Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 88

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 88

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James De Wolf, that versatile native of Bristol, who had made a fortune in the slave trade, and another fortune by privateering during the War of 1812, bought the mill at Ark- wright in 1817, and sought still another fortune in the textile industry. He was the character- istic merchant prince who had become a captain of industry. His activity in the slave trade was only one of his maritime enterprises; the privateer "Yankee," fitted out by James De Wolf, in nine weeks sent eight prizes valued at $391,500, into Bristol. The "Yankee" in less than four years made six cruises, captured forty prizes valued at not less than $1,000,000, and destroyed other British vessels and cargoes valued at $5,000,000. James De Wolf was as successful in the textile industry as he had been in maritime commerce, and in politics, in the period in which the textile industry had become the dominating factor in the economic life of the state, James De Wolf was one of the textile manufacturers whose strength in industry made them successful candidates for the highest political offices in Rhode Island. James De Wolf became United States Senator.

The Brown brothers and their partners followed Moses Brown into the textile industry, and the twentieth century firm, Goddard Brothers, which carries on the business originally of the firm of Brown & Ives, is engaged principally in manufacturing and marketing textiles.

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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN RHODE ISLAND

The Lonsdale Company, engaged in various major textile enterprises in the Blackstone Val- ley, founded in 1820 and incorporated, 1837, was only one of several Brown & Ives corpora- tions. Other early cotton mills, indicating both rapid extension of the industry and its early distribution in places made favorable, by water and water-power, were established, as follows: In Cumberland, at Robin Hollow, 1801 ; in Smithfield, at Central Falls, 1805, and at Slaters- ville, where the Branch River falls forty feet, 1807; in Johnston, the Union Mill, 1808; in Richmond, 1810, and another at Wyoming, 1814; in Smithfield at Allenville, 1812; in Scitu- ate, the Richmond Mill, 1812, and the Red Mill, 1814, and a mill at Rockland, 1812. The first cotton mills at Woonsocket were built in 1822-1827. Other cotton mills built, or older mills converted into cotton mills before 1850 were located : In Cranston, at Cranston, Masha- paug, and Pawtuxet ; in East Greenwich, the Bay Mill, the Orion Mill, and the Bleacheries; in North Kingstown, at Hamilton and Lafayette; in Scituate, the Scituate Manufacturing Company, and the Clayville, Ponegansett and Elmdale Mills; in Smithfield, at Georgiaville, Greenville, and Stillwater; in Westerly.

A glance at a map of Rhode Island and the identification of the places named as locations for early cotton mills immediately establishes association with the principal river systems : The Blackstone, with its vigorous west branches, known as the Branch River in Smithfield, and in Burrillville as the Clear River; the Woonasquatucket, with its network of feeders in Johnston and Smithfield; the Pawtuxet, north and south branches, in Cranston, Scituate, Warwick and Coventry, and the Flat River extension far westward into the last-mentioned town; shorter waterways in East Greenwich and North Kingstown; and in the southwest corner of Rhode Island the Pawcatuck, with the Ashaway River and the Wood River in Hop- kinton and Richmond, and the east branch dividing Richmond and Charlestown. The map will also show a long list of names of villages along these river systems, each of which is the home of one factory or more, whether the latter be one of the early cotton mills still engaged in a century-old business or one of the newer factories engaged in the old or in some modern diversified branch of industry. The map is convincing ; it shows that the third stage in Rhode Island's economic history, like the earlier two, was related to water and water-power, but in this instance to the rivers of Rhode Island rather than to Narragansett Bay. Rhode Island had changed almost in a quarter of a century from a maritime-commercial state into an indus- trial state. The capital that had been invested in commerce was gradually withdrawn; fewer ships were built and more were sold. The wreck of the "Ann & Hope," Brown & Ives ship, January II, 1806, had marked the turning point from the hazard of maritime commerce to the calm security of cotton textiles. Finest ship ever built in Narragansett Bay, the "Ann & Hope" had cost her owners $50,000; she carried a cargo valued at $300,000. Driven ashore on Mohegan Bluffs, Block Island, during a heavy snowstorm, the wreck was sold for $393, and very little of the cargo was recovered.

OTHER INDUSTRIES-Rhode Island had been unfortunate had all her capital been invested in cotton textiles. That diversity of products which has characterized the second half of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century and which has saved Rhode Island from total depression on many an occasion when a leading industry has not been pros- perous began early in the history of colony and state. The rise of industries of various types has been noted in earlier chapters; the extension of these and the inauguration of new indus- tries in the first half of the nineteenth century was almost as remarkable as the development of cotton textiles. The General Assembly was friendly to the development of industry. David Buffum was permitted to use half the cellar of the State House at Newport in 1792 to begin the manufacture of cotton goods; and in the same year a bounty on the production of duck was offered. Giles Hoxsie, who believed that a foreign market for bottled beer could be developed, was granted in 1795 use of part of the State House cellar to experiment.

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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

WOOLENS AND WORSTEDS-The English government had frowned upon the manufac- ture of woolen textiles in America, lest it interfere with the British monopoly in the produc- tion and sale of cloth; hence in colonial America production was limited to homespun. The first broadcloth manufactured in Rhode Island, and probably in America, was made in Cran- ston by the Bellefonte Manufacturing Company, established by William and Christopher Rhodes in 1810. Other early woolen and worsted mills were established as follows: In North Kingstown, at Davisville, 1800, and Sandy Hill, 1815; in Hopkinton, at Ashaway, 1816; in South Kingstown, the Hazard enterprises, 1804, 1819, 1847; in North Providence, at Allendale, 1822; in Pawtucket, the Pawtucket Worsted Company, 1820; in Woonsocket, by Edward Harris, in 1831 ; in East Greenwich, 1836; in Westerly, the Pawcatuck Company, 1814, and the Stillman Company, 1840; in Providence, the Valley Worsted Mills, 1842. An earlier enterprise, the Providence Woolen Manufacturing Company, 1812, was a failure finan- cially. The introduction of power machinery in woolen manufactures was later than in cot- ton. Rowland Hazard introduced carding machines at Peace Dale and, in 1814, installed at Peace Dale the first woolen power looms used in America. The product was saddle girths and webbing; the loom was invented by Thomas R. Williams of Newport. The woolen and worsted industry was on a firm foundation in Rhode Island, but because of English competi- tion, did not develop so rapidly as cotton manufacturing. The nineteen factories in 1832 employed 383 operatives and produced annually goods valued at $215,835; forty-five factories in 1850 employed 1758 operatives and produced cloth valued at $2,381,825. What would Rhode Island do when there were no more water rights to be acquired; was the development of the textile industry to cease? The improvement of power-driven textile machinery and of stationary steam engines serving as power plants furnished a solution of the problem, and the answer, "use steam-power where water-power is not available." Profits on textiles were sufficient to warrant recourse to steam, both as an auxillary to failing water-power in dry sea- sons and as an independent source for driving mill machinery. The Providence Woolen Manu- facturing Company used steam-power in its factory in 1812, and two years later the Provi- dence Dyeing and Calendering Company installed a steam engine built in Philadelphia at a cost of $17,000. The Newport Steam Factory was incorporated in 1831; the Namquit steam cotton mill was built at Bristol in 1836. As steam engines were improved and coal replaced wood as fuel, other steam mills were established in Providence, Warren, Fall River and elsewhere.

PRINTCLOTHS-Calico printing from wooden blocks, the first in America, began at East Greenwich in the Mathewson & Mowry factory in 1790. A bleachery erected at East Greenwich before 1850 was converted into a calico printing factory. The earliest calico print- ing was not a success financially. Schaub, Tissot & Dubosque printed calico from wooden blocks in Providence in 1794. The Clyde Bleachery and Print Works, established in War- wick in 1828, engaged first in bleaching and finishing white cotton goods, adding single-color printing machines in 1833 for producing indigo blue and white calico prints. The plant was enlarged from time to time, and new printing machines were installed, until the company, by the middle of the century, had equipment for printing calico designs in eight colors. In later development fancy dyeing and printing, as well as new styles of finishing cotton cloth, were introduced. The Sayles Bleachery at Pawtucket, 1847, was the beginning of one of the world's largest textile finishing organizations. The Dunnell Print Works, also in Pawtucket, were in operation so early as 1817. Dyeing and bleaching, and novel methods of finishing cloth, lent a variety to the product that promoted sales; Rhode Island manufacturers were able, not only to match the products of competitors at home and abroad, but to surpass both in fineness and finish.

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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN RHODE ISLAND

TEXTILE MACHINERY AND OTHER METAL PRODUCTS-While his name properly is asso- ciated with the first successful machine cotton spinning in America, Samuel Slater was a designer and builder of textile machinery quite as much as a textile manufacturer. In his later years, after success at Pawtucket had been achieved, Samuel Slater attributed his will- ingness to continue there, in spite of almost disheartening failure attending his earliest experi- ments, to his love for Hannah Wilkinson, daughter of Oziel Wilkinson, to whose home Moses Brown sent Slater as a boarder. Slater married Hannah Wilkinson, and the marriage into the Wilkinson family was the first alliance, to be followed by others in business enter- prises. Oziel Wilkinson and five sons, all blacksmiths, had manufactured anchors, screws, heavy oil presses, farming implements and other cast and wrought ironware in Cumberland and Smithfield before they removed to Pawtucket at the end of the Revolutionary War. One of the sons, Jeremiah Wilkinson, invented a process for making cold-cut tacks, and later another for making cold-cut nails out of rolled iron bars. Another son, David Wilkinson, was inventor of a gauge and sliding lathe for which Congress made him an award in money in lieu of profits on a patent which expired before profits were earned. He had been associated with Elijah Ormsbee in the construction of the latter's steamboat. David Wilkinson also cast the first solid cannon, and bored it out with a lathe driven by water-power. Seventy-six cannon of this type, for arming fortifications and the new American fleet of frigates, including the "Constitution" and the "Constellation," were cast and bored in Rhode Island in 1795. Isaac Wilkinson, another son of Oziel Wilkinson, cast sixty cannon at the Franklin Foundry in Providence for use in the War of 1812. For the same war, Stephen Jenks manufactured 10,000 muskets at Central Falls. The Wilkinsons, as might be expected, extended their opera- tions to include manufacturing textile machinery designed by their son and brother-in-law ; indeed, the Wilkinsons made some of the earliest machines planned by Samuel Slater. Other Rhode Island iron workers followed the Wilkinsons in building the new textile machinery, including the Slater spinning machines, power looms as the latter were introduced, and the novel types of winding, braiding and ring spinning devices invented by John Thorp. Thus the foundation was laid for what was to become one of the greatest of Rhode Island indus- tries, the manufacture of textile machinery, not only for Rhode Island mills but for mills elsewhere in America and even in Europe. The J. & P. Coats Company, before removal from Paisley, Scotland, to Pawtucket, was equipped with machines built in Rhode Island.

Some of the earlier establishments engaged in making textile machinery were the Wil- kinson foundry, the foundry of Eleazer Jenkins, Pitcher & Gay, Pitcher & Brown, Charles A. Luther Co., all of Pawtucket; Fales & Jenks, of Central Falls; Joseph and Ebenezer Metcalf, of Cumberland; Nichols & Langworthy, of Hope Valley; the Franklin Machine Company, the High Street Foundry (later Builders' Iron Foundry ), the Phenix Iron Foundry, the Cove Machine Company, the Providence Machine Company, all of Providence; Woon- socket Foundry. Besides these, there were iron foundries, machine shops and metal working shops in various parts of Rhode Island, including the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Com- pany, 1833; the Eagle Screw Company and the New England Screw Company, 1838, later combined as the American Screw Company; and the Corliss Steam Engine Company. The last, under the management of George H. Corliss, produced in 1849 what was then considered to be the "perfect" stationary steam engine. The Benjamin Wilbur Bobbin Works, Scituate, established 1818, produced bobbins and spools; H. L. Fairbrother & Co., Pawtucket, 1834, leather-lacing and picker leather; Atwood Crawford, Pawtucket, 1848, spools; Daniel Fiske, Scituate, 1826, axes, scythes, spindles. These were only a few of the factories manufacturing accessories for mill machinery.

Alpheus Burgess, 1835, made picker leather, leather findings and leather belts for machin- ery. Spindles were made in Burrillville so early as 1831. The diversity of Rhode Island fac- tory production before 1850 is indicated further by the Fletcher Manufacturing Company,

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1793, braids, webbing, wicks; Oliver Johnson, 1833, paints; Smith Granite Company, West- erly, 1846, monumental stones; Gorham, Webster & Price, 1831, jewelry and silversmithing; Brown & Winslow, 1840, rubber goods; Walter Coleman & Sons, 1778, yacht and ship pul- leys; Providence Brass Foundry, 1800; New England Butt Company, hinges, 1842; Seth Arnold Medical Company, 1842, proprietary medicines; Mason Manufacturing Company, 1837, soaps; Providence Gas Company, 1847; Barstow Stove Company, 1836; Household Sewing Machine Company, 1847. The Butterfly Factory, well-known because of the butterfly design in the stone work, and because the bell that called operatives to work was the ship bell of the "Guerriere," captured by the "Constitution," was built in 1813. The Electro-Magnetic Company was chartered in 1838 to build machines introducing the principles of electricity, and in 1847 the Rhode Island Magnetic Telegraph Company. The Scituate Silk Company, 1836, was the manifestation of an attempt to introduce the production of silk and the manu- facture of silk fabrics. At the time silkworms and mulberry trees were imported, and at a fair a doctor wore a suit of clothes made from silk produced on his own estate. The Barring- ton Brick Company was chartered in 1846.

RHODE ISLAND ENTREPRENEURS-Many of the men who were prominent in the new enterprises that marked the opening of the industrial era in Rhode Island bore names that had become familiar in Rhode Island history. They were descendants of hardy pioneers who had followed Roger Williams, John Clarke and Samuel Gorton immediately or eventually in the early migration to the Narragansett Bay country of soul liberty; scions of the old Rhode Island houses of Brown, Harris, Lippitt, Power, Jencks, Hazard, Greene, Tillinghast, Rhodes, Dyer-to mention but a few. There were, besides, sons of later pilgrims-Wilkinson, Allen, Sayles and Sprague ; scions of new Rhode Island families-De Wolf, Francis and Ives; and newcomers, including Slater, Sullivan Dorr and Corliss. Two each of the Dyers and the Lippitts, fathers and sons; and two of the Spragues, uncle and nephew; besides a Francis and an Allen, became Governors of Rhode Island. A son of Sullivan Dorr, Thomas Wilson Dorr, was called Governor Dorr because of his election as Governor under the People's Con- stitution .* Both Spragues, one of the Lippitts, Francis, Allen and De Wolf became United States Senators. Four Allens were prominent in the industrial movement -- Zachariah, who established a broadcloth mill in 1832, introduced power-driven machinery and new processes as these became available, invented an extension roller for processing worsted, sold his woolen machinery and began to manufacture cotton cloth in 1839; Zachariah, who was a most distin- guished, internationally-known scientist, inventor and writer on scientific and philosophical questions while still intimately associated with the new industries; Philip, who became Gov- ernor and Senator, and Crawford Allen-all were engaged in textile manufacturing and asso- ciated with allied enterprises.

The rise of the house of Sprague in three generations to national reputation and scarcely questioned leadership in textile manufacturing, in finance and in politics, was romantic and spectacular. William Sprague, 2d, was one of Rhode Island's earliest calico printers. A farmer, his first venture in textiles was the conversion of a gristmill in Cranston, in 1808, into a small factory for carding and spinning cotton. Not until the factory was destroyed by fire five years later and replaced by a much larger stone building, did Sprague venture a consid- erable investment in power-driven machinery. He was energetic, industrious, thrifty, capable, honest in his dealings with other men, winning their confidence, and was eminently successful in laying a firm foundation for the family enterprises. With William and Christopher Rhodes, who had been manufacturing textiles, William Sprague, 2d, built a stone mill at Natick in Warwick in 1821. This was a large structure for the period, 100x44 feet, and four stories high. It became the nucleus for the property known as the Natick Mills in the A. & W. Sprague Company, and by the same name when owned by the B. B. & R. Knight Company.

*Chapter XVIII.

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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN RHODE ISLAND

William Sprague, 2d, transformed his Cranston mill into a bleachery, dyeing and printing factory in 1824. Printing machines were used for primary colors; additional colors were printed by hand from wooden blocks in the earliest processes. Success continued to follow the progressive, enterprising, personal administration of William Sprague, 2d. He was attracted to politics by his interest in the anti-Masonic movement, and in 1832 was candidate on the "anti-Masonic" ticket. He ran third in a series of five elections in 1832, in which the freemen failed to elect a Governor under the law requiring election by majority vote. He died suddenly in 1836, and was succeeded in business by two sons, Amasa and William Sprague, 3d, who carried on the family enterprises under the firm name of A. & W. Sprague. Both sons had been trained in the Sprague factories. William Sprague, 3d, invented a power loom. Amasa Sprague became the immediate director of the factory enterprises; William undertook the function of buying supplies and selling the products. William Sprague, 3d, who, before his father's death had served four terms in the General Assembly, had been Speaker of the House of Representatives, and had served one term as Representative in Con- gress, continued his interest in politics. He was Governor of Rhode Island in 1838, and failed of reelection in 1839 under the majority vote requirement. He was elected United States Senator in 1842, but resigned his seat as Senator when his brother, Amasa Sprague, was assassinated December 31, 1843. William Sprague, 3d, continued as director of the Sprague industries under the firm name of the A. & W. Sprague Company, and began the development of a much larger organization, throwing into business the zeal which had carried him so far in politics. He built four additional mills-the two Quidnick Mills, on the Flat River in Coventry, in 1848, with a combined equipment of 750 looms; the Arctic Mill, on the Pawtuxet River, 1852, with 612 looms ; the Baltic Mill. on the Shetucket River, in 1854, one of the most extensive of the Sprague properties. William Sprague, 3d, died in 1856, and was succeeded, in the A. & W. Sprague Company, by his son Byron Sprague, and his nephews, sons of Amasa Sprague, Amasa and William Sprague, 4th. William Sprague, 4th, the aggressive heir of the Sprague energy, besides becoming Governor of Rhode Island, 1861- 1863, and United States Senator, 1863-1875, purchased other mills and water rights for a planned extension of the Sprague organization on a national basis in states so widely apart as Maine and Georgia. His was a vision of a chain of associated enterprises as magnificent in conception and as dominant in the field of textile manufacturing as any of the major business combinations of the twentieth century. Under his administration the Sprague assets reached an estimated value of nearly $20,000,000} in 1873, when the company made an assignment during the stress of the national financial panic. The firm's liabilities were estimated at $8,000,000, but immense losses were incurred in the process of enforced liquidation, and the A. & W. Sprague Company never recovered. The career of the Spragues was exceptional and extraordinary, but previous to 1850 it was characteristic of the spirit pervading the tex- tile industry in Rhode Island. Mills were established and administered personally by their owners, or the sons of owners, or other close relatives. The management was intimate and painstaking in attention to detail. Owners worked side by side with employes, and sons of owners went into the factories in order to learn the textile business thoroughly. The rare combination of mechanical ability, inventive genius, thorough familiarity with every aspect of the industry, and keen insight in business supplemented the unparalleled natural resources of Rhode Island available for industrial purposes in making the textile industry first, and other industries later, sources of wealth that increased almost as if a King Midas had touched Rhode Island and turned it into precious metal. .

DEVELOPING RIVER WATER-POWER-Rhode Island needed two other developments to make possible the success that attended manufacturing : First, an adequate internal transpor- tation system; and, secondly, a financial organization that would facilitate the transmutation

*$19,450,000.

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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

of wealth into capital. The lowest waterfall in the bed of a river marks the dividing line between navigable water and water available for power and other manufacturing purposes. The earliest prosperity of Rhode Island was related to easy access to an unsurpassed wealth of navigable water; the later industrial development lay principally along the banks of non- navigable streams and inland fresh-water ponds, lakes and rivers. Thus navigation of the Seekonk River, by which name the Blackstone is known below the falls, stops abruptly at Pawtucket falls ; above for two score miles to Worcester the Blackstone is lined with factories, power plants and water-right reservations, and with factory villages, including, besides those compacted into the three industrial cities of Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket, the Rhode Island villages at Valley Falls, Lonsdale, Berkeley, Ashton, Albion and Manville. From Woonsocket westward for a score of miles lie the Branch and Clear Rivers, feeders of the Blackstone, with factories at Union Village, Forestdale, Slatersville, Nasonville, Glendale, Plainville, Harrisville, Pascoag and Bridgeton. One mile south of Pawtucket Falls, a dam holds back the waters of the Ten Mile River to form Omega Pond, from which a line of factory sites stretches on toward Attleboro, with mills at Phillipsdale, Rumford, Lebanon, Hebronville and Dodgeville, the last two Massachusetts properties developed by the Rhode Island house of Knight. Similiar exploitation of water-power and water-rights occurred along the Moshassuck and the branch known as the West River; along the Woonasquatucket, a river tired out by the labor of turning factory wheels long before it mingles a sluggish flood with the Moshassuck to form the Providence River; along the Pocasset, both branches of the Pawtuxet and the Flat River; and far to the southwest, the Pawcatuck and its feeding branches.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 88

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716