Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 43

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. II > Part 43

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*Talbot Dodge.

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TRANSPORTATION AND OTHER PUBLIC UTILITIES

requirements of residents of the East Side highlands were supplied by building Hope Reser- voir on the crest of almost the highest elevation and maintaining a stand of water in the reser- voir by pumping. With relatively little extension the Pawtuxet water system, with a pumping station at Pettaconsett, supplied the needs of the city for nearly fifty years.

Early in the twentieth century, nevertheless, Providence, still a growing city with larger needs, sought a more ample water supply, and in 1910, under legislative authorization began to acquire land and water rights along the north branch of the Pawtuxet River, principally in Scituate. The largest unit in the new system is Scituate reservoir, formed by a dam 3200 feet long and 100 to 180 feet high from valley levels, across the Pawtuxet River Valley at Kent. The reservoir collects drainage water from a watershed the total area of which is little less than 100 square miles, and has storage capacity of 36,900,000,000 gallons and flow capac- ity of 85,000,000 gallons daily. From Kent Dam, the flow line of which is 284 feet above mean high water in Narragansett Bay, the water is carried through an aqueduct 7.3 miles long, more than half of which was tunneled through rocky hills to Sockanosset Hill and a connection with the old Providence water system. Two supplementary covered reservoirs have been con- structed at Neutaconkanut and at Longview in North Providence, and the water is filtered. The first water from the new system reached Providence on September 30, 1926. The total expenditure for the completed system, including main conduits will approximate $22,000,000. Providence supplies water for parts of Cranston, Warwick, Johnston, Scituate and North Providence.

Pawtucket was authorized in 1875 to take a municipal water supply from the Blackstone River or Carpenter's Pond, but selected Abbott's Run in Cumberland, authorization for which was obtained in 1876. The Pawtucket system as developed includes three reservoirs, at Stump Hill in Lincoln, and at Diamond Hill and Arnold's Mill in Cumberland, with a capacity of 2,770,000,000 gallons. Pawtucket supplies water for Central Falls and parts of Cumberland, East Providence, Lincoln and North Providence. The Newport city water system was author- ized in 1877 under a charter granted to George H. Norman and associates; the charter was replaced by another in 1879. The supply is drawn from Easton's Pond; deepened as a reservoir, and the capacity is sufficient to supply 4,000,000 gallons daily. Except in extraordi- narily dry seasons, Newport has an abundant water supply; the problem of increase is diffi- cult because of island location and want of extensive river valleys or broad watersheds. Woonsocket has a municipal water system, the only problem related to which arises from the fact that part of the watershed lies in Massachusetts, and may be protected adequately only with the cooperation of extra-state officers. In several compact towns water is provided by private water corporations, which maintain reservoirs or standpipes, pumping stations, mains and distributing pipe lines.

STREET AND HOUSE LIGHTING-The earliest statutes referring to street lighting were measures penalizing interference with private lights placed at entrances to estates. The illu- mination of streets and buildings mentioned occasionally in connection with celebrations or receptions in honor of distinguished guests consisted of lighted candles placed behind window panes. A few streets in Providence were lighted in 1821. Newport is credited with being the first American city to light a street with gas, which was used on Thames Street. Gas was not used for public lighting in Providence until 1848, when the Providence Gas Company, newly established, placed forty poles in the circle around the Cove as a demonstration. Other gas companies were chartered and gas plants constructed at the period, and gas gradually replaced whale oil and gasoline as a street illuminant, and also for house lighting. The earliest gas manufacture was principally for lighting purposes; although gas as an illuminant is little used in the twentieth century, the manufacture of fuel gas for cooking, heating, and hot-flame

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processes in factories continues with a tendency to enlarge gas-producing plants and distri- bution systems. Thus the Providence Gas Company sells 3,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas annually to 75,000 customers in three Rhode Island counties. The Blackstone Valley Gas and Electric Company, supplying Pawtucket, Central Falls and much of the Blackstone Valley northward, continues to increase its output of gas.

The introduction of electricity for lighting purposes awaited the perfection of the incan- descent lamp half a century ago (1879) and the invention later of a satisfactory and practical type of carbon arc lamp. The Narragansett Electric Lighting Company was incorporated in 1884. Street lighting by electricity had not become usual until the opening of the twentieth century. The improvement of transmission systems makes the operation of large power plants practicable, with distributing lines supplying vast areas. There are few streets and roads in Rhode Island, and few houses, so far removed from electric trunk lines as to be with- out electric service. The completely modern installation includes lights, cooking range, electric refrigeration, a long list of electrical devices to be plugged into convenient sockets, and radio with electric-socket charged battery or direct service.

OTHER UTILITIES-Electric telegraph companies operating intercity lines were chartered in Rhode Island soon after the Morse apparatus had been perfected; eventually these com- panies were merged in the national systems. An ambitious project was disclosed in 1869, when the General Assembly granted a charter for the "Narragansett and European Cable Company," which had a plan for laying an ocean submarine cable with one end in Rhode Island. The following year the "National Submarine Company" was chartered, not to antici- pate Jules Verne* and John P. Holland, but to conduct marine diving operations. The Prov- idence Telephone Company was chartered in 1880, and extended its lines to cover the whole of Rhode Island and parts of southeastern Massachusetts.

The Rhode Island telephone system is connected with the network of lines covering the country. With the perfection of the De Forest apparatus for wireless telegraphy the "Provi- dence Journal" established wireless stations at Point Judith, April 1, 1903, and on Block Island, May 5, 1903. Beginning July 9, 1903, the "Journal" printed a daily newspaper through the summer of 1903 on Block Island, the news being relayed from the mainland by wireless telegraph.

The General Assembly created a Public Utilities Commission in 1912, placing under its supervision and administration public service corporations operating transportation systems or furnishing utility service such as gas, electricity, telegraph and telephone. The commission may approve or disapprove tariffs applying to intrastate commerce, and to house service by other companies, and enforce such regulations as will insure reasonably satisfactory advan- tage to the general public from the franchises granted to the great corporations that control utilities. For reasonable economy in maintaining pipe lines and mains, and conduits for cables, poles for carrying wires, public utilities tend to become and remain monopolies ; and public regulation is the condition precedent to granting frachises for the type of exclusive service that seems warranted.

The convenience of a normal Rhode Island home is indicated by the well-lighted street or road on which it is located, and access to a transportation system. Within the home the pressing of a button or the turning of a knob or faucet brings water, light or heat ; most homes are supplied with machinery that operates by electric power and tends to reduce the drudgery of housework, and even to cool the atmosphere if relief from summer heat is wished. By telephone the home is connected with thousands of other homes in and outside the state of Rhode Island, besides with stores, shops, offices and other business establishments. A tele-

*"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," 1870.

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phone message brings to the door of the home every conceivable commodity that caprice may suggest, delivered in gasoline driven wagons. It brings to the door also a public automobile to transport the citizen where he would go, or to the station or another transportation system. The local telephone exchange extends service to long-distance lines traversing the continent, so that the citizen may talk with a friend in the next house or thousands of miles away; it connects him with telegraph or cable system for relaying land or ocean messages, and it delivers telegrams addressed to him over his home telephone. Turning the knobs on a radio receiving set, the citizen picks up from the air a concert, educational program, news broadcast- ing, drama, public address, perhaps a sermon or a religious concert; occasionally 100,000 Rhode Island homes in a million through the nation are reached in one gigantic national hookup of broadcasting stations, so that all who will may hear some important message. Truly there is no place like home-in Rhode Island.

CHAPTER XXIX. RHODE ISLAND INDUSTRY AFTER 1850.

UT of the experiments conducted by Samuel Slater in Pawtucket grew a cotton manufacturing interest in Rhode Island, which in 1850 included 158 factories with capital investment amounting to $6,675,000, employed 10,875 persons, and produced annually goods valued at $6,447,120. In the same year 45 Rhode Island woolen and worsted factories employed 1758 persons. The capital invested in the manufacture of wool amounted to $1,013,000, raw material cost $1,463,900, and the annual product sold for $2,381,825. In sixty years most of the available natural water sites had been occupied, although there were still possibilities awaiting development through the building of higher dams and reservoirs for storing water. The two textile industries had followed the river valleys, seeking water for power and clear water for bleaching and dyeing and mixing the chemicals used in printing. By 1850, however, mills driven by steam instead of water power were in operation, following the beginning of an import and coastwise trade in coal, which had been brought to Narragansett Bay from Newcastle, England, so early as 1819, and from Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1831. The coal trade was destined to increase tremendu- ously with the development of mines in Pennsylvania. The iron and steel industry, one of the earliest developed in the colony, was versatile in 1850 in its production of nails and screws of all kinds and sizes, hand tools, iron and steel utensils, and machinery. Most of the machin- ery installed in Rhode Island textile factories was manufactured in Rhode Island; indeed, the Wilkinson family, into which Slater married, engaged before he came to Rhode Island in casting and forging iron and steel, undertook to build the machines designed by Slater and afterward to manufacture others for new factories. Other enterprising metal workers rec- ognized the opportunity opening for the manufacture of mill machinery, as the latter was improved and new types were introduced. Thus the iron and steel industry found a new field, and was extended rapidly at a pace commensurate with the increase in cotton and wool manufacturing. Rhode Island foundries and machine shops were well equipped to accept and fill orders for weapons in war times, bayonets, sabres and swords, muskets and parts of fire- arms, and heavy cannon, and the old line of the Greene forges, anchors, chains and metal fit- tings for ships. Iron foundries had facilities for making brass and bronze castings, as these hardened copper alloys came into use for purposes for which iron and steel were not suitable. Two large wooden screw* factories were in operation in 1850, which were by consolidation to become the nucleus for the American Screw Company. Wire for manufacture into screws was made in Rhode Island. The Brown & Sharpe factory was an infant industry, giving little promise in 1850 of the development that was to come later because of the inventive genius of one and the sound business practices of the other member of the firm. The Provi- dence Steam and Gas Pipe Company had been incorporated in 1850; years later it was to become the General Fire Extinguisher Company, manufacturing devices for protection against fire losses that would make the name of Grinnell known the world over. George H. Corliss had already built and patented his first improved type of steam engine, and the firm of Corliss & Nightingale was manufacturing, besides, machine tools of new and novel design invented by Corliss. The iron and steel industry, associated as it had become with textiles, also fol- lowed the river valleys and was distributed over the state. The granite quarries at Westerly were being worked, and there was quarrying elsewhere of granite and marble, although gran-

*A steel screw for use in wood.

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ite had not yet replaced the brown sandstone familiar in old Rhode Island buildings, including the State Houses at Newport and Providence, and the "College Edifice" at Brown Univer- sity ; nor the slate used for cemetery monuments. The jewelry industry was well established by 1850; six years later the fifty-six establishments in Providence employed 1400 operatives, and produced annually jewelry and silverware valued at $2,696,000. Like the manufacture of cotton textiles it had risen within seventy years, the expansion from a general line of small production having been due principally (1) to Nehemiah Dodge's invention of a method of making gold plate by soldering a thin sheet of gold on a base of copper, and rolling both out to suitable thickness; (2) to Jabez Gorham's enterprise in improving methods of making silver spoons and afterward other silverware, and (3) to the introduction by Thomas H. Lowe, in 1846, of a method of gold plating by "sweating." The output in Providence in 1790 was 100 pairs of silver shoe buckles, 1400 pairs of plated buckles, and 80 dozen silver spoons. From Nehemiah Dodge's invention had developed an industry that was to make Rhode Island the leading state in the production of low-priced jewelry; from the effort of Jabez Gorham to improve methods of producing silver spoons sprang the silversmithing industry. Experi- ments with manufacturing silk resting upon the development of mulberry plantations and cocoons had been unsuccessful; in 1850 cotton and wool textiles were profitable beyond the dream of wealth in silk. Besides the main lines of cotton textiles, wool textiles, iron and steel, machinery and tools, jewelry and silversmithing, other smaller industries promised develop- ment, but did not in 1850 compare in capital invested, in value of product, or the number of persons employed with the major industries in a state which years ago had passed out of the classification of farming and fishing, and by 1850, because of the transfer of capital from ships to factories, was completing the commercial cycle and becoming predominatingly manufacturing.

COTTON AS KING-Samuel Slater, by introducing water-driven machinery, and Eli Whit- ney, with his cotton gin, had enthroned cotton as king both in the agricultural Southland and in industrial Southern New England. Rhode Island cotton factories received the raw product from the ginning and baling sheds on Southern plantations, and transformed it from cotton wool or lint into a finished, merchantable product as cloth; they spun the lint into yarn for warp and woof, wove the yarn into gray cloth, and bleached, dyed, or printed the gray. Except cloth bleached white for domestic uses, printing was the favorite finishing process, although the art of the spinner and the weaver was occasionally displayed with beauty of color design in a fabric of gossamer thread and filmy texture. "A new pattern of mousseline de laines arrived from France at New York" in February, 1840, "and was offered by the importer at fourteen cents per yard by the case. The agent of a Rhode Island calico-printing establish- ment forwarded a piece of the new style of goods to Providence the day after their arrival, and in sixteen days he had the same style of goods and of equal fabric in New York, selling at ten cents per yard. The manufacturer had but twelve days to engrave the new pattern on a copper cylinder then hardened and made ready for impression; to compound the ingredients for colors discovered by chemical experiments," and to print the cloth, dry it and pack it in cases for market .; In this exploit the advantage of an environment suitable for the manu- facture of cotton textiles played much smaller part than the enterprise of the men who cap- tained the industry. With the exception of a short period during the panic of 1857, which was felt so severely in Rhode Island that Philip Allen, one of the most prominent calico printers, was forced to make an assignment, the period from 1850 to 1860 was profitable, and both capital and value of product were nearly doubled. In 1860, 135 cotton factories con- tained 766,600 spindles and 26,000 looms, employed 12,089 operatives, and produced goods

tThe quotations are from Bishop's "History of Manufactures."

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WOONSOCKET INDUSTRIAL FLANTS

ARMORY, WOONSOCKET

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RHODE ISLAND INDUSTRY AFTER 1850

valued at $12,258,677. Then came the Civil War, and the blockade of Confederate ports ; raw cotton disappeared as a marketable commodity, and the price of cotton rose from ten cents to $1.80 per pound. For a period almost no cotton of any kind could be found at any price, and many factories were completely idle. Cotton manufacturing was revived immediately after Appomattox, and by 1870, 139 factories contained 1, 142,000 spindles, employed 16,745 operatives and produced annually cloth valued at $22,049,203. The capital invested had increased from $6,675,000 in 1850, to $11,500,000 in 1860, and to $18,836,300 in 1870.

The cotton textile industry, because of the practice of "finishing" cloth in specialized factories and of the method of selling through agents who control usually the entire output, lends itself to consolidation or large units, as converters establish control of yarn and cloth mills to assure a constant flow of cloth through their bleaching and dyeing vats or printing machines, or as yarn and cloth mills combine to own or to control a finishing plant. The Rhode Island firm of Brown & Ives began in 1808 to transfer its capital investments from ships into factories. The last Brown & Ives vessel was sold in 1838, and by 1846 Brown & Ives owned the Blackstone Manufacturing Company and the Lonsdale Company in the Black- stone Valley, and the Hope Company in Scituate. The three corporations operated 275,000 spindles in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, with looms for weaving the yarn. Lonsdale cambric, which achieved a worldwide reputation, was only one fabric manufactured and mar- keted by this organization. The first of the three William Spragues whose names are asso- ciated with cotton textiles in Rhode Island extended an interest, which began with a gristmill in Cranston converted into a yarn factory, until it included five mills in Warwick and Cran- ston, and the bleachery and print works at Cranston. The second William Sprague and his brother, Amasa,* continued the expansion through twenty years from 1836, and under the third William Sprague the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company operated 280,000 spindles and twenty-eight printing machines in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine. The firm of B. B. & R. Knight was organized in 1852 by two brothers. who as children had been employed in the Cranston Print Works and had learned the methods and practices of the Spragues. The Knights in 1852 owned one mill in Warwick. Subsequently they acquired mills at Hebronville and Dodgeville, the Grant Mill in Providence, the Manchaug in Sutton, the Whiterock in Westerly, the Clinton in Woonsocket, the Jackson and Fiskville in Scituate, and the Readville in Hyde Park. The Knights purchased six of the Sprague mills in War- wick in 1883, operating 200,000 spindles ; their combined factories operated 400,000 spindles at the end of the century. One of the products of their mills, Fruit of the Loom cotton cloth, was and is known all over the world, and the picture trade mark has been printed probably more times than any other. The Lippitt family, after operating smaller mills in Newport and in Connecticut, purchased shares in and eventually acquired the Ballou mills in Woonsocket, which were organized as the Social Manufacturing Company. The Lippitts entered the field of woolen as well as of cotton textiles. Their holdings included also the factories of the Manville Company. The Spragues were eliminated following the panic of 1873. At the end of the nineteenth century, the then three leading cotton textile combinations in Rhode Island were as follows : The Brown & Ives group, operating in Rhode Island the Lonsdale, the Berk- eley and Hope companies, 300,000 spindles, with Goddard Brothers as agents; the Knight group, with Rhode Island mills principally in the Pawtuxet Valley, operating 300,000 spindles ; the Lippitt group, with mills in Manville and Woonsocket, 225,000 spindles, with Henry F. Lippitt as agent. The Conant Mill property of the J. & P. Coats Company, producing sewing thread, also operated 300,000 spindles.

The panic of 1873 was disastrous in Rhode Island in its effect upon the leading industry -cotton textiles. Almost at the beginning the house of Sprague, then operating almost

*Until his death, 1843.

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twenty-five per cent. of the 1,142,000 spindles in Rhode Island, besides the largest and finest finishing factory in New England, suspended. The Sprague factories were reopened, and operation was continued by the trustee in possession under an assignment for the benefit of creditors, but confidence had been destroyed, and the recovery was slow. Eventually other industries were affected by the business depression, many failures were entailed, and thousands of persons were unemployed. Uncertainty as to the actual financial condition of the Sprague estate delayed the return of confidence and optimism; ultimately the failure of Rhode Island's greatest manufacturing organization was found to be so complete as to involve almost total losses, as an immense property shrank in value and was dissipated in litigation. The total loss in Rhode Island was vastly more than the $14,000,000 indicated by the amount of Sprague notes issued by the trustee, inasmuch as not all of the creditors accepted the composition ; besides that, there was a tremendous shrinkage in general property values throughout the state, marking the end of a period of prosperity in which widespread development had been planned, and land had been bought and sold at prices that reflected optimism. Factories had been busy, wages had been relatively high, and the development of the street railway systems in Rhode Island cities opened up new areas for dwellings. Then came a crash and a defla- tion that were unprecedented. The blow was so severe that Rhode Island, and the textile industry particularly, scarcely had recovered from the effects of the disaster at the end of the century. Yet the physical equipment-the factories and machinery and the power-for a great industry was practically intact ; confidence and active operation were necessary to restore the cotton textile industry to the preeminence that had made cotton king.

In the ten years from 1870 to 1880 the number of cotton factories was reduced from 139 to 115, but the capital invested had been increased by nearly $10,000,000, from $18,836,300 to $28,047,331, the number of employes was nearly 5000 greater, and the weight of goods pro- duced had increased from 38,503,000 to 60,906,000 pounds. The value of the product, meas- ured by the selling price, had increased less than $1,000,000, from $22,049,203 to $22,875,III. Compared with increases in capital, employes and poundage, the statistics of value of product suggest explanation. Three factors were significant: First, the variation in the purchasing power of the dollar was fifteen per cent. between 1870 and 1880; if the selling value of the product of the mills in 1870 is reduced to terms of the standard dollar of 1880, it indicates an increase of $4,000,000 in the value of the product in 1880 over that in 1870, which is con- sistent with other statistics of the industry. Secondly, the range of raw cotton and cotton goods prices was definitely lower in 1880 than in 1870. Thirdly, the Sprague factories, although operated in 1880, were not flourishing, and the administration, as indicated by the evidence taken in litigation that opened shortly after 1880, was neither economical nor effi- cient. The number of factories was reduced further from 115 in 1880 to 94 in 1890, and to 87 in 1900; but the number of persons employed was increased from 21,474 in 1880 to 24,832 in 1890, and dropped slightly to 24,032 in 1900. An increase in the volume of the product between 1890 and 1900 was offset, as affecting value of product, by lower prices for cotton goods. The industry, although not affected seriously by actual changes in tariff schedules, had weathered the depression attributed variously to a vacillating tariff policy or to a poorly adjusted monetary system. The decrease in the number of plants was due to consolidation involving the replacement of small by larger units, and economy in the organization of fac- tories. The number of persons employed increased in spite of improvements in machinery, including not only simplification in the duties of operatives, which suggested the allotment of a larger number of machines to each employe, but also the introduction of machines or of mechanical devices to be attached to machines, which tended to reduce hand labor. The industry had been strengthened in the twenty years from 1880, and in 1900 was in better physical condition in Rhode Island than at any earlier time. Almost the only reason then for

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 43

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