USA > Pennsylvania > The making of Pennsylvania; an analysis of the elements of the population and the formative influences that created one of the greatest of the American states > Part 16
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The Franklin Institute, devoted to the promotion of the mechanic arts, and established in 1824, is another Philadelphia society of wide reputation. It is interesting as marking a turning-point in the advancement of science.
Some writers place the beginning of modern science since the year 1800, and they are right, so far as concerns the practical application of science to the mechanic arts and to useful inventions like the steam-engine and tele- graph. Science began by being theoretical. The theo- rists had to clear the ground, discover the elementary laws of matter, and start the habit of observing nature
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as she actually existed, and not as the theologians sup- posed she ought to exist. But by the beginning of the present century the work of the theorists was so thor- oughly done that the applications of science to every- day affairs became very numerous. A new class of in- stitutions sprang up for the purpose of giving instruction and information to the men engaged in such employ- ments. The polytechnic schools and the schools of mines in France and Switzerland were among the first of these. But the want was felt everywhere, and it is noteworthy that during the years 1823 and 1824, when the Franklin Institute was being founded in Philadelphia, the first mechanics' institute was being founded in England.
During the colonial period, and for some time after- wards, Pennsylvania, like the rest of the scientific world, had been engaged in discovering the elementary laws and in developing the preliminary theories, and in this she led all the other colonies. When the theories were absorbed into practical applications, and modern science in the full sense of the word began, Pennsylvania was again at the head, and established the first American institution for diffusing a knowledge of the new spirit of the age among mechanics and manufacturers.
The Franklin Institute, in its early days, conducted some important investigations in water-motors, the causes of the explosion of steam-boilers, and the strength of materials, subjects which are now fully developed and commonplace enough, but at that time comparatively new and untried. The institute also, from time to time, gave a large number of medals and premiums to encour- age investigators and inventors. These are still given
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1 in the same careful manner, are eagerly sought for, and when obtained, carry respect for their holder all over the world.
The journal of the institute, published every year since its foundation, is an authority and a source of quotation wherever modern science is taught. Descrip- tions of the first twenty-nine hundred patents issued by the United States government are to be found only within its covers, and from its first volume to its last it is generally regarded as an almost complete history of the growth of applied science.
Under the auspices of the Franklin was reared Thomas U. Walter, the architect of the capitol at Wash- ington, who began life as a bricklayer ; also Alexander Dallas Bache, a combination of two well-known Phila- delphia names, who was finally appointed superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, and to whose skill and training are due the accuracy and comprehensive- ness of that work which has challenged so much admi- ration.
In 1833, when an attempt was made to introduce gas- lighting in Philadelphia, many of the principal citizens, amounting in all to several hundred, remonstrated and petitioned the city councils not to adopt it. This action has often been cited as showing the slow and unpro- gressive spirit of Philadelphians. But a careful examina- tion of the circumstances reveals an altogether different meaning.
The remonstrance was largely inspired by gentlemen connected with the Franklin Institute, who knew as mechanical experts that the proposed method of intro- ducing gas was incomplete and dangerous. In fact,
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it would now be considered as an intolerable nuisance. The result of the remonstrance was that Mr. Samuel V. Merrick, a prominent member of the Franklin, was sent to Europe to collect information and plans of all the best improvements. He obtained access to all the gas- works in England and on the continent, and was al- lowed to inspect and draw plans on condition that he would not reveal any of their secrets to rivals in the same community. He returned with a complete and practical knowledge of the best methods then known, and they were combined for the first time in America in the Philadelphia Gas-Works.
Many of the former opponents of gas-lighting united in recommending the new plan, which was copied all over the Union, and works previously in operation were remod- elled. Not only did the rest of the country come to Philadelphia for instruction, but her combination of the best methods was returned to Europe, and had an im- portant influence in improving the mechanism of the es- tablishments from which it had been originally obtained.
Another instance of early success in mechanical appli- cations may also be mentioned. The pumping-works at Fairmount, by which the water of the Schuylkill is raised to the reservoirs, were erected in 1819, were unsurpassed at that time in their class of mechanism, and remained without a rival until almost up to the time of the Civil War.
In 1824, when the Franklin Institute started, manu- facturing was well under way in Philadelphia, and the city had already become remarkable for its industries. There had previously been a manufacturing society which gave premiums as early as 1789, and the Phila-
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delphia Premium Society had been established in 1801. There was also a periodical called " The American Mu- seum," issued by Mathew Carey, and devoted to the encouragement of mechanics. Manufacturing is now the most characteristic feature and the controlling ele- ment in all Pennsylvanian civilization ; and this assertion may be regarded as the fundamental proposition, without which it is impossible to understand the modern condi- tion of the State, and especially the modern condition of Philadelphia.
If we look further into the history of the matter, we find that in colonial times manufacturing was positively prohibited by the British government in all her colonies, but that in spite of this command Pennsylvania always had a strong tendency towards such industries, and leaned against the barriers as much as she dared. The colonial governors were required to act as spies in this respect, and there are a number of their letters extant reporting to England that very few attempts were made at manu- facturing, and those few hardly worth the trouble of suppressing.
Investigation, however, shows that there was probably more manufacturing than the governors had any idea of, or else they were willing to wink at it. The vicious tendency of the colony in this direction usually showed itself in the making of hats, carpets, glass-ware, linen goods, also in ship-building, and in utilizing the great natural wealth of the mountains to produce pig iron. Nearly all these industries are still in existence, and have had a steady development and success.
It is needless to say that iron-making is still one of the great sources of our wealth. Hat-making is also
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still a large industry, having had a continuous existence in the State for nearly two hundred years.
Another industry which was firmly established in colonial times, and still flourishes, is paper-making. Some of the early Germans who settled on the banks of the Wissahickon, now within the limits of Fairmount Park, established the first American paper-mills. Wagons loaded with rags were until recently seen, as they were seen for a hundred and fifty years, following the roads which wind through those romantic ravines.
Some of these same Pennsylvania Dutch who settled Germantown established the knitting-mills of that place, which have become famous for their product the world over. The industry has now spread to the city, and become of still greater importance. Like the industries of iron, paper, and hats, it seems to be rooted in the soil.
The British government appears to have had no objection to the ship-building, nor to the manufacture of pig iron, provided it stopped at that stage, and was not turned into steel or into articles or implements. An act of Parliament expressly forbade any rolling- or slitting- mills, or any establishment for the production of steel. But it was in vain for any government to try to keep Pennsylvanians from their natural vocations. At the time of the Revolution, Philadelphia seems to have been full of mechanics, who made steel, nails, screws, gimlets, firearms, saws, and all kinds of machinery.
The natural instinct for manufacturing was still more clearly shown when the Revolution removed the barriers, and all these industries, and others in addition, sprang at once into a flourishing condition. The Pennsyl- vanians became manufacturers and protectionists at one
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bound. The National Constitution had hardly been passed when, in 1789, they petitioned Congress to lay such duties on imported goods as would give a pref- erence to the mechanics of Pennsylvania.
John Mellish, an English writer, the author of " Travels in the United States of America in the Years 1806-7 and 1809-1I," seems to have been very much impressed with his discovery that Philadelphia was a great manufacturing centre. He gives the credit to the steady habits of the Quakers.
Dr. Mease's " Picture of Philadelphia in 1811" is also of some interest. He describes the city as at that time the largest on the continent, with a population of one hundred and eleven thousand two hundred, as against ninety-two thousand three hundred, the population of Manhattan Island. He describes large establishments for edge-tools, tin-ware, silver-plate, oil-cloths, earthen- ware, brewing, drugs, ship-building, shot, paints, spinning machinery, hosiery, leather, especially morocco, carriages, hats, type-founding, firearms, all kinds of iron-ware, fifteen rope-walks, and ten sugar refineries. Nearly all of these will be recognized at once as industries which still continue, some of them having reached great impor- tance.
But, without going into further details, a glance at the statistics shows that in 1850 the value of Philadelphia's annual manufacturing product was sixty-three million dollars. Following down the column, we see it rolling up every year until it now reaches the enormous figure of over five hundred million dollars, of which two hun- dred million dollars represents textile fabrics alone.
The remarkable part of this industry is that it is very
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much diversified. The coal and iron industries of the State are natural products of the soil, and it would be expected in the ordinary course of things that they should be great. But the other industries are all what might be called artificial. They are not the natural pro- ducts of the soil, but the products of energy, enterprise, scientific skill, and sound judgment in affairs.
When we come to look into their diversification we find that in Philadelphia alone the industries are divided into over five hundred different classes, conducted in over twelve thousand different establishments. The number of people directly employed is two hundred and fifty thousand, about one-fifth of the whole population.
When we add to all this the manufacturing done throughout the State, the petroleum, glass, iron, and steel, we begin to realize the controlling characteristic before which everything else, except the railroads, must bend, and before which everything else, except the railroads, is insignificant.
It would be long to tell of the many and various in- stances in which Pennsylvania has excelled in the me- chanic arts. Nearly all the great and peculiar mechanical structures of the country have been made in our State; the great iron light-houses, the greatest steam-vessels and war-ships; in fact it has been said that there is no mechanic contrivance or device of modern times which cannot be built within the boundaries of Pennsylvania.
The State was among the earliest in railroad enter- prise. The Baldwin Locomotive-Works began with the first development of railroads in the United States about 1829, and have kept even pace with that development ever since, inventing, improving, and perfecting, uphold-
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ing a high standard, and advancing and improving every department of the art. Philadelphia was among the earliest places to experiment with the steam-engine, and the first successful American engines were made there. Beginning at a time when to build a single locomotive that would draw a train in wet weather and on a slippery track was considered a great feat, the Baldwin establishment has now become the greatest locomotive-works in the world, and receives orders .from Canada, South America, Austria, Russia, and, indeed, every country where such machines are used.
In building and managing railroads Pennsylvania has again shown the ascendency of her mechanic skill. By the year 1858 she had more than one hundred and thirty million dollars invested in these enterprises, and in 1878 over five hundred and ninety million dollars. The Pennsylvania Railroad has long been regarded as a model for the whole country. The smoothness of its road-bed, the alignment of the tracks, the convenience of its equipment, and the completeness of its organization have given rise to the expression "Pennsylvania Rail- road standard," as a test of merit. It has become a school of railroading, and apprenticeships in its depart- ments are eagerly sought.
In ship-building Philadelphia was long pre-eminent, especially in colonial times and for many years after. It was a Philadelphia ship, the "Rebecca Sims," that in 1807 made the passage from the capes of the Dela- ware to Liverpool in fourteen days, a speed which has never since been equalled by a sailing vessel. When the American navy was formed after the adoption of the Constitution, the first navy-yard was placed at Philadel-
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phia and the first war-ships were built there. In the re-establishment of our navy, which is still in progress, most of the ships have been built in Pennsylvania, either at Roach's yard at Chester, or at Cramp's in Philadel- phia, and all the guns and armor-plate have been made at Bethlehem or at Pittsburgh.
In spite of the large manufacturing population in Philadelphia, there is no tenement-house system, no unwholesome crowding, and none of the suffering and misery often seen in towns of one-tenth its size; the large tracts of level land in the city allow of indefinite expansion, and the workmen live in small houses instead of tenement flats.
Our State is undoubtedly overwhelmingly manu- facturing, " saturated with 'industrialism,"-the result of tendencies that have been working for two hundred years. It has led our people to become distinguished as organizers of men and of industries, as the Massachu- setts people are distinguished as organizers of thought and its expression. This is very strikingly shown in the long list of remarkable military men that we have produced,-a list unequalled in any other State.
In the Revolution we had Armstrong, Wayne, Muh- lenberg, and Mifflin, all of them remarkable in their way. In the Civil War we had the very great names of Meade, McClellan, Hancock, Reynolds, Meigs, and Heintzelman; the lesser names of Hartranft, Gregg, Humphreys, Gibbon, and Parke; among the admirals, Porter and Dahlgren; and before the Civil War, Com- modore Stewart.
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CHAPTER X.
THE CONNECTICUT INVASION.
THE Connecticut people were not a very numerous part of the population of Pennsylvania until about the time of the Revolution, but they made up for this lack of numbers by their activity and the largeness of their demands. Like the other divisions, they wanted to live by themselves. They claimed the northern half of the province as their own, and maintained their possession of a part of it by force of arms.
If any one will look at a map of the United States and carry out the northern and southern boundaries of Con- necticut to the westward, he will see that they slice off nearly the whole of the upper half of Pennsylvania. The northern line of Connecticut will correspond very closely with the northern line of Pennsylvania, passing, in fact, only about a mile or so to the north of it, and the extreme southern limit of Connecticut, if carried westward, will pass a short distance above the forks of the Susque- hanna .*
The two little colonies of New Haven and Connecticut, the latter being situated at Hartford, were amalgamated into one commonwealth under a charter granted by Charles II. in 1662. At the time of their first settlement they had no definite legal title to the land they occupied,
* Cee map (frontispiece).
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and they had no charter giving them the right of civil government. The Connecticut Colony at Hartford was an offshoot from Massachusetts. The New Haven people had come direct from England. They were all Puritans of the sturdiest stock, aggressive, enterprising, and independent. They occupied the land by squatter sovereignty, and with about the same feeling that inspired their fellow-Calvinists, the Scotch-Irish, who planted themselves on the Pennsylvania frontier. It seemed like a pleasant place ; they wanted it. They were the saints, and the saints, as we all know, shall inherit the earth.
The Connecticut Colony at Hartford soon purchased a title to their land from Lord Say and Seal, and others, who had received a grant from the Plymouth Council, who were the grantees of the king. But this grant gave the Connecticut Colony merely an ownership of the land, and conferred no powers of civil government. The New Haven Colony remained without title until amalgamated with Connecticut.
The two colonies began their existence almost entirely independent of Great Britain. Their connection with the mother country was nominal. Even after they were chartered in 1662 they were allowed to elect their own governors, and had pretty much all the essentials of independence.
Having originally acquired their land simply by taking it, and having enjoyed so much independence in their civil government, they naturally grew up with rather liberal views as to their right to any additional territory that pleased their fancy. They were never altogether satisfied with their narrow limits in New England. Large families have been fashionable among them, and they
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have always overflowed their borders. There is no State in the Union that has colonized so many other communities. They have built up a large part of New York, pretty much the whole of Vermont, the famous Western Reserve in Ohio, and innumerable towns in the . Great Valley of the Mississippi. We have already dis- cussed their attempts to effect a settlement on the Dela- ware in the time of the Swedes and Dutch. We must now consider their more serious and determined devo- tion to that region.
The charter under which New Haven and Connecticut united themselves after the year 1662 gave them for an eastern boundary Narragansett Bay and the same northern and southern boundaries as at present, namely, the Massachusetts line on the north and Long Island Sound on the south. But, like many of the charters of that time, it extended their dominion westward to the Pacific Ocean, or, as it was then called, the South Sea.
There was a proviso in the charter saying that there should be excepted from this grant any portions of territory "then possessed or inhabited by any other Christian prince or state." Such forms of expression were usually inserted in colonial charters. But they were hardly necessary, because they merely stated a general rule of law which prevailed, whether the charter recognized it or not. The New Netherlands, or New York, long occupied by the Dutch, came within this exception, and, when the Connecticut charter was granted, lay directly in the path of its westward course of empire. But having skipped New York, that empire began again, and passed cheerfully westward, cutting out large portions of the present commonwealths of
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Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California.
This was all well enough for many years, and Con- necticut held an undisputed dominion over millions of acres of forests and prairie, and millions of buffalo and elk. But in 1681, Charles II., who had given Connecticut her charter nineteen years before, gave another charter to William Penn which overlapped Connecticut's western domain where it passed through Pennsylvania. Con- necticut maintained that she was first in time, and there- fore first in right, and that this second grant, so far as it covered her territory, was void.
The question was submitted in 1761 by the Penn family to Lord Camden, then plain Charles Pratt, a barrister and attorney-general to the Crown. He decided against Connecticut. Soon afterwards four other dis- tinguished barristers-Thurlow, Wedderburn, Jackson, and Dunning-were asked by Connecticut to give their opinion, and they decided against Pennsylvania. The lawyers had in each instance given what their clients wanted, and each side had a learned opinion in its favor.
In America a final decision was reached in 1782, by a committee of Congress which had full power not merely to give an opinion, but to definitely settle the question. This tribunal decided in favor of Pennsylvania. Pre- viously to that decision, Connecticut had always insisted on what she believed to be her rights, and maintained them against Pennsylvania by force.
About the middle of the eighteenth century her people began to cast longing eyes out on their western way beyond New York. Exploring parties were sent; and in the year 1750 some tired Puritans climbed the last
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summits of the Blue Ridge, and looked down into the Valley of Wyoming. They never forgot that scene. Nor will our race ever look upon such a scene again.
The valley was about twenty-one miles long, and three miles wide. The broad, rippling Susquehanna wound through it, now burying itself in groves of sycamores, and again flashing into the sunlight in wide expanses. There were woodland and meadow, level plains and roll- ing plains, and the remains of ancient fortifications of a vanished race. Mountain-ranges bounded every side. The river entered the valley from the north, through a gap called the Lackawannock, and went out at the southern end through the Nanticoke Gap. Both of these gaps were just wide enough to admit the waters, and in some places had perpendicular walls on either side cov- ered with laurel and pine. The valley had evidently been a deep lake which had gradually drained itself by erosion at its outlet, leaving a level fertile floor shut in and secluded by the hills; and this floor, as was after- wards discovered, was underlaid by a bed of anthracite coal.
The Delaware Indians held the eastern side and the Shawanese the western side, with the river between them. At the foot of the valley were the Nanticokes. Game was abundant. The quail whistled in the meadows, the grouse drummed in the woods, and the wild ducks nested along the river. The deer and elk wandered at will from the plains to the mountains. The streams that poured down ravines to join the river were full of trout, and in the spring large schools of shad came up the Susquehanna. Wild grapes and plums grew in the woods, and here and there on the plains the Indians had
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cultivated tracts of corn. It was an ideal spot, the natural home of the hunter and the poet, a combination of peace, beauty, abundance, and wild life such as is seldom found.
The delight with which the men gazed from the moun- tain-side, while the smoke from the Indian wigwams rose into the still air, was quickened when they descended and explored the plains. Only one white man had been there before them, Count Zinzendorf, the Moravian mis- sionary. They returned to Connecticut, and with kin- dling eye and excited gesture described this paradise they had found among the western hills. They were laughed at as romancers. But the thrifty ones who laughed were careful to send others to spy out the land. The reports were confirmed, and from that time parties from Connecticut visited the valley every season.
Wyoming entered deep into the Connecticut heart, and the Yankee lovers were ready to measure their de- votion with their lives. The solemn men of " the land of steady habits" became unrestrained enthusiasts. Their speech became eloquent and sometimes extravagant. When Eliphalet Dyer was once urging the assembly to more strenuous exertions in behalf of their western settlement, an unsympathetic wit handed about an im- promptu verse :
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