Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 46

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

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In making brooches and other ornamental pins attention was paid to developing hinges and locks for pins, and patent after patent rewarded the ingenuity of Rhode Island jewelers. Beauty of design was maintained; machinery for chasing was invented. The influence of Rhode Island School of Design could be detected shortly after 1877 in an improvement of design in all types of jewelry, and an emphasis upon beauty as exemplified in simplicity and unity, harmony and proportion. New patterns were sought and introduced by enterprising jewelers as measures for stimulating trade. Shell pearl was used for inlaying first, and later as the beauty of the material was recognized, a line of pearl novelties mounted in gold or

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gold-plate was introduced and sold in large quantities. Not all of the media for expression would satisfy the canons of modern art ; one manufacturer produced a line of jewelry consist- ing principally of wire-mounted sea shells. The sea shell jewelry had an immense sale at almost the same period in which a company then occupying the old Slater Mill in Pawtucket discontinued the making of sheet metal trimmings for coffins, in order to manufacture a new wire easel invented by E. B. Crocker. Crocker obtained a second patent on the design of the easel, which was copied from the lowly bullrush or cattail .* Wire stems of artificial cattails made the frame of the easel-grouping of the heads constituted the novelty in the design. The easel, holding a life-size crayon portrait or other picture draped with a scarf, relieved the stern severity of horsehair upholstery and marble-topped black walnut stand or table, the latter depository of the family Bible, family photograph album, family scrapbook, and, perhaps, an unabridged dictionary. At almost the same time the Pawtucket Hair Cloth Manufacturing Company was nearing the age of golden prosperity in which it would make the crinoline foun- dations for women's dresses requiring twenty to twenty-five yards of cloth, as contrasted with the little more than two yards needed for a modern frock. In those days the reasonably well- dressed woman might wear no less than forty to fifty yards of cloth in a complete costuming of garments, some of which were visible and others unmentionable; and all the textile mills were prosperous, while some were working overtime to produce the cloth demanded for bal- loon sleeves and widening skirt draperies.

In jewelry the general business depression of 1893-1897 was offset somewhat, particularly in silversmithing, by the new low market price for silver bullion, which made the white metal popular for uses which the higher rates of yesteryears had prohibited. When it was settled definitely and conclusively in the political campaign and election of 1896 that the United States government neither would restore its silver purchasing policy nor would undertake, by open- ing the mint to free coinage of silver, to maintain the market price for silver at parity with gold in the ratio of sixteen to one, silver bullion sank to price levels that unlocked a market for silver for use in the arts. The large production of new mines, vastly exceeding needs for currency or other monetary uses, turned away from the mint and treasury, flowed into jewelry factories and silver foundries. Silversmiths realized an opportunity almost immediately to increase their sales by producing new lines of solid silver and silver-plated novelties at pop- ular prices, and the industry, which theretofore had been limited principally to tableware, was expanded and exploited. Besides solid silver and silver-plated toilet articles and toilet articles of other materials inlaid or ornamented with silver, silver jewelry was produced in great variety. New processes of finishing silver, tending to prevent tarnishing, were introduced; oxidized silver, in variegated patterns of dull gray satin to ebon black, was popular. Jewelers who theretofore had manufactured principally solid gold or gold-plated articles, reproduced old patterns in the white metal, and introduced new patterns. The older classification of jew- eler and silversmith, based principally on metal, was discarded in practice; in modern usage the silversmith and jeweler are distinguished rather by the type and size of article produced than by the metal used in the manufacture. The popularity of silver was not determined exclu- sively by price, however ; a fondness for the white color, in preference to red or yellow gold, is proved by the modern vogue of white gold and platinum, particularly as a setting for diamonds.

Among other factors affecting the jewelry industry in Rhode Island in the twentieth century most significantly have been (1) increase in the volume used and type of jewelers' findings; (2) introduction of new types of machines and mechanical devices that diminish hand labor ; (3) changes in styles and fashions; and (4) effective competition by other jew-

*Sometimes called cat-o-nine tails.

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elry centres. The use of jewelers' findings in a few lines was introduced early in the history of the industry ; it meant only that a manufacturer had specialized his work and limited him- self to producing "stock" in quantities, to be sold to other jewelers for conversion into the ultimate or finished product. The relations are the same as those between the wool manu- facturer who produces yarn to sell, and the weaver who buys yarn to be woven into cloth. The modern jeweler buys little ingot or bar metal; instead, he buys wire or sheets of stand- ard material to be fed into his presses, forges or other machines. The division of labor implied in the specialization thus far has interposed a middleman or jobber between the two jewelers; that is to say, a merchant who buys from the producer of standard material and carries the material as stock in trade, and who sells it to the converter. In consequence, the converter who has a new design or a new order buys stock, and turns the design over to a hub and die cutter or to a toolmaker.

The older type of equipment in a jewelry shop included a few machines, each of which performed a single operation; the machines were fed by hand, and the product was fed to successive machines until the machine processes had been exhausted and the article was ready for assembling or other finishing. The new equipment includes automatic-feeding, multiple- operation machines, accepting wire or other stock at one end and delivering a finished product at the other. Most notable advances have been made in chainmaking; whereas little of chain- making was otherwise than by hand in 1900, most chainmaking is entirely by machine in 1930.

Styles and fashions affect jewelry as well as other articles of dress or adornment. Men in the twentieth century wear little jewelry; the cravat pin, watch chain, rings, and, perhaps, earrings of yesteryear for the most part are no more. The watch chain was replaced first by a fob; and then disappeared almost altogether with the introduction of the popular wrist watch. Fashions in women's jewelry are as variable as the styles in dress. The jewelers have replaced old with new lines, however; and are quickly in the market with novelties to satisfy even transient fads. The sale of millions of pocket cigar and cigarette lighters in recent years is only one example of the adaptability of the jewelry industry to any fresh demand for small metal articles. In some instances the jeweler's problem consists in market- ing his own product before his competitors are in the field with rival designs. Competition is keen, not only between jewelers in Rhode Island, but also between Rhode Island jewelers and jewelers elsewhere. In recent years rivals have risen, particularly in the field of low- priced jewelry, in middle western cities, and there has been effective competition by jewelry produced in European countries. Rhode Island still leads the United States in the volume of production, which is valued at $45,000,000 annually.

Besides the Gorham Manufacturing Company, which is the largest silversmithing estab- lishment in the world, other large jewelry factories in Rhode Island include Ostby & Barton Company, "largest manufacturers of rings in the world"; Brier Manufacturing Company, Progressive Ring Company, jewelry for syndicate trade; American Standard Watch Case Company ; George F. Berkander, enamel and celluloid goods; T. W. Foster & Brother Com- pany, solid gold, gold-plated and silver jewelry; Ambrust Chain Company, Automatic Gold Chain Company, A & Z Chain Company, General Chain Company, Hamilton & Hamilton, Jr., Martin-Copeland Company, Spredel Chain Company, chains; B. A. Ballou & Co., James C. Doran & Sons, Jewelers' Supply Company, T. W. Lind Company, D. W. Watkins Company, jewelers' findings; the Hadley Company, wrist watch bracelets; Irons & Russell Company, Williams & Anderson, badges and emblems; Blacher Brothers, Cohn & Rosenberg, Park Brothers & Rogers, Silverman Brothers, Uncas Manufacturing Company, operating largest factory devoted to rings exclusively in America; George W. Cahoone, gold jewelry; Rex Manufacturing Company, rings and bracelets; Fray Ring Company.

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RHODE ISLAND INDUSTRY AFTER 1850

RUBBER GOODS-The rubber industry in Rhode Island employs 6500 persons in 1930. It is an old industry, originating before the middle of the nineteenth century. "The business" of making rubber shoes "was carried on more exclusively in Providence than in any other place" before 1848, Albert C. Eddy testified in a suit brought to test the validity of patents. Early Rhode Island manufacturers included John Haskins, Isaac Hartshorn, Daniel Hayward, George O. Bourn and Edwin M. Chaffee, the last of whom built the first calendering machine. The Providence shoe was manufactured so early as 1843 in quantities of 250 to 300 pairs per day, and later by thousands. The Providence Rubber Company manufactured rubber blankets during the Civil War, and lost a patent infringement suit involving $200,000 as damages; it became the National Rubber Company, and was succeeded in 1888 by the National India Rubber Company of Bristol, which was organized by Colonel Samuel P. Colt, receiver for the National Rubber Company. Colonel Colt was energetic and ambitious, and in ten years had developed a plant at Bristol which produced 24,000 pairs of shoes daily, $150,000 worth of insulated wire per year, besides rubber clothing and other rubber goods. The plant at Bristol is the largest unit operating in Rhode Island in 1930, employing nearly 2500 persons.

The Davol Rubber Company was organized in Providence in 1875 under the name of the Perkins Manufacturing Company. Joseph Davol, the proprietor, assumed direction in 1878. The company undertook the manufacture of rubber goods for druggists, surgeons, dentists, stationers, and other grades, including a complete line of hard and soft syringes, toilet articles, hot and cold bottles and bags. The trade extended to all parts of the United States and Can- ada, and Davol products were exported to Central and South America, Europe, China and Japan, and Australia. The Davol Company introduced new machinery and devices, many of which were manufactured in their own machine shop on the premises. The enterprise is still vigorous, employing nearly 700 persons in 1930.

Joseph Banigan came to Woonsocket in 1864, without money capital, but with business acumen, ambitious enthusiasm, and knowledge of rubber, which proved to be worth millions of dollars within a few years. Banigan succeeded in convincing Lyman A. Cook and Simeon S. Cook that he had a mission to perform in Rhode Island, with their assistance borrowed $10,000, and began making rubber blankets and rubber rolls for clothes wringers in an old planing mill. Banigan bought the machinery, supervised the installation, superintended the plant and sold the product. He seemed to have a Midas touch, and the enterprise was suc- cessful immediately ; it was incorporated as the Woonsocket Rubber Company with capital of $100,000. From blankets and wringer rolls, the company changed to manufacturing rubber boots and shoes. Under Banigan's direction, profits beyond an annual dividend of eight per cent. were issued as stock and reinvested in expansion of the business. The Woonsocket Rubber Company built a new mill at Millville in 1882 at a cost of $750,000, and paid for it out of accumulated profits. Seven years later the Alice Mill, then the largest rubber factory in the world, was constructed and paid for in the same way. In that year the nominal capital · of the Woonsocket Rubber Company was $2,000,000, consisting principally of stock issued as dividends. The actual value of the enterprise was indicated by the offer of purchase made four years later by the United States Rubber Company, to pay $300 cash or to issue $540 stock in exchange for each share of Woonsocket Rubber Company at $100 par ; that is to say, the $100,000 of original capital had become $6,000,000, and had paid eight per cent. annual dividends additional for thirty years. The average annual earnings had been twenty-eight per cent .; in one year the company paid forty-eight per cent., forty stock and eight cash. Joseph Banigan became President and general manager of the United States Rubber Com- pany, 1893-1896. The United States Rubber Company was a holding corporation, planned to control the rubber shoe industry in the United States, and in this purpose was successful with reference to all but the Boston Rubber Shoe Company. Joseph Banigan resigned from both

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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

the Woonsocket Rubber Company and the holding company in 1896. Colonel Samuel P. Colt, who had organized the National India Rubber Company at Bristol, was his successor as President of the United States Rubber Company. Joseph Banigan in thirty years had become a multi-millionaire as captain of a great industry ; he was not through in 1896, although he had sold his holdings in the Woonsocket Rubber Company. He had organized, in 1891, the American Wringer Company, to control the manufacture of rubber rolls for wringers; the company established a factory in Rhode Island at Woonsocket. In 1896 the Joseph Banigan Rubber Company was incorporated with capital of $1,000,000, and built a factory on Valley Street in Providence. Banigan died in 1898. Two of the largest rubber organizations in Rhode Island operating in 1930 and together employing nearly 2300 persons -- the Woonsocket Rubber Company and the Providence plant of the United States Rubber Company-were developed by him. The American Wringer Company, Woonsocket, employing 250, was also a Banigan corporation. The Banigan wealth was invested in a great variety of Rhode Island and other manufacturing enterprises. Joseph Banigan built one of the first tall office build- ings in Providence; the name was changed later from Banigan building to Grosvenor build- ing, when the property was sold by the Banigan estate.

The Mechanical Fabric Company of Providence was incorporated in 1890, and the next year began to manufacture bicycle tires, the American Dunlop or double-tube type. In the factory of the Mechanical Fabric Company, P. W. Tillinghast, American inventor of a suc- cessful type of single tube bicycle tire, made his experiments. Tillinghast obtained a patent on a tire which was built up unvulcanized, and vulcanized after completion; it was the first successful single-tube pneumatic tire, and 50,000 pairs were sold in two years. The Tilling- hast patents were sold to a corporation organized with $20,000,000 capital and controlling ninety-five per cent, of factories manufacturing single tube tires. The Mechanical Fabric Company is still in existence, manufacturing India rubber thread and cord cloth, and employ- ing 175 persons. Rhode Island had a bicycle factory, as well as a tire factory. W. W. Whitten began to sell bicycles in 1886, to import and sell bicycles and parts of bicycles in 1887, and to manufacture the once-popular Whitten in 1893. The company was incorporated in 1896 and was prosperous until the automobile replaced the bicycle as a popular vehicle.

Augustus O. Bourn, Governor of Rhode Island, 1883-1885, and Consul-General of the United States in Italy, returned to Rhode Island in 1893. He was a son of George Bourn, who had been one of the pioneer manufacturers of rubber in Rhode Island, and had been asso- ciated with rubber enterprises from 1859 to 1899. He organized the Bourn Rubber Company in 1894, making two grades of rubber shoes, and employing 300 operators. The Bourn Rub- ber Company has been succeeded by the Phillips-Baker Rubber Company of Providence, which manufactures rubber boots and shoes and employs 700 operatives. Most of the wire companies make rubber-insulated electric wires; the Atlantic Tubing Company of Cranston manufactures rubber tubing.

OTHER INDUSTRIES-Other Rhode Island industries exist in large numbers, but none employ so many people as textiles in wool, cotton, silk and rayon; iron and steel and machin- ery; jewelry and rubber. Westerly is seat of a granite industry, including eight quarries and employing over 350 persons. Westerly granite is awarded "first place for a material which is well adapted to work of the finest description and intricacy of detail. Fine grained, hard and tough, it responds to the labor of the carver and sculptor with results unattainable in any other granite, and will hold an arris firm and durable. The statue of Alexander Hamilton in Central Park, New York, was wrought from this material, and has won unqualified praise from the best judges both at home and abroad. This material is difficult to quarry in large dimensions and is too expensive for commercial buildings." The excessive cost of material was assigned as a reason for constructing the State House of limestone instead of granite from Westerly.

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The buildings at Rhode Island State College were constructed of granite quarried on the col- lege estate. The columns in the interior of the State House at Hartford, Connecticut, are from Westerly bluish-gray granite, of the type which was awarded first prize at the Paris Exposi- tion in 1867. The statue of the American soldier on the battlefield at Antietam, twenty-two feet high, is of Westerly granite. Westerly granite is used principally for monuments. The massive pillars on both fronts of the Arcade in Providence, among the largest monoliths in the world, were quarried in Cranston, and hauled to Providence on ox teams.

John Coleman began to manufacture tackle blocks in Providence in 1778. The business was continued and extended by his heirs, and for more than a century and a quarter the Cole- man business sign, a large wooden representation of a block, was a familiar landmark in front of the factory on South Water Street. One day it was taken in, never to reappear ; the mak- ing of tackle blocks in Providence had ended with the decline of shipping in wooden sailing vessels.

Henry L. Kendall came to Rhode Island in 1827 and began to manufacture soap and "soapine," the latter one of the first soap powders sold. For many years thereafter, almost a full century, the soapine trade mark, a stranded black whale with a white spot on the side, marked "Soapine did it," was familiar on packages and boxes, and on billboards throughout New England. Soapine was made in Providence and achieved a countrywide sale and repu- tation. The Kendall Manufacturing Company is still in existence and a soap powder is sold under the familiar name, but the Kendall Manufacturing Company is merely a selling agency, and Soapine is no longer a Rhode Island product.

Perry Davis came to Rhode Island in 1843, having in his pocket the formula for making a medicine. He established a factory and manufactured the medicine, which was sold under the name of "Perry Davis' Pain Killer" and advertised under the slogan "Pain Killer Kills Pain." The venture, once the medicine had established a reputation as a remedy for acute abdominal pains, was successful, and "Pain Killer" was sold in every part of the world. Perry Davis made a fortune within twenty years ; before he died in 1862 he built at his own expense the brick church still standing at Pond and Stewart Streets. The business was continued in Providence until the end of the century, and then removed to New York. For many years a branch factory was conducted in Canada because of the heavy tariff levied there on imported medicinal preparations. Eventually sales of "Pain Killer" diminished as medical practice was directed to curing disease rather than relieving the symptoms, and as statutory regulation imposed stringent restriction upon the alcoholic and narcotic contents of proprietary medi- cines. Other proprietary and patent medicines were made in Rhode Island and sold nationally and internationally, including a well-known "Sarsaparilla," and a long list of "tonics," "herb and root" concoctions, emulsions, salves and health and beauty restorers. Conflicting proprie- tary interests in the manufacture of "Yellow Dock" led to a famous lawsuit, in which legal protection against unfair competition by imitating labels, packages, containers, wrappers and advertising matter was discussed thoroughly .*

Lyman Klapp, returning to Rhode Island after a voyage to the coast of Africa with an expedition for the relief of Livingstone, the explorer, invented machinery for hulling cotton seed and a process for extracting and refining vegetable oils. Cotton seed theretofore had been a waste product of the ginning sheds on Southern plantations ; Klapp had found a way to util- ize it, and incidentally the key to the extraction of oils from other vegetables. He incorporated the Union Oil Company in 1855, and established a factory in Providence. Thirty years later, when the Klapp machinery and processes had been introduced into over 100 mills, Klapp became a trustee of the American Cotton Oil Trust, a holding company with $35,000,000 capi- tal, controlling the entire industry. The combined production in 1885 was 22,000,000 gallons

*Alexander vs. Morse, 14 R. I. 152.

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of oil, and 450,000,000 pounds of cake and meal. The cake and meal, waste products of the oil factories, were fed to cattle as fatteners, and were used also as fertilizers. The oil was refined and sold principally for food. One product of the Providence factory was "Providence Salad Oil," which was sold as a perfect food substitute for olive oil, and at one time was said to defy distinction from olive oil by chemical analysis. The business in Providence was wound up after more than fifty years of successful manufacturing.

Fitz James Rice and George W. Hayward established a bakery in Providence in 1849, and by 1861 had achieved so much success that they made a second venture, the "Rhode Island Bakery," in Washington to supply bread and other baked flour foods for the Union Army. The Washington project was not profitable as the seat of warfare was moved from the capital city, but the Providence bakery was continued and extended. The company at one time manu- factured "crackers" or biscuits, as well as bread, pies and cake, using 125 barrels of flour daily in one of the largest baking factories in New England. The company succumbed to competi- tion, after an existence of half a century.

David Heaton invented a button fastener on which he obtained six patents. The Heaton Button Fastener Company was incorporated in 1875, and a company was organized. The fastener was a small brass wire, bent and clinched, and was intended to replace the use of thread for sewing buttons on shoes. The original patents covered the fastener, machines for making it, and punches for attaching buttons on shoes. As processes were improved, other patents were obtained. The punches were sold to shoe factories, to retail shoe stores, and eventually to families, thus helping to solve the perpetual problem of replacing shoe buttons. In the heyday of success the Heaton Button Fastener Company used tons of sheet brass daily in making the fasteners, and sold their product wherever buttoned shoes were worn. And then -men stopped wearing buttoned shoes, and styles for women changed suddenly from fifteen- button shoes (thirty to a pair) to sandals without buttons. There were no buttons to be fastened, and there was no need for a fastener.

Among other industrial ventures that were inaugurated, developed, prospered and then were discontinued because there was no longer place for them in a changing economy, were factories for making leather and other belts and belting for turning machinery, discarded along with steel shafting, belts and shafting hangers, steel pulleys, and other related devices, when individual electric motors, attached directly to machinery, replaced altogether the elab- orate mechanical power transmission systems previously in use. Electric power was more con- venient, the installation was cheaper, and the use of motors made it possible to operate any machine while others were idle; in factory administration it solved many problems, including the serious one related to waste of power when an entire plant must be operated if one depart- ment only was really busy.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 46

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