized as the largest mill of the kind in the
United States. In 1869 Mr. Dilworth made further business connections by founding the firm of Dil- worth, Harper & Co., which merged into Dilworth Bros., wholesale grocers, with which he was also identified up to his death. The manufacturing firm of Dilworth, Porter & Co. was continued until 1880, when it was reorganized under the title of Dilworth, Porter & Co., Limited, of which he was elected Chairman. All the original members of this firm are now dead. Upon the death of Mr. Joseph Dilworth, the last surviving partner, his sons, Charles R. and Joseph R, succeeded to the husiness and have since conducted it, the former as Chairman and the latter as Secretary and Treasurer. Their operations are now confined exclusively to the manufacture of railroad and boat spikes, and they adhere closely to the conservative methods by which the founder of the house attained so large a measure of business and personal distinction. Mr. Dilworth was also prominently connected with the Northern Pacific Railroad, being one of the first directors of the company and the purchaser of nearly all the supplies used in the construction of that great work. He served as a director up to the time of Mr. Henry Villard's election and control, a period of about seven years, and during this time he charged himself with the special oversight of the interests of Pittsburgh capitalists in this enterprise. Personally he took tracts of land in lieu of stock in the company, and when the financial reverses came which ruined Jay Cooke & Co., he retained all his properties. This property has steadily increased in value and productiveness, and now emhraces over 4,000 acres of magnificent rolling land in a grain country unequalled in America. It is located at Moorhead, Minn., near the great Dalrymple wheat farms, across the Dakota line in the famous valley of the Red River of the North, which, extending into Canada, makes Manitoba the most fertile sec- tion in all of England's colonial possessions. Mr. Dilworth was ever proud of the city of his hirth and
regardful of the good name of its institutions. He
was for many years and up to the time of his death a director of the Citizen's National Bank; was one of the trustees of the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation, and the most active projector and promoter of their new and handsome building ; was one of the founders and a liberal supporter of the Pennsyl- vania Female College, raising for it, with Dr. Sco- ville, the munificent sum of $75,000; and was the "father " of the great temperance movement under Francis Murphy, whom he personally started upon his remarkable career of human benefaction. He was a simple-hearted Christian. His nature shaped the life, and his religious life was active and execu -
John D. Jennings
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CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
tive rather than devotional. From carly years a member of the First Presbyterian Church, hc re- moved his connection on leaving Mount Washing- ton and became a working member of the Shady Side Church, which held his warmest sympathies to the last. He was also President of the National Iron and Steel Publishing Company, under whose auspices "The American Manufacturer," a journal of considerable importance to the two distinctive industries of Pittsburgh, was published. Through- out his busy life Mr. Dilworth held himself aloof from political combinations. As an exemplary citi- zen lie was at all times eager for good government, local and general, but his dignificd nature and his fondness for social and domestic quietness forbade his participation in political movements, however flattering the preferments held out to him. He had no ambition for public office and never held but one, and that one he assumed not as a politician but because he deemed acceptance a duty of good citi- zenship. For several years he had headed a move- ment having for its object the purification of the Department of County Commissioners. He shared strongly in a prevalent belief that the office was be- ing maladministered, and that licenses were being illegally and fraudulently granted to saloon keepers without proper return to the county treasury. A vacancy occurring in the board Mr. Dilworth was appointed a County Commissioner and was practi- cally compelled by the best public sentiment to ac- cept. He at once went to work with a directness that gave promise of long needed results. After making a thorough examination of the office and methods of the board, he insisted with his well- known earnestness upon an immediate and radical change. His reformatory measures bore larger fruit than was anticipated, for he forced two of his fellow Commissioners to trial and conviction for corrupt practices in office, saloon keepers no longer found it convenient or expedient to procure a gro- cery storc license for a whiskey shop, and the tax receipts of the county began to show an unwonted appreciation. He was so honest and uncompromis- ing in the enforcement of the license laws as to win the highest encomiums of the better classes of citizens, irrespective of partisan allegiance, and, per contra, the bitterest animosity of the liquor factiou. By common consent he was placed in nomination for a full term, subsequently, and was defeated by a majority that really augmented the honor of his achievements. Mr. Dilworth was married on Janu- ary 28, 1850, to Miss Louisa Richardson, a native of New Lisbon, Ohio, but then a resident of Cincinnati. Her father was a man of influence, sterling charac- ter and official prominence. At a time when public
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